Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal

The dramatic, unlikely story behind the founding of Twitter, by New York Times bestselling author and Vanity Fair special correspondent The San Francisco-based technology company Twitter has become a powerful force in less than ten years. Today it’s everything from a tool for fighting political oppression in the Middle East to a marketing must-have to the world’s living room during live TV events to President Trump’s preferred method of communication.

Drawing on hundreds of sources, bilton offers a rarely-seen glimpse of the inner workings of technology startups, venture capital, and internal e-mails, documents, and Silicon Valley culture. But few people know that it nearly fell to pieces early on. In this rousing history that reads like a novel, and noah glass, Jack Dorsey, Biz Stone, Hatching Twitter takes readers behind the scenes of Twitter’s early exponential growth, following the four hackers—Ev Williams, who created the cultural juggernaut practically by accident.

It’s a drama of betrayed friendships and high-stakes power struggles over money, influence, and control over a company that was growing faster than they could ever imagine. It has hundreds of millions of active users all over the world.


American Kingpin: The Epic Hunt for the Criminal Mastermind Behind the Silk Road

All the investigators knew was that whoever was running the site called himself the Dread Pirate Roberts. Filled with unforgettable characters and capped by an astonishing climax, American Kingpin might be dismissed as too outrageous for fiction. The unbelievable true story of the man who built a billion-dollar online drug empire from his bedroom—and almost got away with it   In 2011, forged passports, a clandestine Web site hosted on the Dark Web where anyone could trade anything—drugs, a twenty-six-year-old libertarian programmer named Ross Ulbricht launched the ultimate free market: the Silk Road, hacking software, counterfeit cash, poisons—free of the government’s watchful eye.

. As ross made plans to disappear forever, the Feds raced against the clock to catch a man they weren’t sure even existed, searching for a needle in the haystack of the global Internet. Spurred by a public outcry, no witnesses, with no leads, the federal government launched an epic two-year manhunt for the site’s elusive proprietor, and no clear jurisdiction.

It wasn’t long before the media got wind of the new Web site where anyone—not just teenagers and weed dealers but terrorists and black hat hackers—could buy and sell contraband detection-free. It’s a story of the boy next door’s ambition gone criminal, anonymous, spurred on by the clash between the new world of libertarian-leaning, decentralized Web advocates and the old world of government control, order, and the rule of law.

New york times bestseller. Drawing on exclusive access to key players and two billion digital words and images Ross left behind, Vanity Fair correspondent and New York Times bestselling author Nick Bilton offers a tale filled with twists and turns, lucky breaks and unbelievable close calls.


How to Turn Down a Billion Dollars: The Snapchat Story

In the grand tradition of Ben Mezrich's The Accidental Billionaires 2009. A fellow stanford undergrad and fraternity brother of the company’s founding trio, Gallagher has covered Snapchat from the start. In the tradition of great business narratives, How to Turn Down a Billion Dollars offers the definitive account of a company whose goal is no less than to remake the future of entertainment.

An engaging look into a fascinating subculture of millions. Booklist"Breezy. How to turn down a billion dollars ably if uncritically chronicles the short history of a young company catering to young users, with a young chief executive, intentionally or not, and reveals, the limitations that come with that combination.

Wall street journalthe improbable and exhilarating story of the rise of Snapchat from a frat boy fantasy to a multi-billion dollar internet unicorn that has dramatically changed the way we communicate. In 2013 evan spiegel, the brash ceo of the social network snapchat, or genius? in how to turn down a billion dollars, and his co-founder Bobby Murphy stunned the press when they walked away from a three-billion-dollar offer from Facebook: how could an app teenagers use to text dirty photos dream of a higher valuation? Was this hubris, tech journalist Billy Gallagher takes us inside the rise of one of Silicon Valley's hottest start-ups.

Snapchat developed from a simple wish for disappearing pictures as Stanford junior Reggie Brown nursed regrets about photos he had sent. After an epic feud between best friends, brown lost his stake in the company, linked to celebrities like Taylor Swift and his wife, while Spiegel has gone on to make a name for himself as a visionary—if ruthless—CEO worth billions, Miranda Kerr.

He brings unique access to a company Bloomberg Business called “a cipher in the Silicon Valley technology community.


The Airbnb Story: How Three Ordinary Guys Disrupted an Industry, Made Billions . . . and Created Plenty of Controversy

A fast-paced, fun dive into one of the seminal firms of our time; through the tale of Airbnb, Leigh Gallagher shows us how the sharing economy can be a force for emotional connection — as well as for social and business disruption. Rana foroohar, financial Times columnist and CNN global economic analyst  .

At first just the wacky idea of cofounders Brian Chesky, Joe Gebbia, and Nathan Blecharczyk, Airbnb has become indispensable to millions of hosts and travelers around the world. An engrossing story of audacious entrepreneurism and big-industry disruption, this is a tale for our times. Charles duhigg, author of smarter faster betteran investigative look into a beloved, disruptive, notorious start-up This is the remarkable behind-the-scenes story of the creation and growth of Airbnb, the online lodging platform that is now the largest provider of accommodations in the world.

Fortune editor leigh gallagher presents the first nuanced, in-depth look at the Airbnb phenomenon — the successes and controversies alike — and takes us behind the scenes as the company’s young CEO steers into increasingly uncharted waters.


Netflixed: The Epic Battle for America's Eyeballs

Yet for all its success, Netflix is still a polariz­ing company. Netflix also faces disgruntled customers after price increases and other stumbles that could tarnish the brand forever. First it engaged in a grueling war against video-store behemoth Blockbuster, transforming movie rental forever. Drawing on extensive new interviews and her years covering Netflix as a financial and entertainment reporter, Keating makes this tale as absorbing as it is important.

Then it jumped into an even bigger battle for online video streaming against Google, Amazon, Hulu, and the big cable companies. Hastings is often heralded as a visionary-he was named Business Person of the Year in 2010 by Fortune-even as he has been called the nation's worst CEO. Netflix has come a long way since 1997, marc ran­dolph and Reed Hastings, when two Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, decided to start an online DVD store before most people owned a DVD player.

Journalist gina keating recounts the absorbing, fast-paced drama of the company's turbulent rise to the top and its attempt to invent two new kinds of business. They were surprised and elated when launch-day traffic in April 1998 crashed their server and resulted in 150 sales. Netflix ushered in such innovations as dVD rental by mail, a patented online queue of upcom­ing rentals, and a recommendation algorithm called Cinematch that proved crucial in its struggle against bigger rivals.

Today, netflix has more than 25 million subscribers and annual revenues above $3 billion. The quest to become the world's portal for pre­mium video on demand will determine nothing less than the future of entertainment and the Internet.


The Facebook Effect: The Inside Story of the Company That Is Connecting the World

How did a nineteen-year-old harvard student create a company that has transformed the Internet and how did he grow it to its current enormous size? Kirkpatrick shows how Zuckerberg steadfastly refused to compromise his vision, insistently focusing on growth over profits and preaching that Facebook must dominate his word communication on the Internet.

The exclusive inside story of Facebook and how it has revolutionized the way the world uses the Internet. This is the Facebook Effect. As facebook spreads around the globe, it creates surprising effects—even becoming instrumental in political protests from Colombia to Iran. A fantastic book, filled with great reporting and colorful narrative” Walter Isaacson.

In little more than half a decade, Facebook has gone from a dorm-room novelty to a company with 500 million users. Veteran technology reporter david Kirkpatrick had the full cooperation of Facebook’s key executives in researching this fascinating history of the company and its impact on our lives. It is one of the fastest growing companies in history, an essential part of the social life not only of teenagers but hundreds of millions of adults worldwide.

In the process, altering politics, a company that has become a ubiquitous presence in marketing, business, he and a small group of key executives have created a company that has changed social life in the United States and elsewhere, and even our sense of our own identity. Kirkpatrick tells us how Facebook was created, why it has flourished, and where it is going next.

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Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber

Backed by billions in venture capital dollars and led by a brash and ambitious founder, Uber promised to revolutionize the way we move people and goods through the world. A near instant “unicorn, apple, ” Uber seemed poised to take its place next to Amazon, and Google as a technology giant. What followed would become a corporate cautionary tale about the perils of startup culture and a vivid example of how blind worship of startup founders can go wildly wrong.

With billions of dollars at stake, Isaac shows how venture capitalists asserted their power and seized control of the startup as it fought its way toward its fateful IPO. Based on hundreds of interviews with current and former uber employees, Super Pumped is a page-turning story of ambition and deception, along with previously unpublished documents, obscene wealth, and bad behavior that explores how blistering technological and financial innovation culminated in one of the most catastrophic twelve-month periods in American corporate history.

Isaac recounts uber’s pitched battles with taxi unions and drivers, the company’s toxic internal culture, and the bare-knuckle tactics it devised to overcome obstacles in its quest for dominance. New york times and wall street journal bestsellera new York Times technology correspondent presents the dramatic story of Uber, the Silicon Valley startup at the center of one of the great venture capital power struggles of our time.

In june 2017, travis kalanick, the hard-charging CEO of Uber, was ousted in a boardroom coup that capped a brutal year for the transportation giant. Uber had catapulted to the top of the tech world, yet for many came to symbolize everything wrong with Silicon Valley. Award-winning new york times technology correspondent Mike Isaac’s Super Pumped presents the dramatic rise and fall of Uber, set against an era of rapid upheaval in Silicon Valley.




Losing the Signal: The Untold Story Behind the Extraordinary Rise and Spectacular Fall of BlackBerry

In 2009, blackberry controlled half of the smartphone market. The rise and fall of BlackBerry reveals the dangerous speed at which innovators race along the information superhighway. Together, they engineered a pioneering pocket email device that became the tool of choice for presidents and CEOs. With unprecedented access to key players, senior executives, directors and competitors, Losing the Signal unveils the remarkable rise of a company that started above a bagel store in Ontario.

At the very moment blackberry was ranked the world's fastest growing company internal feuds and chaotic growth crippled the company as it faced its gravest test: Apple and Google's entry in to mobile phones. Expertly told by acclaimed journalists, jacquie McNish and Sean Silcoff, this is an entertaining, whirlwind narrative that goes behind the scenes to reveal one of the most compelling business stories of the new century.

The partnership enjoyed only a brief moment on top of the world, however. Today that number is one percent. What went so wrong? losing the signal is a riveting story of a company that toppled global giants before succumbing to the ruthlessly competitive forces of Silicon Valley. At the heart of the story is an unlikely partnership between a visionary engineer, Mike Lazaridis, and an abrasive Harvard Business school grad, Jim Balsillie.

This is not a conventional tale of modern business failure by fraud and greed.


Black Edge: Inside Information, Dirty Money, and the Quest to Bring Down the Most Wanted Man on Wall Street

New york times bestseller • “an essential exposé of our times—a work that reveals the deep rot in our financial system. Black edge is a riveting legal thriller that raises urgent questions about the power and wealth of those who sit at the pinnacle of high finance and how they have reshaped the economy.

Everyone should read this book. David grann, author of killers of the flower moon   one of the best books of the year—the new york times and the Economist • Finalist for the New York Public Library’s Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism   The hedge fund industry changed Wall Street.

Cohen, however, himself, was never charged. Stewart’s den of thieves, sheelah Kolhatkar’s thrilling Black Edge should be next on your reading list. The wall street Journal   “Excellent. The economist   “A true-life thriller with Shakespearian stakes. In hedge fund circles, Steven A. Cohen was revered as one of the greatest traders who ever lived.

Longlisted for the andrew carnegie medal for excellence in Nonfiction and the Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award   “A modern version of Moby-Dick, with wiretaps rather than harpoons. Jennifer senior, the new york Times   “If you liked James B.


The Upstarts: How Uber, Airbnb, and the Killer Companies of the New Silicon Valley Are Changing the World

These are the upstarts, idiosyncratic founders with limitless drive and an abundance of self-confidence. Led by such visionaries as travis kalanick of Uber and Brian Chesky of Airbnb, they are rewriting the rules of business and often sidestepping serious ethical and legal obstacles in the process. The upstarts is the definitive story of two new titans of business and a dawning age of tenacity, conflict and wealth.

One of amazon's best books of 2017 a look deep inside the new silicon valley, from the new york times bestselling author of The Everything Store Ten years ago, the idea of getting into a stranger's car, would have seemed bizarre and dangerous, or a walking into a stranger's home, but today it's as common as ordering a book online.

Uber and airbnb have ushered in a new era: redefining neighborhoods, challenging the way governments regulate business, and changing the way we travel. In the spirit of iconic silicon valley renegades like Steve Jobs and Bill Gates, another generation of entrepreneurs is using technology to upend convention and disrupt entire industries.

In brad stone's riveting account of the most radical companies of the new Silicon Valley, we discover how it all happened and what it took to change the world.


The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon

To do so, he developed a corporate culture of relentless ambition and secrecy that's never been cracked. Amazon. Com's visionary founder, Jeff Bezos, wasn't content with being a bookseller. Named a best book of the year by the Washington Post, The Economist, Bloomberg, Forbes, New Republic, and Gizmodo. The everything store is the book that the business world can't stop talking about, the revealing, definitive biography of the company that placed one of the first and largest bets on the Internet and forever changed the way we shop and read.

The definitive story of Jeff Bezos and Amazon. Com -- "it's hard to imagine a better retelling of the Amazon origin story" New Republic. Until now. Brad stone enjoyed unprecedented access to current and former Amazon employees and Bezos family members, and his book is the first in-depth, fly-on-the-wall account of life at Amazon.

He wanted amazon to become the everything store, offering limitless selection and seductive convenience at disruptively low prices.