Home

Book-Summary - Anything You Want

I follow Derek Sivers. I got introduced to him via his blog (I do not remember how I got his blog reference though - maybe via DHH blogs). I like many of his blog posts. They are short posts, simple in the content and profound in its teaching. This book follows a similar pattern. This is targeted at entrepreneurs. It has around 40 chapters based on his experience of running the CD Baby company.

The thing that stood out was that many of the decisions taken by him are grounded in very simple desires. Based on these simple desires, the company was run in a unique way, much different from what I expected from a technology startup. There is this belief that as a startup, you need to think big and constantly expand. As you expand, your needs change, you need to evolve, and to a certain extent even the customers change. But for CD Baby, that wasn’t the case. The company’s growth was very natural: based on the problem faced, a solution was invented, and that itself became a monetization channel for the company (example - building the servers and renting them out). He actively wanted a small company so that he could cater to those customers who could not be served by distributors. He loved writing code even when he was running a company of 75-80 employees.

With all these crazy startup stories in the current age about various technologies and the need to grow fast or think big, Anything You Want is an antidote for that. It helps bring our minds back to thinking of customers first, solving the simplest problems customers are in pain over, and remembering that, at the end of the day, it is your world you are creating and hence you should enjoy what you like. I also feel the book itself projects that journey as too simplistic, but I believe there were a lot of challenges (example — coming to the selling decision, hiring and letting go, the tussle with Apple).

I strongly recommend reading this book for anyone who is an entrepreneur or wants to become one.

My personal rating of this book is:

  • Category: Entrepreneurship
  • Rating: 5/5

I have used an LLM to review the write-up, fix grammatical errors, and iron out any awkward sentences.