History of Tech Companies — The Ultimate List of Books
4 min readJan 15, 2018
You can use accumulated know-how from all these great stories to build a better tech company. Only good books which I’ve read and can recommend.
Until 1969
- Innovators — The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses and Geeks Created Digital Revolution
- IBM — The IBM Century: Creating the IT Revolution
- HP — Tough Choices: A Memoir (this is not as good as the rest of the list but still interesting)
- Intel — Only the Paranoid Survive: How to Exploit the Crisis Points That Challenge Every Company
1970
- Virgin — Screw Tt, Let’s Do It — Lessons In Life
- Atari — Atari Inc. Business Is Fun (Complete History Of Atari — Volume 1)
- Microsoft — Idea Man: A Memoir by the Cofounder of Microsoft
Gates: How Microsoft’s Mogul Reinvented an Industry and Made Himself the Richest Man in America - APPLE — Steve Jobs
Becoming Steve Jobs: The Evolution of a Reckless Upstart into a Visionary Leader
Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products - Oracle Softwar: An Intimate Portrait of Larry Ellison and Oracle
- Apple, Amazon, Google, Facebook — The Four: The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google
1980
1990
- ID — Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture
- Red Hat — The Open Organization: Igniting Passion and Performance
Under the Radar: How Red Hat Changed the Software Business - Amazon — The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon
- Yahoo — Marissa Mayer and the Fight to Save Yahoo!
- Netscape — Netscape Time: The Making of the Billion-Dollar Start-Up That Took on Microsoft
- eBay — The Perfect Store: Inside eBay
- Netflix — Netflixed: The Epic Battle for America’s Eyeballs
- PayPal — The PayPal Wars: Battles with eBay, the Media, the Mafia, and the Rest of Planet Earth
- Google — In The Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives
- 37 Signals — Getting Real
- Salesforce — Behind the Cloud: The Untold Story of How Salesforce.com Went from Idea to Billion-Dollar Company-and Revolutionized an Industry
- Zappos — Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose
2000
- Facebook — The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook: A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal
Chaos Monkeys: Obscene Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon Valley - Y Combinator — The Launch Pad: Inside Y Combinator, Silicon Valley’s Most Exclusive School for Startups
- Twitter — Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal
- Zendesk — Startupland: How Three Guys Risked Everything to Turn an Idea into a Global Business
- Groupon — Groupon’s Biggest Deal Ever: The Inside Story of How One Insane Gamble, Tons of Unbelievable Hype, and Millions of Wild Deals Made Billions for One Ballsy Joker
2010+
- Growth Engines — Startup Growth Engines: Case Studies of How Today’s Most Successful Startups Unlock Extraordinary Growth
- Founders at Work — Founders at Work: Stories of Startups’ Early Days
- Uber, AirBnB — How Uber, Airbnb, and the Killer Companies of the New Silicon Valley Are Changing the World
ps. If you like reading, you will love our Knowledge Center at Divante.co
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