On Top of Tides

On Top of Tides, written by former senior staff research scientist of Google and founding partner of Amino Capital Dr Jun Wu. This book consists of two volumes. The first volume draws an panoramic overview on the major technology companies, who contribute to the advancement of the world from different domains, in the recent history. Some of them like IBM and General Electronics has survived from many waves of revolution and adopt themselves to the ever change environment; they seized new opportunities and built completely new business. No doubt, the success of these companies are largely because they had a great leaders like Lou Gerstner who turned around IBM from bankruptcy and flourished till today. However, history also proves that no matter how great a companies was,such as Sun Microsystems and Motorola, if they stop innovating and evolving, they will be eliminated by the times. After introducing these industrial giants, he turns to Silicon Valley, the place every entrepreneur are dreamed of. Starting from the birth of the name to the legendries were born at this magic land, and then the reasons why silicon valley are the source of innovation and why it will still be the engine of technology evolvement in the future. However, the silicon valley may not looks as perfect as you dreamed; one success accompanied hundred thousands of failures. At the end of this volume he revealed the mystery power stand behind these titan- venture capital such as Sequio. According to Dr Wu, not like other financial institution, venture capital leaves positive impact to the society as it paves the road for start-ups to grow into giants. Investing a company in largest extent is to bet on the entrepreneur who is characterized by execution, resilient and innovative.

Second Volume starts with revealing the hidden pattern of IT industry by introducing 70-20-10 market share rule, Norvig's Law and generic laws of an companies, and then it introduced the history of Stanford university, and explained why it has been a such successful world class university. It can be conclude as immense assistance, an powerful community and practical education model. When talking business, it is inevitably to talk another power behind them- investment bank, a demon and angle. This book give an overview on the role investment banks, such as Goldman Sache and Morgan Stanly, play in the different stage of a company as well as the power of Wallstreet. As one of the early employee at google, Dr Wu walks readers through how google under the founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin's command become the king of internet, and why it is such a company that even more difficult to be admitted than Stanford. It discussed the importance of business model. The emerge of industrial giants are largely because they have build a business model, which can turn breakthrough and idea into cash flow. No matter how profound the innovation is, without a proper business model, it will not bring huge growth to the company. The volume also covered topics such as web 2.0, 2008 finical crisis, and cloud computing which is the next tipping point, a lucrative market. In the end, he leads the reader to find the next "google", and provided his understanding on the new energy, medical and agricultural, e-commerce, and ICT industry.

My biggest takeaway from this book is that this society needs talent who not only has expertise in particularly areas such as engineering, but also who knows how to run a business, and who are driven by curiosity, excellence, and determination.