The New New Thing: A Silicon Valley Story

Review

My Rating: 9 out of 10

In “The New New Thing”, author Michael Lewis draws the portrait of Jim Clark, founder of Silicon Graphics and Netscape. Published in 1999, it describes the success of an entrepreneur in the uprise and boom time in Silicon Valley.

Apart from describing the unique personality of Clark and the characteristics that made him special as an engineer, Lewis also talks about how Clark brought SGI and Netscape to life.

Whilst reading, the similarities between the story behind Google and SGI is pretty evident. Founded by top-level students from a renown University, run as a small engineering-centered company—and became employers the best of the business wanted to work for.

Bottom line

Reading this book from todays point of view is pretty interesting as it shows how similar careers developed before the dot.com times. It uses a very charismatic and successful founder of various Silicon Valley firms as an example to not only describe the business, but also what drives people that brought Silicon Valley and the Internet to where they are today.