Tuesday, February 28, 2017

Steven A. Cohen is a Wall Street legend. Born into a middle class family in an affluent Long Island town, he longed from an early age to be a star on Wall Street. He went to Wharton and in 1992 launched the hedge fund SAC Capital, which he built into a $15 billion empire, almost entirely on the basis of his wizard-like stock trading. He cultivated an air of mystery, reclusiveness and extreme excess, building a 35,000 square foot house in Greenwich, flying to work by helicopter and amassing one of the largest private art collections in the world. On Wall Street, he was revered as a genius: one of the greatest traders who ever lived. That public image was shattered when SAC Capital became the target of a sprawling, seven-year criminal and SEC investigation, the largest in history, led by an under-recognized but determined group of FBI agents, prosecutors and SEC investigators. Labeled by prosecutors as a "magnet for market cheaters" whose culture encouraged relentless pursuit of an information "edge"--and even "black edge" (inside information)--SAC Capital was ultimately indicted and pled guilty to charges of securities and wire fraud in connection with a large-scale insider trading scheme. Cohen's company paid record criminal and civil fines of nearly $2 billion and Cohen was forced to stop managing other people's money. But as Kolhatkar shows, even as the company bearing his initials plead guilty, Cohen was never actually put out of business. He was allowed to keep trading his own $10 billion fortune (in 2014, he made over $2 billion in profit) and can start a new hedge fund in only a few years. Though his company and several of his employees were convicted or plead guilty to insider trading, Cohen himself walked away a free man. This is a riveting, true-life thriller that raises an urgent and troubling question: Are Wall Street titans like Cohen above the law?

AgeProof: Living Longer Without Running Out of Money or Breaking a Hip

All the money in the world doesn't mean a thing if we can't get out of bed. And the healthiest body in the world won't stay that way if we're frazzled about five figures worth of debt. TODAY Show financial expert Jean Chatzky and the Cleveland Clinic's chief wellness officer Dr. Michael Roizen explain the vital connection between health and wealth - giving readers all the tactics, strategies, and know-how to live longer, healthier, more lucrative lives.

The same principles that allow us to achieve a better body will allow us to do the same for our investment portfolio. For instance, physical and financial stability comes down to the same equation: Inflow versus outflow. Do we burn more calories than we ingest? Likewise, are we making more money than we spend? The authors detail scientific ways to improve our behavior so that the answers tilt in the readers' favor. They also offer ways to beat the system by automating how we do things and limiting our decisions in the face of too much food or too much debt.

Chatzky and Roizen provide a plan for both financial independence and biological strength with action steps to get you there.

The Startup Way: Making Entrepreneurship a Fundamental Discipline of Every Enterprise Hardcover – Import, 17 Oct 2017

In The Lean Startup, Eric Ries, entrepreneur in residence at Harvard, serial entrepreneur and founder of the lean startup meetups, showed how ideas from the startup world such as constant iteration, minimal viable products (or MVPS), and constantly testing business hypotheses with customers to determine when to perservere, and when to pivot, now turns his attention to established, mature companies and organizations. For the past four years, Ries has been working closely with companies like GE and Toyota and Pitney Bowes to help them become more nimble, and more open to change and innovation, in order to spur growth and produce products and services that customers want. In The Startup Way, Ries shares his insights, lessons, stories, challenges and best practices from his intense collaborations with some of the world's most innovative and successful companies, as they attempt to change their culture and processes to be faster and smarter at what they do. At GE, Ries's ideas are codified under the name FastWorks; each company adapts his basic framework and ideas in their own way, to fit their particular organization and industry, as Ries discusses in the book.
For every company that recognizes it needs to embrace agility, change and do so quickly if it is to survive and thrive, The Startup Way is an absolutely critical guide and toolkit.

Tuesday, February 14, 2017

In 2008, two broke art school graduates and their coder-whiz friend set up a platform that – in less than a decade – became the largest provider of accommodations in the world. Now valued at $30 billion, Airbnb is in the very top tier of Silicon Valley’s ‘unicorn’ startups.
Yet the company has not been without controversy – disrupting a $500 billion hotel industry makes you a few enemies. This is also a story of regulators who want to shut it down, hotel industry leaders who want it to disappear and neighbourhoods that struggle with private homes open for public rental. But beyond the headlines and the horror stories, Airbnb has changed the terms of travel for a whole generation – where a sense of belonging has built trust between hosts and guests seeking a more original travel experience that hotels have struggled to replicate.
This is the first, definitive book to tell the remarkable story behind Airbnb in all its forms – cultural zeitgeist, hotel disruptor, enemy to regulators – and the first in-depth character study of its leader Brian Chesky, the company’s curious co-founder and CEO. It reveals what got Airbnb where it is today, why they are nothing like Uber, and where they are going next.

Monday, February 13, 2017

In this candid and riveting memoir, for the first time ever, Nike founder and CEO Phil Knight shares the inside story of the company’s early days as an intrepid start-up and its evolution into one of the world’s most iconic, game-changing, and profitable brands.

In 1962, fresh out of business school, Phil Knight borrowed $50 from his father and created a company with a simple mission: import high-quality, low-cost athletic shoes from Japan. Selling the shoes from the trunk of his lime green Plymouth Valiant, Knight grossed $8,000 his first year. Today, Nike’s annual sales top $30 billion. In an age of startups, Nike is the ne plus ultra of all startups, and the swoosh has become a revolutionary, globe-spanning icon, one of the most ubiquitous and recognizable symbols in the world today.

But Knight, the man behind the swoosh, has always remained a mystery. Now, for the first time, in a memoir that is candid, humble, gutsy, and wry, he tells his story, beginning with his crossroads moment. At 24, after backpacking around the world, he decided to take the unconventional path, to start his own business—a business that would be dynamic, different.

Knight details the many risks and daunting setbacks that stood between him and his dream—along with his early triumphs. Above all, he recalls the formative relationships with his first partners and employees, a ragtag group of misfits and seekers who became a tight-knit band of brothers. Together, harnessing the transcendent power of a shared mission, and a deep belief in the spirit of sport, they built a brand that changed everything.
In 1962, fresh out of business school, Phil Knight borrowed $50 from his father and created a company with a simple mission: import high-quality, low-cost athletic shoes from Japan. Selling the shoes from the trunk of his lime green Plymouth Valiant, Knight grossed $8,000 his first year. Today, Nike’s annual sales top $30 billion. In an age of startups, Nike is the ne plus ultra of all startups, and the swoosh has become a revolutionary, globe-spanning icon, one of the most ubiquitous and recognizable symbols in the world today.
But Knight, the man behind the swoosh, has always remained a mystery. Now, for the first time, in a memoir that is candid, humble, gutsy, and wry, he tells his story, beginning with his crossroads moment. At 24, after backpacking around the world, he decided to take the unconventional path, to start his own business—a business that would be dynamic, different.
Knight details the many risks and daunting setbacks that stood between him and his dream—along with his early triumphs. Above all, he recalls the formative relationships with his first partners and employees, a ragtag group of misfits and seekers who became a tight-knit band of brothers. Together, harnessing the transcendent power of a shared mission, and a deep belief in the spirit of sport, they built a brand that changed everything.In 1962, fresh out of business school, Phil Knight borrowed $50 from his father and created a company with a simple mission: import high-quality, low-cost athletic shoes from Japan. Selling the shoes from the trunk of his lime green Plymouth Valiant, Knight grossed $8,000 his first year. Today, Nike’s annual sales top $30 billion. In an age of startups, Nike is the ne plus ultra of all startups, and the swoosh has become a revolutionary, globe-spanning icon, one of the most ubiquitous and recognizable symbols in the world today.
But Knight, the man behind the swoosh, has always remained a mystery. Now, for the first time, in a memoir that is candid, humble, gutsy, and wry, he tells his story, beginning with his crossroads moment. At 24, after backpacking around the world, he decided to take the unconventional path, to start his own business—a business that would be dynamic, different.
Knight details the many risks and daunting setbacks that stood between him and his dream—along with his early triumphs. Above all, he recalls the formative relationships with his first partners and employees, a ragtag group of misfits and seekers who became a tight-knit band of brothers. Together, harnessing the transcendent power of a shared mission, and a deep belief in the spirit of sport, they built a brand that changed everything.

Followers