Randall Stross – författare

In The Launch Pad, Randall Stross, author of eBoys and Planet Google, takes a behind-the-scenes look at how tomorrow's hottest startups are being primed for greatness.Twice a year, in the heart of Silicon Valley, a small investment firm called Y Combinator selects an elite group of young entrepreneurs. Months of intense work culminates in Demo Day, when investors and venture capitalists flock to hear their pitches. Any one of them might turn out to be the next Dropbox (class of 2007), or Airbnb (class of 2009).Randall Stross was granted unprecedented access to Y Combinator, enabling a unique inside tour of the world of software startups. He tells the full story of this ultra-exclusive institution, how it chooses the aspiring Mark Zuckerbergs, and how it teaches them to go from concept to profitability in record time.This is the definitive story of a seismic shift in the business world, in which coding skill beats job experience, pairs of undergraduates take on Goliaths, and inves­tors fall in love. The Launch Pad is both a gripping narrative and a gold mine of useful insights.'A must-read for anyone interested in the realities of modern entrepreneurship' -Eric Ries, author of The Lean Startup'Stross's account of the best new entrepreneurs and the exciting companies they're building at startup schools is a great read for founders and would-be founders alike' -Marc Andreessen, cofounder, Andreessen HorowitzRandall Stross is the author of several acclaimed books, including eBoys, Planet Google, and The Wizard of Menlo Park. He has a Ph.D. in history from Stanford University.

The liberal arts major is often lampooned: lacking in "skills," unqualified for a professional career, underemployed. But studying for the joy of learning turns out to be surprisingly practical. Unlike career-focused education, liberal education prepares graduates for anything and everything—and nervous "fuzzy major" students, their even more nervous parents, college career center professionals, and prospective employers would do well to embrace liberal arts majors. Just look to Silicon Valley, of all places, to see that liberal arts majors can succeed not in spite of, but because of, their education.A Practical Education investigates the real-world experiences of graduates with humanities majors, the majors that would seem the least employable in Silicon Valley's engineering-centric workplaces. Drawing on the experiences of Stanford University graduates and using the students' own accounts of their education, job searches, and first work experiences, Randall Stross provides heartening demonstrations of how multi-capable liberal arts graduates are. When given a first opportunity, these majors thrive in work roles that no one would have predicted.Stross also weaves the students' stories with the history of Stanford, the rise of professional schools, the longstanding contention between engineering and the liberal arts, the birth of occupational testing, and the popularity of computer science education to trace the evolution in thinking about how to prepare students for professional futures. His unique blend of present and past produces a provocative exploration of how best to utilize the undergraduate years.At a time when institutions of higher learning are increasingly called on to justify the tangible merits of the liberal arts, A Practical Education reminds readers that the most useful training for an unknowable future is the universal, time-tested preparation of a liberal education.

Based on unprecedented access he received to the highly secretive "Googleplex," acclaimed New York Times columnist Randall Stross takes readers deep inside Google, the most important, most innovative, and most ambitious company of the Internet Age. His revelations demystify the strategy behind the company''s recent flurry of bold moves, all driven by the pursuit of a business plan unlike any other: to become the indispensable gatekeeper of all the world''s information, the one-stop destination for all our information needs. Will Google succeed? And what are the implications of a single company commanding so much information and knowing so much about us? As ambitious as Google''s goal is, with 68 percent of all Web searches (and growing), profits that are the envy of the business world, and a surplus of talent, the company is, Stross shows, well along the way to fulfilling its ambition, becoming as dominant a force on the Web as Microsoft became on the PC. Google isn''t just a superior search service anymore. In recent years it has launched a dizzying array of new services and advanced into whole new businesses, from the introductions of its controversial Book Search and the irresistible Google Earth, to bidding for a slice of the wireless-phone spectrum and nonchalantly purchasing YouTube for $1.65 billion. Google has also taken direct aim at Microsoft''s core business, offering free e-mail and software from word processing to spreadsheets and calendars, pushing a transformative -- and highly disruptive -- concept known as "cloud computing." According to this plan, users will increasingly store all of their data on Google''s massive servers -- a network of a million computers that amounts to the world''s largest supercomputer, with unlimited capacity to house all the information Google seeks. The more offerings Google adds, and the more ubiquitous a presence it becomes, the more dependent its users become on its services and the more information they contribute to its uniquely comprehensive collection of data. Will Google stay true to its famous "Don''t Be Evil" mantra, using its power in its customers'' best interests? Stross''s access to those who have spearheaded so many of Google''s new initiatives, his penetrating research into the company''s strategy, and his gift for lively storytelling produce an entertaining, deeply informed, and provocative examination of the company''s audacious vision for the future and the consequences not only for the business world, but for our culture at large.

The liberal arts major is often lampooned: lacking in "skills," unqualified for a professional career, underemployed. But studying for the joy of learning turns out to be surprisingly practical. Unlike career-focused education, liberal education prepares graduates for anything and everything—and nervous "fuzzy major" students, their even more nervous parents, college career center professionals, and prospective employers would do well to embrace liberal arts majors. Just look to Silicon Valley, of all places, to see that liberal arts majors can succeed not in spite of, but because of, their education.A Practical Education investigates the real-world experiences of graduates with humanities majors, the majors that would seem the least employable in Silicon Valley's engineering-centric workplaces. Drawing on the experiences of Stanford University graduates and using the students' own accounts of their education, job searches, and first work experiences, Randall Stross provides heartening demonstrations of how multi-capable liberal arts graduates are. When given a first opportunity, these majors thrive in work roles that no one would have predicted.Stross also weaves the students' stories with the history of Stanford, the rise of professional schools, the longstanding contention between engineering and the liberal arts, the birth of occupational testing, and the popularity of computer science education to trace the evolution in thinking about how to prepare students for professional futures. His unique blend of present and past produces a provocative exploration of how best to utilize the undergraduate years.At a time when institutions of higher learning are increasingly called on to justify the tangible merits of the liberal arts, A Practical Education reminds readers that the most useful training for an unknowable future is the universal, time-tested preparation of a liberal education.