Book Review: Iterating Grace, by Koons Crooks
Iterating Grace: Heartfelt Wisdom and Disruptive Truths from Silicon Valley’s Top Venture Capitalists by Koons Crooks
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
While I second the comments others have made (“not my world”, “obviously a marketing ploy”, among others), I believe that this work makes fun of itself in such a way that makes it truly important to the history of the technology world. It mocks the longevity of our technology (or lack thereof), it mocks the personalities that have created it, and it touches on what is (perhaps) most important:
That startups are a kind of spiritual exercise.
While we might debate if this is a good spiritual exercise, it has many of the hallmarks of what non-Judeo-Christian religions commonly count as such, namely:
- Ineffability (inability to capture the experience in ordinary language).
- Noetic quality (the notion that mystical experiences reveal an otherwise hidden or inaccessible knowledge).
Those 2 are very easily met by a startup - it is impossible to capture the experience in ordinary language, or to even attempt to explain The Struggle. The experiences also reveal hidden or inaccessible knowledge - not just knowledge of the market, the products and technology, but in people. Most notably, it reveals hidden truths about yourself, your best friends (founders), and humanity as a whole.
In short, if you’re in tech I strongly recommend reading it. If you aren’t, you probably won’t get it.