Hello, Startup ― A Programmer's Guide to Building Products, Technologies, and Teams

At this very moment, somewhere in the world, two programmers are sitting in a garage and creating our future, one line of code at a time. We are in the era of the high tech startup.

This book is the "Hello, World" tutorial for building products, technologies, and teams in a startup environment. It's based on the experiences of the author, Yevgeniy Brikman, as well as interviews with programmers from some of the most successful startups of the last decade, including Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, GitHub, Stripe, Instagram, AdMob, Pinterest, and many others.

If you're at all interested in startups—whether you're a programmer at the beginning of your career, a seasoned developer bored with the politics of large companies, a manager trying to figure out how to motivate your engineers, or just someone trying to figure out what this startup thing is all about—this book is for you. For more info, seehttp://www.hello-startup.net

Hello there! I'm Yevgeniy (Jim) Brikman. I'm a programmer, writer, speaker, and traveler. You can find me on Twitter (@brikis98), LinkedIn (linkedin.com/in/jbrikman), Blogger (http://brikis98.blogspot.com), and my Homepage (ybrikman.com).

I got my BS and Masters in Computer Science at Cornell Unitversity, started my career at several big companies (Cisco Systems, Thomson Financial), and then made the jump into the startup world (LinkedIn, TripAdvisor). Along the way, I got the chance to work on enterprise products, hiring tools, scalable infrastructure, company culture, engineering branding, travel apps, VoIP software, innovation programs, and much more.

I wish I had a book like "Hello, Startup" back when I was in college. By the time I graduated, I had a BS, a Masters, a bunch of internship experiences—and absolutely no idea what I was doing. What technologies should I learn and use? Why should I spend time writing automated tests? How do I build a user interface that doesn't look terrible? How do I get people to use my product? How do I negotiate a job offer? Should I negotiate for more salary or more equity? What is equity, anyway? And most importantly, should I work at a large company or join a startup?

I learned the answers to these questions, and many others, the hard way—through trial and error. I also learned that thousands of other developers before me went through the same inefficient trial and error process. It doesn't have to be this way. While there are a small number of lessons that you can only learn by making your own mistakes, my hope is that you can learn everything else by studying the successes, failures, and stories in "Hello, Startup".