(book review) Brilliant, Crazy, Cocky: How the top 1% of Entrepreneurs profit from Global Chaos

Brilliant, Crazy, Cocky: How the top 1% of Entrepreneurs profit from Global Chaos by Sarah Lacy

John Wiley & Sons, New Jersey-USA, 2011

I started reading this book when I did not know who Sarah Lacy was or what the book might contain. The only thing that really made me pick the book was second half of the title - 'How the top 1% of Entrepreneurs profit from Global Chaos' . I was not convinced that anyone could actually accomplish such a humongous goal in just a couple of hundred pages. But, Sarah Lacy has done an amazing job.

She traveled to places like Brazil, India, China, Israel, Indonesia and Rwanda to explore how entrepreneurs, despite of challenging situations have made a whole lot of difference in their worlds. She has written about real stories she experienced, real people she met and entrepreneurs she interviewed. Lacy further goes to explore how some of these people created solutions to better their (unique) difficult situations. And some of them are set to change the world. The following excerpt from the book is mentions some of the entrepreneurs she talks about in detail:

“So, too, is the high-growth entrepreneurship wave sweeping the developing world about more than just cash and stock options. Marco Gomes wants anyone in Brazil to make money using the Internet. Xu Xiong wants a way for anyone in China to get a driver's liscence without paying bribes. Ravi Ghate and Rajiv Mehrotra want to connect India's villages to lifesaving information. Martha Tilaar wants every Muslim woman to feel beautiful. And Jean Dieu Kagabo wants his once-decimated nation to stand on it own two feet, consuming its own products and creating its own jobs.”

While she talks about the how entrepreneurs in the developing world are solving real problems, she talks about why Silicon Valley may lose the edge in the future:

“...in Silicon Valley, VCs hem and haw over investing in a company like Facebook at too high of a valuation, because they can't immediately determine how they'll double their money. This is the curse of short-term thinking. It's not risk-based investing if you can see an exit before you do the deal. Or as legendary venture capitalist Vinod Khosla sums up his industry's sad evolution: “There's too much capital and not enough venture.”

I enjoyed the ethnographic research throughout this book. It is not an easy task to just travel to 11 different countries and understand minute details of people's cultures, beliefs, actions, their situations and put in detailed descriptions of how and why the people act the way the act.

I read this book almost a year after it was published. Even if I am late, I wanted to write this review for all the others who might have missed it.