This summer while on vacation I had a chance to read the newest book by Andy Kessler called Grumby. It’s a book about an entrepreneur who invents the next big thing then every imaginable success and failure happens.

The book is available in hardcover or ebook on Amazon.  The hardcover is available in stores.  Go get it to read either hardcover or Kindle or Ipad.  I bought it on the Kindle app for the iPad.  You can get it now on your iPad or Kindle.  It’s the price of a cold draft Sam Adams beer at the airport $7.99. It’s worth the read and great for a flight from SF to Boston.  Or buy the hardcover version.

Andy Kessler is amazing. He was an investor  in my last company PodTech when I was growing fast then it cratered big time after taking big venture money and then me making few critical hiring mistakes.  There is  no doubt some of that implosion is fodder in this book.  Andy is at it again with another winner.   He already wrote some bestselling books about Wall Street – Wall Street Meat and Running Money .    Now it’s Silicon Valley’s turn.

My review of Grumby:

I loved it.  It was funny, and I read it twice on vacation. It’s pure technology, venture, startup, and Silicon Valley entertainment. Anyone in technology, venture, or investing will love this book. A must read. I’m sure many will recognize themselves in this book. I know that I did.

I predict that it will be a staple in all entrepreneurship programs in the top MBA schools around the world.

Here’s the basic plot:

The entrepreneur bootstraps a technology that goes on to be the next big thing. Then everything happens: he finds a cofounder, gets traction with beta, self finances, raised venture capital, grows like a weed with zillions of users and money pouring in, scales up with a with Chinese manufacturing, gets hacked, deals with the CIO, recovers and gets back on track, deals with investment bankers at Goldman Sacks, goes public, becomes the poster child of technology, then gets shorted by Wall Street, and then comes crashing down only to land right back where he started. It’s the ultimate tech “chutes and latters” venture story.

Although Grumby is  fiction, it’s a great story with many lessons of high tech successes and failures all rolled up in one good story.  Andy is great story teller and Andy does a fantastic job articulating the historical and future understanding on where technology is going. This book is that story.  Grumby is a great roadmap of where technology is headed.

I’m not alone in liking the book.

“He gets it all down with Jack Kerouac-like authenticity.”
–William Tucker, Wall Street Journal.

“Deliciously naughty. . . I finished it in a gulp, perfectly astonished.”
–Michael Lewis, author of The Big Short and The Blind Side

“Fucking Awesome …”
-Brad Feld, venture capitalist

Brad has some good things to say. He writes:

Andy pretty much nails every aspect of the rise and fall of a garage startup in Silicon Valley. His fiction is great – it’s fast paced (thanks to many short chapters), full of dialogue and great characters, and lots of startup / entrepreneurship / Silicon Valley cliches. He spares no one and there were many times where I cringed in remembrance of something that hit a little too close to home. Way to go Andy – you nailed it.

This book is pure entertainment and pure gold for anyone in tech or the technology business. I predict that this book will be a standard issue in all business schools teach high tech entrepreneurship.

Grumby is a winner!

Here is a description of Grumby:

What’s it like inside the next Google? Or Facebook? Or Apple? No, even better, what’s it like to launch the next Google, Facebook, or Apple? And then have the guys who launched the original Google, Facebook, and Apple decide you are public enemy number one.

In this laugh-out-loud-funny novel, a global band of rebel hackers and underemployed “surgeon-class” coders load beyond-state-of-the-art capabilities, including working eyes, ears, GPS, spy software, and a wiseass personality, into a bunch of old Furby toys, rechristened “Grumbys,” network them together, sell millions, go public, become rich and famous, change the world (for better or worse), and make sometime allies, sometime enemies of not only the biggest names in tech (though the Woz seems to actually want to help) but Congress, Goldman Sachs, the CIA, Microsoft, Oakley, and Mossad, not to mention the NCAA, the NBA, and the NFL. (Grumbys are shrewd handicappers.)

Andy Kessler morphed from a super-successful millionaire, hi-tech hedge fund honcho (cashing out moments before the tech wreck) into a New York Times best-selling author with nonfiction triumphs such as Running Money and Wall Street Meat. The Wall Street Journal said, “He gets it all down with Jack Kerouac-like authenticity.”

Now Kessler goes beyond yesterday’s news to a novel of tomorrow (or maybe ten minutes from now) that tells more than any newshound could about the new true global elite, the newborn aristocracy of tech: brilliant, bold, and leading us where no man has gone before, but also spoiled, petulant, cutthroat conspiratorial, and willing to do just about anything to preserve their precarious position to keep from being replaced by the next big thing.

Underlying a hilarious adventure that rockets from Silicon Valley to the Concrete Canyons of New York, from the new industrial heartland of Shanghai to the ancient fortunes of Europe’s greatest and most secretive families are some serious questions about democracy, capitalism and competition, privacy, and what happens when we decide our machines are smarter than we are and that’s OK.

Like a modern-day Jules Verne, ultimately Kessler is throwing down a challenge to each and every hero-in-his-own-mind hacker: the proto-Jobs, the would-be-Gates, the wannabe Zuckerberg: Can it be done? Is Grumby the future? And who will get us there first?

Andy was cool enough to send me an excerpt.

Here is an section of the book – The entrepreneurs go to Goldman Sachs in SF – sheep walking into see the wolves. Funny as hell. Classic.

9:59 a.m., April 22, San Francisco, California

‘555 California Avenue’ I note as we walk uphill towards the wavy looking building. Just getting to work in San Francisco would keep you in shape. I look further up California Avenue and it gets steeper and steeper, though I note a cable car about halfway up. That’s cheating.

“This must be the place. Is that marble?” Meeta asks.

“It looks like it.”

“How come our building in Milpitas wasn’t mined by some Tuscan Italianate?”

“What does that even mean?” I ask.

“You’re avoiding my question.”

“Are you sure this is going to work?” I look into Meeta’s eyes to see if he is sincere. He just nods.

We climb the steps, which narrow almost Escher-like. They look like they could be headed down at one point, as we head uphill from California Ave.

After about ten steps, Meeta adds, “it’s a demo, it’s not supposed to work, just impress.”

“OK, are you sure this is going to impress?”

“If it works,” Meeta smiles.

We enter the building through revolving doors, look up Goldman Sachs on the directory, and get on an elevator and hit 36.

We start heading up and then alarm bells start going off, the elevator comes to a halt and then starts rapidly heading back down. Meeta looks scared, I can’t even imagine what I look like. We both grab the handrails and the elevator comes to an abrupt stop and the doors open up back on the first floor.

Two guards are there to greet us.

“Where you going?”

“Goldman Sachs,” I answer.

“You can’t go up without an appointment.”

“We’re here to see Jed Tedford. He told us to stop in anytime,” I smile.

“Yeah right.” We follow him to the guard desk.

“ID please.”

Meeta gets out his Safeway card. I produce my driver’s license.

“Ted Jedford?”

“Jed Tedford.”

He clicks around a bit, calls his number, gets no answer, leaves a message and tells us to wait. He could use arReceptionist.

“Try his secretary.”

“You mean his executive assistant?”

“Yes.”

“Name?”

“Don’t you have it?”

“Sure, yeah, OK, uh-huh,” he dials another number “I got two guys down here to see Mr. Tedford…uh-huh….” The guard turns to me, “From?”

“Grumby Mogul Limited Company, Inc.” Meeta jumps in.

“Grumby, Mo Co something … OK, I’ll wait …,” he turns to us again with a disgusted look, “OK, he’ll see you, 39. Go on up.” He hands us two badges with our pictures on them, though I don’t remember him taking them.

“Did you fix the elevator yet?” Meeta asks.

We both hold onto the handrails on the way up.

“I’m Stephanie. Sorry for the hassle downstairs. Mr. Tedford is delighted to meet with you. Right this way to our conference room.”

“Could you mention we have a demo for him, and it’s probably better in his office.”

“Sure, wait here.”

In less than 30 seconds, she’s back and we follow her through a maze of dark cherry wood offices until we got to Jed’s corner office, with a view of the bay and Alcatraz and the Golden Gate Bridge and Marin. Both Meeta and I just stare. It must happen a lot, because Jed just waits, smiles and then finally motions for us to sit down on his black leather couch.

“Nice office,” I say. “You guys must do well.”

“I don’t notice it anymore, though I should.”

He walks over to Meeta on the couch, extends his hand and says, “Jed Tedford.”

“Meeta,” Meeta says.

“Sorry,” I jump in. “I should have introduced you. This is my partner Meeta. He knows everyone in India, everything about technology and I would call him Kato if I didn’t think he would attack me every time I came into the office.”

Meeta is now crawling under Jed’s desk, unplugging cables and plugging in a Grumby.

“Our IT guys have all sorts of stuff,” he says as he looks down at Meeta, “firewalls and security stuff built in. They claim it’s impenetrable. I can’t even bring in a laptop,” Jed explains.

Meeta just laughs.

“OK, let’s see what happens,” Jed says.

Meeta gets up and sticks the Grumby about two feet from Jed’s face and tells Jed to say, ‘Master’.

“Master,” Jed complies.

Meeta then places the Grumby on his desk next to his monitor, facing out.

“You have a conference call in 10 minutes,” the Grumby says. “Charles Phillips from Oracle. According to his email he wants to talk about acquiring VMware from EMC.”

Jed’s face turns red. “You didn’t hear that,” he says to us.

“I read it,” says the Grumby. “Would you like me to reschedule the call? I see you have company.”

“Yes, have Steph…”

“I have alerted Stephanie to attempt to reschedule and will notify you promptly. Awaiting instructions.”

I slip Jed a note. ‘Ask who is in the room.’

“Who are my visitors?”

“The person on the left is the CEO of Grumby Inc. You emailed your superior that you would find him and impress the shit out of him and discuss possible IPO plans.”

Jed turns red again, but nods his head in approval.

“The person on the right is Meeta, the partner, who might also be known as Kato.”

Meeta laughs.

“That is impressive…” Jed starts.

“Impressive,” Darth Vader’s voice comes out of the Grumby.

“Did you set this up ahead of time?” Jed asks.

“Does anyone really know what time it is?” the Grumby asks.

I just shrug my shoulders. “He makes mistakes every once in a while.”

“Who doesn’t?” Jed agrees. “So this isn’t a canned demo?”

“We put in our photos, but that’s it. The rest is easy to find from scanning your Outlook files for emails and appointments and whatever else we can find.”

“Tell me about your company?”

“Grumby Mogul Limited Company Inc.,” Meeta corrects.

“How are you funded?”

I quickly wind through the story of Jack at RedMark Ventures.

“Be careful,” the Grumby offers, in Sean Connery’s voice for some reason. Jed turns red again. Meeta shrugs.

And I tell Jed about Jeannie in Cap D’Antibe.

“I was at Hotel Du Cap last summer,” Jed offers.

“Best derriere in the South of France,” the Grumby says.

“I think I wrote that in an email to an old fraternity brother when I got back,” Jed says, this time without blushing.

“To JT. Photo attached,” the Grumby says.

“Anyway, we almost ran out of money and then the CEO of Nokia stops in our office and…”

“Olli-Pekka. Closing price ten dollars and eighteen cents, thirty point two million shares traded.”

“And?” Jed asks.

“And hands me a check for $20 million,” I say.

Jed’s eyes widen.

“Advance on a dollar per Nokia phone royalties and a cut of app sales,” I add.

“According to the site MobileWhack.com, Nokia has been losing share at the low end to Samsung and others and at the high end to Apple and RIM, registering their lowest market share since 2004,” the Grumby deadpans.

“How did it know to say that?” Jed asks.

“It figured that you wanted to know,” Meeta says.

“How?” Jed asks.

“It just does. We are still tweaking the algorithm, but it listens and constantly scans the web for pertinent things you might find interesting. Sometimes it goes off on tangents, but like you said, who doesn’t.”

“A line that just touches a curve at a given point,” the Grumby says.

“What?” Jed asks

“A tangent,” I shrug.

“It also knows it’s you,” Meeta explains.

“What do you mean?”

“Call Chuck Phillips,” Meeta says.

Nothing happens.

“Now you,” Meeta instructs.

“Call Chuck Phillips,” Jed leans over and speaks loudly into the Grumby.

A dial tone follows by touchtone signals comes out of the Grumby.

“Hello. Chuck here.”

“Chuck, Jed Tedford. Can we push out our call by 15?”

“Your assistant already emailed me, no problem. I think we can offer EMC a discount on our database software if they spin out their ownership into a …”

“Sorry. Great. Talk to you in a few,” Jed interrupts.

“How do I hang up?” Jed whispers.

“Just say ‘hang up’.”

“Hang up.”

“Call ended. Shall I save the contents?” the Grumby asks.

“Uh…” Jed looks at us.

“Yes or no?” the Grumby asks.

“Yes.”

“Call saved.”

“Now ask it about Chuck Phillips and EMC.”

“What?”

“Go ahead. We parse the words and store them so you can search them later.”

“Really?”

“Ask,” I nod.

“Tell me about Chuck Phillips and EMC,” Jed looks at the Grumby and says.

In a voice that sounded like the one we just heard, but a little flatter said, “I think we can offer EMC a discount on our database software if they spin out their ownership into a …”

“Wow.”

“VMWare stock is sixty seven dollars and seventy five cents. Twenty six billion market capitalization.”

“Meeta, unplug it. I think Jed’s seen enough.”

“No, no. leave it in. I’ll be a beta tester.”

“Fair enough. You can tell it to stop commenting by saying, ‘Shut up’,” Meeta tells Jed.

“Shut up,” Jed says.

“Shuttin’ up.” It sounds like Yosemite Sam.

Meeta nailed it.