Monk and the Riddle, The

Prospective entrepreneurs may think they know everything there is to know about starting a business in Silicon Valley. They can draw up business plans, have meetings with venture capitalists, maybe even get funded and actually launch a start-up. However, in The Monk and the Riddle, Randy Komisar, a Silicon Valley sage, reasons that this is only half the equation for success. And it may not be the important half. Komisar has worked with a number of companies--Apple, LucasArts Entertainment (the gaming division of George Lucas's empire) and WebTV among them--and has come to a rather startling conclusion: If you can't see yourself doing this business for the rest of your life, don't start it. In other words, he wants to see passion and purpose in business, not just spreadsheets and a by-the-numbers business model.

To illustrate, Komisar takes the reader through a hypothetical Silicon Valley start-up, with an eager entrepreneur named Lenny trying to get funding for an online casket-selling business. As Komisar helps Lenny find the real purpose of the business, the passion behind the revenue projections, he reflects back on his life as an entrepreneur. Komisar emerges as a master storyteller, the kind of guy you would feel honoured to share a bottle of wine with. And you believe his conclusion: "When all is said and done, the journey is the reward". It's great if you have made billions on the journey, but the important thing is that you do something you can truly throw yourself into. --Lou Schuler, Amazon.com

View other editions of Monk and the Riddle, The.
View books by Randy Komisar, Kent L Lineback.

A good rather than exceptional book - Rated
The book is interesting and well written and can be red in a couple of days. The author offers good insights into his professional career. The message of the book is: live your dreams, rather than trying to make money at all costs.

Outstanding! - Rated
Utterly engrossing book! One of the best, and most meaningful, I've ever read...and entertaining to boot. I couldn't put it down from the moment it arrived!

Uplifting, optimistic, insightful stuff. Enough has already been said by other reviewers about what it contains, so no need to add any more here I think.

Passionate Entrepreneurship: Live Your Dreams Today! - Rated
Mr. Komisar has a simple message: It's the journey . . . not the destination . . . that counts, stupid! What that means is that you should focus on getting the most out of the moment, in creating a synthesis between what you value and what you spend your time on and do. The book opens with a brief story of Mr. Komisar giving a monk a ride on his motorcycle. After a long afternoon of riding, he delivers the monk where he wants to go. A few minutes later, he learns that the monk wants now to return to where they started. Finally, it sinks in. The monk just likes riding on motorcycles. He doesn't really have a destination in mind. Mr. Komisar connects that anecdote to his life as a young lawyer where he was so focused on goals, that he didn't see the conflict between his ambition for the future and the selling out of his values. Through a number of job changes and experiences, he emerges as someone who understands that the journey is all that counts, and takes on the role of virtual CEO for start-ups. This role means that he tries to help management accomplish what it wants, rather than representing the investors as venture capitalists do. It's a shift in direction that makes all the difference. My hat's off to Harvard Business School Press for publishing this heart-warming, inspiring book.

Most of the book is a fable about a stiff would-be entrepreneur named Lenny who seeks Mr. Komisar's advice. To get some idea of this fable, Lenny starts his pitch by saying that his business concept is to put the fun in funerals. Through the course of the book, Lenny learns (with a lot of prodding from Mr. Komisar and Lenny's co-founder) to connect to his original passion, to provide a place on the Web where geographically-dispersed families can connect to grieve when a loved one dies. They can also get advice on how to handle the grief and the funeral. Mr. Komisar interspaces his own experiences with the fable to provide context for his observations.

The fable is so far-fetched that it works well, because it allows you to see the differences more easily between serving an empowering vision that excites you, investors, potential employees, and customers and just trying to make a bundle.

For those who want to know a little more about fund-raising for start-ups, the fable is filled with worthwhile advice. If you want to know more, read Confessions of a Venture Capitalist (which I also reviewed).

At another level, the book makes the point that the reason to be an entrepreneur is to avoid the stultification of companies without a soul, operating only to meet the numbers. But you will have learned bad habits of forgetting about your soul-felt needs in mainstream corporate America, so you've got to regear as you enter entrepreneurship.

The book is very well written, and you'll get through it very quickly.

A good related book is Who Am I? which will give you tools to help you identify what you really want to get out of life.

You should also use this book as an opportunity to reexamine your beliefs about life and relationships. You may have lots of stalled thinking outside of your working life, as well.

Don't forget what it's all about. - Rated
The world of venture capital and business is sometimes treated as a cold, barren landscape defined by numbers. This book is a refreshing reminder of how untrue that is. Randy talks about business being a process not an end in itself. He describes how the creation of a company is a form of self-expression and when applied correctly can be very personally fulfilling. He talks of the differences between passion and drive. He talks about business and start-ups with a refreshing twist reminiscent of the eastern values of acceptance, respect and mindfullness.

Must-read for anyone interested in the VC world - Rated
This is the best business book I've read in a long time. Randy Komisar has an excellent pedigree as a Valley businessman and a VC, and he shares a lot of experience in this book. Don't expect Tom Peters-style "how to succeed" fare -- Randy places as much emphasis on being happy with your lifestyle as on making piles of money.

Throught the book, Komisar makes use of light-hearted anecdotes to make his points, some of them fairly subtle and many of them relevant to business in general, not just the VC world. He punctuates the story with anecdotes about his experiences in Apple, Claris, WebTV, etc.

If you're interested in the Valley VC world, buy this book now!