A blueprint for thriving in your job and building a career by applying the lessons of Silicon Valley’s most innovative entrepreneurs.
The career escalator is jammed at every level. Unemployment rates are sky-high. Creative disruption is shaking every industry. Global competition for jobs is fierce. The employer-employee pact is over and traditional job security is a thing of the past.
Here, LinkedIn cofounder and chairman Reid Hoffman and author Ben Casnocha show how to accelerate your career in today’s competitive world. The key is to manage your career as if it were a start-up business: a living, breathing, growing start-up of you.
Why? Start-ups—and the entrepreneurs who run them—are nimble. They invest in themselves. They build their professional networks. They take intelligent risks. They make uncertainty and volatility work to their advantage.
These are the very same skills professionals need to get ahead today.
This book isn’t about cover letters or resumes. Instead, you will learn the best practices of Silicon Valley start-ups, and how to apply these entrepreneurial strategies to your career. Whether you work for a giant multinational corporation, a small local business, or launching your own venture, you need to know how to:
* Adapt your career plans as you change, the people around you change, and industries change.
* Develop a competitive advantage to win the best jobs and opportunities.
* Strengthen your professional network by building powerful alliances and maintaining a diverse mix of relationships.
* Find the unique breakout opportunities that massively accelerate career growth.
* Take proactive risks to become more resilient to industry tsunamis.
* Tap your network for information and intelligence that help you make smarter decisions.
A revolutionary new guide to thriving in today's fractured world of work, the strategies in this book will help you survive and thrive and achieve your boldest professional ambitions. The Start-Up of You empowers you to become the CEO of your career and take control of your future.
About the Authors:
Reid Hoffman is the co-founder of LinkedIn, a partner at Greylock, and director at Microsoft, and is widely viewed as one of the most successful investors of all time. He is the host of the award-winning podcast Masters of Scale and the New York Times bestselling author of The Alliance, Blitzscaling, and Masters of Scale.
Ben Casnocha is an entrepreneur and cofounder of Village Global, a Silicon Valley venture capital firm that has funded hundreds of successful startups. He has appeared on CBS’s The Early Show, CNN, and CNBC. He is a co-author, with Reid Hoffman and Chris Yeh, of the bestseller The Alliance.
Reviews:
“Hoffman and Casnocha make a number of astute observations about shifts in the world of work. . . . As well as explaining network intelligence, or why your contacts’ contacts may be the best source of leads about potential jobs . . . the book also gives numerous tips—including ones gleaned from the world of online dating—about how best to broker effective relationships.”—The Economist
“If you are starting a career, it is an excellent book for thinking through the practical issues you will face in branding yourself in what is becoming a more volatile and very different labor market.”—Tyler Cowen, Marginal Revolution
“Hoffman has pulled off something extraordinary in his book-writing debut. He has challenged a well-worn idea . . . and replaced it with something better.”—Fortune
“Being an entrepreneur isn’t really about starting a business. It’s a way of looking at the world: seeing opportunity where others see obstacles, taking risks when others take refuge. Whatever career you’re in or want to be in, The Startup of You holds lessons for success.”—Michael Bloomberg, founder, Bloomberg, L.P., and former mayor of New York City
“Everyone, women and men alike, needs to think big to succeed. This is a practical book that shows you how to take control and build a career that will enable you to have real impact.”—Sheryl Sandberg, author of Lean In
“Forging a fulfilling career is one of the most important—and often, most difficult—challenges in building a happy life. The Startup of You is crammed with insights and strategies to help each of us create the work life we want.”—Gretchen Rubin, author of The Happiness Project
