Oliver Thylmann’s Thoughts

Once again, I have found another that I truly love. I started reading Ilium well over a year ago and stopped again because it was just confusing. I mean it starts with some small robot under water trying to get away from something huge, a group of people that seem to live in all too happy times and that can teleport (fax), and a little bit of Achilles, Troja, Zeus and other.

A few weeks ago I gave it another try and once you get over the initial hump it is amazing. When you have finished Ilium you will surely run out to buy the second part called Olympos. The only thing is that the end of Olympos is a little swift. Hundreds of pages of great story telling and in the last 100 its done. The end is good but it seems a little bit like Dan didn’t want to continue any longer, even though I wouldn’t know from the top of my head what to change, other than wanting to know more … I started to really like the characters. Whenever somebody wants ot make that into a film, it will really be the most expensive film ever

Have a good reading time. It’s thought provoking in a lot of places.

I am actually not even done yet, but it already proves to be a wonderful book to read when founding or thinking of founding a company. Now Paul reviewed it and Guy did as well and and they both love it. I can only agree. Yes, it is not something that you read to learn how to attract VCs, or to get a 3 step guide to launch a successful start-up. When you are starting a company though a bell rings in hundreds of places. I remember one part where one of the founders (I think it was Joe Krauss from Excite, JotSpot). When you are starting a company you have days where you think that you will rule the world, and the next day you wake up and you think it will all fall to pieces, and nothing between those days has changed. Nothing. You still have the drive to pull this through because you really believe in it and you think it is the right thing to do. There are endless of other parts in there that are a great read so I can only suggest buying the book.