As part of an internal programme at Sun, I am a “SEED mentor” for another Sun employee (not a former employee of MySQL, but what we Sun Dolphins call Sun Classics). He is called Alok and lives in Bangalore, and sadly, our schedules crossed so that I couldn’t meet him when I was at our Bangalore offices in July. So I am mentoring someone I’ve met only over phone — but we’re getting along just fine.

Two of the topics we’ve discussed recently are blogging and books. So after hanging up after our 9 CET 12:30 Indian time mentoring session, I got the idea to combine the two: write a blog entry about the books I recommended Alok.

One thing Alok is contemplating at the moment is the degree to which he should spend time on developing his business skills vs his engineering skills. That’s a familiar topic for many of us in Engineering.

So what I ended up doing was to list some of the top books I’ve read and used over the years. Not just the freshest and most recent ones, but the ones I remember and go back to, even over a decade after I read them. And they have a strong engineering slant to it — the general business books are missing from this list.

Steve McConnell: I started my list by three classics by Steve McConnell, published within Microsoft Press. (The “Microsoft Press” label may be surprising, as these books are truly timeless, as opposed to providing ideas that expire with the next file format change of Microsoft Word). These books are:

1. Code Complete, a Practical Handbook of Software Construction, 1993 (see Code Complete Home, Wikipedia). “Welcome to Software Construction”, “Characteristics of High-Quality Routines”, “General Issues in Using Variables”, “Code-Tuning Strategies” are some chapters in it. Very enjoyable, enlightening reading. I read it about 1995 and have been recommending it since. I managed to convince MySQL co-founder Monty to read it in 1995, and have been debating minute points of the book with him from time to time since then.
2. Rapid Development, Taming Wild Software Schedules, 1996 (see Steve McConnell’s Home Page). Some chapters: “Classic Mistakes”, “Software-Development Fundamentals”, “Lifecycle Planning”, “Estimation”, “Motivation”, “Teamwork”, “Feature-Set Control”. Same style as Code Complete, and as good. I read it in 1996, and have used its arguments to punctuate wishful thinking by customers and colleagues of the “pointy-haired boss” category ever since. In fact, I should probably have done more of it.
3. Software Project Survival Guide, How to Be Sure Your First Important Project Isn’t Your Last, 1998: “The Successful Project at a Glance”, “Hitting a Moving Target”, “Quality Assurance”, “Software Release”. Good, and a quick read after the previous two books, which still are the ones which stick to my mind as providing the most meat.

Steve Maguire: There is another Steve who wrote books with Microsoft Press, in fact of a very similar nature. The topic of software engineering management is so important that I am happy recommending the two additional books to Alik. When Maguire wrote these books, at least I was spending much more of my time using Microsoft products than today, and the lessons he writes about are (as I see it) relevant also in Open Source.

1. Writing Solid Code, Microsoft’s Techniques for Developing Bug-Free C Programs, 1993: “Assert Yourself”, “Step Through Your Code”, “Risky Business”, “The Rest Is Attitude”. This is C specific, for good and for bad, compared to the language-unspecific Code Complete.
2. Debugging the Development Process, Practical Strategies for Staying Focused, Hitting Ship Dates, and Building Solid Teams, 1994: “Laying the Groundwork”, “The Systematic Approach”, “Scheduling Madness”, “Constant, Unceasing Improvement”, “That Sinking Feeling”. The preface starts with the sentence “This book might make Microsoft sound bad.” which to me displays an attitude that I like, because we all know we make mistakes and pretending not to do so is not getting us anywhere — whereas learning from other people’s mistakes may do so.

A few other Software Engineering reference books: I also want to list three other books on IT for Alok.

1. A Discipline for Software Engineering, Watts S. Humphrey, 1995. This was recommended to me after I read the McConnell books. “The Personal Software Process Strategy”, “Why Forms Are Helpful”, “Why Make Plans”, “Measuring Software Size”, “Popular Estimating Methods”, “Design and Code Reviews”.
2. The Capability Maturity Model, Guidelines for Improving the Software Process, Carnegie Mellon University, Software Engineering Institute, 1995.”Introducing Software Process Maturity”, “Customer Satisfaction”, “Skipping Maturity Levels”. Introduces CMM and its five maturity levels of Heroics, Repeatable, Defined, Managed and Optimizing. I wish MySQL were more mature and less heroic.
3. Agile Project Management with Scrum, Ken Schwaber, 2003. Yes, I have bought new books this century. “Scrum Roles”, “Scrum Flow”, “Product Backlog”, “Sprint Backlog”, “Bringing Order From Chaos”, “Project Reporting — Keeping Everything Visible”. We try to apply Scrum for MySQL, but due to our virtual nature and to the timezones, we need to apply it a bit.

Nassim Nicholas Taleb: Next, I took the step towards business through the more philosophical. I read both NNT books this summer, and I found them very inspiring and insightful.

1. Fooled by Randomness, The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets, 2004 (see NNT’s homepage, Wikipedia): “If You’re So Rich, Why Aren’t You So Smart?”, “Europlayboy Mathematics”, “Wittgenstein’s Ruler”. NNT has a somewhat peculiar writing style (mixing facts, opinion and personal anecdotes), but he clearly explains that random events influence us more than we believe, and what we should do about it. Winners tend to attribute their winning to being smart and hard-working, losers attribute their losing to bad luck.
2. The Black Swan, The Impact of the Highly Improbable, 2007 (see Wikipedia on the Black Swan book and the Black swan theory). “Umberto Eco’s Antilibrary”, “How Not To Be A Sucker”, “The Narrative Fallacy”, “What Do You Do If You Cannot Predict”. About why we don’t know so much about the future, and why it’s dangerous to pretend that we do, and what we should do instead. One of the best books I’ve read this century. Especially now in the financial crisis, there is plenty of material on the book and NNT’s thinking, on Wikipedia, on NNT’s own website and elsewhere.

Just One (Semi-) Business Book: I wanted to concentrate my advice to Alok on engineering and engineering management, but there’s one book that describes the borderline from engineering to sales very well:

1. Writing Winning Business Proposals, Your Guide To Landing the Client, Making the Sale, Persuading the Boss, Richard C. Freed, Shervin Freed, Joe Romano, 1995. “The Slots in a Proposal’s Generic Structure”, “Desired Results, Benefits, and Objectives”, “The Four Buying Roles”, “Determining What to Weave in Your Web of Persuasion”. Very self descriptive book title, and it contains great advice about persuading both clients and bosses, in writing.

Meta-books on self management: At this point, I started to have a bad conscience towards Alok. Hey, already eleven books in my recommendation list. How is he ever going to have the time to read them, and to get any real work done at the same time? Thus, I decided to address those issues one at a time.

1. The PhotoReading Whole Mind System, Paul R. Scheele, 1993. “Read this easy-toread book and all books will be easy to read”, “5 breakthrough steps for improved comprehension and retention”, “The secrets to PhotoReading at 25,000 words per minute”, “5 time management strategies for instant results”. I still re-read (ehh, re-glance) the book at times, and have recommended it to many people, the latest one being my son.
2. Getting Things Done, The Art of Stress-Free Productivity, David Allen, 2001. It’s about getting peace of mind to concentrate on what you (through your systematic pre-planning) know is the most important thing. It has plenty of associated GTD services and software; personally, I’m just using Omni Outliner and my Thunderbird inbox. But then again, I’m rereading this book just now.

To round it off, I wanted to provide Alok with an entertaining book, without too much of an emphasis on usefulness, but still some practical usability. In that category of books, I try to avoid English books, in favour of Swedish and German (as I tend to get more than my fair share of reading in English anyway), so I’m limited to a fraction of the books I would want to recommend. My choice ends up in a book recommended to me by Simon Phipps:

1. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, Mark Haddon, 2003. Wikipedia says “The story is written in the first-person perspective of Christopher John Francis Boone, a 15-year-old autistic boy living in Swindon, Wiltshire. Although Christopher’s condition within the autism spectrum is not stated explicitly within the novel, the summary on the book’s inside cover describes it as Asperger syndrome.” And while that doesn’t sound entertaining, it is. It is both sad and fun, and I tend to believe Simon’s claim that it “helps understand Open Source developers”.

So, Alok, happy reading! I hope I haven’t inundated you with much too long a list of Recommended Reading.

Today at the Venture Capital Forum in Hilton Arc de Triomphe, Paris, I received the EVCA “Hall of Fame” Award on behalf of MySQL AB. What a timing, to meet with investment bankers and venture capitalists now!

In these times of a deep finance crisis, of no credit handed out by banks and of general doom and gloom, it felt great to be somewhat of an “everybody’s darling”. In the VC community, MySQL is seen as a great success — and in particular, we’re seen by European VCs as a European success story (despite over 50 % of our personnel and most of our Management Team being US-based, at the point of time when the VCs exited).

Side note: I don’t mind MySQL being seen as a European success story. We’re used to portraying ourselves as belonging to whatever geography is relevant for the moment. That can be “Swedish”, “Scandinavian”, “European”, “Bulgarian”, “American”, “Silicon Valley”, or whatever you’d like. And at the same time, I never stop pointing out that MySQL was originally written in Finland, and that a disproportionate amount of the corporate DNA originates from TF, the Swedish speaking, Helan går-singing student association of Helsinki University of Technology.

Before the panel began, Paul Deninger, Vice-Chairman of Jefferies & Company gave what I learned is his traditional opening speech. I can see why he’s appreciated. With a good sense of the audience’s mixed atmosphere of horror (at the current financial crisis) and hope (for opportunities presented due to lower valuations), he introduced Jefferies as “an investment bank that unlike the now-socialised ones never became an investment firm“. Paul is also known for his yearly “PD’s list of the top 10 events of the year”, with observations on raw material prices, the advent of CleanTech, the pricing of financial instruments, Russia remaining in South Ossetia and other equivalent global events. Interestingly, Sun’s acquisition of MySQL AB made it onto his list. We’ve always joked that we’re “world famous for being humble”, but PD does give us a hard time.

Together with Robert Dighero of Tradus (a UK based eBay-of-Eastern-Europe online auction company), I was on the “Entrepreneurship Hall of Fame” panel lead by Mike Chalfen, General Partner at Advent Venture Partners and a good friend of MySQL investor and former MySQL board member Danny Rimer.

I got a number of questions, both publicly on the panel and privately in the networking thereafter. In gratitude of having been given the award, I’d like to share my answers.

Q: What was the impact of VC investors on MySQL’s business?

A: Above all, VC investments enabled faster growth (through enabling recruitment of key talent). Each of the earlier-round investors also opened the doors for the next level of investors. Our VCs certainly granted us credibility towards big customers. Sure, they also gave us valuable feedback on our business model and tightened corporate governance procedures, easing our growth pains.

Q: What could the impact have been of having more or less cash?

A: Mainly, it would have influenced the speed of recruitment. Now, we grew as fast as we could with the ambition of having the VC money mostly as a safety net, and financing growth mainly through increased sales. Cash on the balance sheet increases operational focus and creates stability!

Q: How would MySQL fare in today’s tougher climate?

A: As for sales, it’s important to understand that MySQL has a “low TCO” proposition (”destruction factor”), where the tough climate is good for us. As for IPOs and trade sales, it’s hard to identify a company that isn’t negatively impacted by today’s climate.

Q: What were the 1-2 most critical turning points in the development of the business?

A1: Entering a deal with SAP in 2003, which influenced the product technically, but most of all gave us enterprise credibility (but was dangerous technically, as it impacted our roadmap).

A2: The next-round VC evaluation meeting in Scope Capital’s Stockholm offices after our CEO Mårten Mickos came back with term sheets from the two dream Silicon Valley candidates in a round where the finalists were Kleiner, Sequoia, Warburgs, Advent and Benchmark. Our co-founder Michael “Monty” Widenius concluded with asking “Do we want to become partners with our father (referring to Kleiner) or our brother (referring to Benchmark)?“. Ending up choosing our brothers wass a key to the culture in the company, which is what really built MySQL.

A3: Moving management to Silicon Valley, easing recruitment of key people.

Q: What lessons can you pass on for VCs and entrepreneurs that are most relevant in the coming recession?

A: Four lessons. First, be smart. Choose smart people, pick the right strategy, make the right decisions. Second, work hard. If opportunity knocks, you have to seize the moment, or being smart won’t help. I don’t consider myself lazy, but my work hours pale in comparison with the co-founder’s when he grew the community around the turn of the century, and with those of our CEO ever since he took over. Third, be resistant to uncertainty. When bad things happen, never give up. Hadn’t our CEO been a replica of Admiral Stockdale, living out the Stockdale Paradox [1], we would have lost the company several times over. Fourth, be lucky. Yes, you can be smart about timing, but to succeed, you also need a big portion of luck.

[1] “You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end — which you can never afford to lose — with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.”

Q: What advice do you have for VCs?

A: Most VCs are smart people, and they know that they have to pick the right entrepreneurs (who are smart, work hard, and resistant to uncertainty). They know that to be lucky, they have to buy several lottery tickets. Then, let the right entrepreneurs do their thing! Support them when they need support. On a different note, I think VCs should be happy that they belong to a caste respected by Nassim Nicholas Taleb of Black Swan fame. VC investments are potential positive Black Swans, and I think MySQL turned out to be one of them.

Q: What does it take for a buyer to want to pay up a lot of cash for a VC business?

A: A huge customer base that has money to spend. A documented, strong and sustainable growth rate. Brand recognition doesn’t hurt. Finally, and obviously, a lot of cash in the bank.

Q: Did MySQL experience a conflict between the mentalities of the “geeky” MySQL users and the “greedy” Venture Capitalists?

A: In general, it hasn’t been that challenging to keep a balance. Sure, it’s true that the geeks and the VCs form two entirely different audiences. But we target our messages. “Tala med bönder på bönders vis och med de lärde på latin”, we say in Swedish — roughly “Talk to peasants as peasants do, and to the learned in Latin” (let’s not go into which audience matches which category in the Swedish saying). And in reality, at least when it comes to MySQL, geeks and VCs have benefitted from each other. We did of course joke in front of geeks that “we fooled these VCs to give us money to be able to write more Open Source software faster”, and conversely said in front of VCs that “we exploit Open Source Software to give a larger ROI for VCs”. But neutrally speaking, it was a mutual benefit, a virtuous circle, where we’ve done our best to align commercial and community interests.

Q: You’re a serial entrepreneur, and made some money out of the Sun acquisition. Would you do it again?

A: Obviously, there is a hunger for more. Or perhaps appetite is a better word, as I am clearly more picky about the nature of the opportunity than before. During my two first entrepreneurships (founding Polycon Ab, and buying back Polycon shares from a German investor three years after the trade sale where we had sold half of Polycon), I jumped at opportunities without evaluating them in detail. By contrast, in 2001 I sold the MySQL related part of Polycon to MySQL AB based on long contemplations, but still, with MySQL I’ve been willing to relocate my family from Grankulla, Finland to Munich, Germany. I’m not so sure I’d relocate as easily again. Besides, for the time being, I’m quite happy with working for Sun — it’s an exciting job with a great learning curve and an opportunity to have an impact.

Q: What are you investing in yourself?

A: I’ve got a day job at Sun, and that consumes nearly all of my business focus. That said, I made a certain investment, together with a former angel investor in MySQL, in an IT solution provider on Åland, the islands between Finland and Sweden that are independent enough to have their own Top-Level Domain .ax. It’s called PBS Ab, for Productive Business Systems, and provide a great opportunity to apply learnings from my earlier life as a serial entrepreneur (with both Polycon and MySQL).

That’s it. Finally, I would like to extend a special thank you note to a few of the members of the MySQL AB Board of Directors that I’ve had the honour and pleasure to work with over the years. Our first Chairman John Wattin once described me as a “fireman”, as I’ve been given various tasks (”wherever there’s a fire”) since joining MySQL. Fredrik Oweson of Scope Capital, Danny Rimer of Index Ventures, Kevin Harvey of Benchmark Capital, Bernard Liautaud (founder of Business Objects) and Tim O’Reilly (founder of O’Reilly Media) have each provided all of MySQL but also myself in person with invaluable inspiration and insight over the years. Thank you, former MySQL BoD members!

Links:

• Benchmark Capital: http://benchmark.com/
• Index Ventures: http://indexventures.com/
• Scope Capital: http://www.scope.se/