How to jot down a corporate affairs guide — behind the scenes from THE COLD START PROBLEM at andrewchen

(above: Me in Sep 2023, a contented creator, discovering the Japanese translated model of my guide on the fantastic Daikanyama Tsutaya Books in Tokyo)

 

Dear readers,

As a lot of , 2 years in the past I revealed my first guide THE COLD START PROBLEM. It goals to inform the story of why some merchandise — YouTube, Instagram, Uber, Slack, Dropbox, and others — find yourself with a whole lot of tens of millions (and typically billions!) of customers, and to offer the definitive idea of community results which are sometimes referenced within the tech business, however solely superficially understood. It’s been a hit, now in a dozen financial hubs, translated into many languages (together with Japanese, Chinese, Spanish, Russian, and many others).

Here’s a screenshot of among the fantastic footage that readers took throughout launch week:

This was an superior expertise. Nevertheless, I swear I’ll by no means write one other guide once more . (I suppose by no means say by no means, ha)

The inventive course of was an extended, meandering path, and folk ping me now and again as a result of they need to tackle a masochistic journey of their very own. So this publish will probably be concerning the messy, annoying, behind the scenes main as much as writing a guide like this — it describes a bit the inventive course of, but in addition among the main milestones and classes discovered.

Hopefully will probably be helpful for somebody sooner or later who’s considering of a giant writing venture of their very own.

A short abstract of what I’ll cowl:

• Month 0: At first, writing a guide looks like a enjoyable concept (till you determine it’s not)
• Month 1-6: Finding an agent, writing a proposal, and opening up your Christmas presents early
• Month 6-12: Collecting and organizing the concepts — a number of enjoyable chats, reconnecting with colleagues, speaking to nice folks
• Month 12: How to jot down the preliminary the define, then the mega-outline — discovering the system
• Month 12-24: The very messy center, the trough of sorrow, the arduous slog, adopted by trench warfare (sure, it’s 3-5 years to jot down a guide)
• Month 24-36: Why you’ll really feel insecure concerning the inventive course of
• Final months: Just ship it already

I’m additionally going to hyperlink to numerous copies of intermediate content material alongside the way in which — sadly I can’t share all the pieces (like interview notes, and many others) since some stuff must be confidential, however right here’s a couple of fascinating bits anyway

OK — so let’s get began on the journey.

Month 0: At first, writing a guide looks like a enjoyable concept (till you determine it’s not)
I joined Andreessen Horowitz in mid-2018, I had already been writing on my weblog for 10 years and I used to be form of having some inventive boredom over it. At that point, Elad Gil had simply revealed his guide and we had a pleasant convo at MKT’s lounge a few week after his guide was out — he had wonderful issues to say concerning the course of (he writes sooner/higher than me, at the back of Ubers it seems), and he mentioned it helped him loads professionally. At a16z, as you all know, Ben and Scott have each written improbable books as nicely, and it appeared to essentially be nice for them professionally, so I believed it is perhaps a enjoyable problem to do the identical. So consider the motivation as 50% a inventive problem, and 50% seeing what it had completed for different folks.

I had two traces of considering when it comes to selecting the guide subject. First, I’ve had good luck taking ubiquitous jargon and writing the definitive weblog publish on the subject — one thing I did with progress hacking, CAC/LTV, viral loops, and ideas like that. I had a couple of concepts bouncing round in my head that felt like good candidates. “Power customers” was one — a time period we use willy nilly, however and not using a sturdy theoretic underpinning. “Network results” was one other, since we had been speaking about it at a16z on a regular basis, however when it got here time to take a look at the metrics and reply the query — OK so does this product have it!?? — then it acquired a bit of mushier. Another was “Product/market match” or “MVP” and increasing these ideas a lot additional.

The different line of considering revolves round answering the massive query — why? I made a decision my focus could be on one thing concentrating on a really small group of nerdy founders and executives, reasonably than a large subject that is perhaps extra mainstream. I may write about, say, profession recommendation or methods to begin a corporate affairs (in a common sense), however felt like these could be too broad.

In the tip, I picked the subject of community results as a result of it’s a genuinely necessary subject, I felt like I had one thing to say, and I additionally felt prefer it may fold in plenty of ideas from my prior work on progress. Once I began down the trail of selecting, I began to speak to folks at a16z about it — they really useful I begin with writing a guide proposal.

Month 1-6: Finding an agent, writing a proposal, and opening up your Christmas presents early
The crew at a16z was very useful, and within the first few weeks I labored with Hanne Winarsky (now at Substack!) and others to begin assembly brokers, which is how I in the end met Chris Parris-Lamb from Gernert who additionally represented Peter Thiel for Zero to One, and Pete Buttigieg for his guide. I despatched him the next book proposal with a placeholder identify, MOONSHOT. The proposal often kinda reads like a corporate affairs plan:

• Overview
• Chapter summaries
• The market
• Author bio
• Competitive books

We shortly agreed to work collectively, and that we might method numerous publishers to solicit presents. The precise method was form of enjoyable, actually a extra environment friendly model of what we do in enterprise capital. Chris ran the entire thing, and the method seemed like the next:

• Chris approached publishers and despatched alongside the guide proposal
• They learn the proposal (thanks!) and requested for half-hour of time
• We acquired on the decision they usually requested me detailed questions, displaying they’d really learn the proposals — UNLIKE a typical startup/VC course of the place the founder makes use of the time to current
• Later, they submitted a suggestion (I believe 7 did?)
• Chris then took the highest half of the presents, and gave them a second likelihood to bid once more
• The prime 2 bids had been shut, however I selected to work with Hollis Heimbouch at Harper Business

I selected Hollis as a result of she’s legend within the business, and labored with Jim Collins, Clay Christensen, Satya Nadella, and others on their most well-known books — a16z had additionally labored together with her for Ben’s earlier guide and it went nicely. My advance was excessive mid six figures, which I used to be advised was excellent for a first-time creator, and could be paid out in elements because the guide progressed (one half at signing, the subsequent on the draft, the subsequent at publishing, and many others).

The whole means of doing this was possibly 3-4 months? I’ve described the early days of this as “opening up your Christmas presents early” since you get all the great vibes up entrance of promoting the guide, with out the work of really writing something. But quickly I used to be going to pay the worth!

Month 6-12: Collecting and organizing the concepts — a number of enjoyable chats, reconnecting with colleagues, speaking to nice folks
The remainder of the primary 12 months was fairly enjoyable as nicely — I noticed I wanted to do plenty of major analysis, so I began reaching out to folks I revered, asking them for brief interviews. Thank you to Li Jin who tag teamed with me on many of those interviews, the place I requested open-ended questions, heard tales, and tried to jot down as a lot of it down as doable.

Readers need to hear opinions. The sharper and funnier, the higher, and I had a idea that if I may accumulate all of it, then that in itself may very well be the bones of a guide. Thus, I wrote down pithy, opinionated statements at any time when I heard them — something that is perhaps a great tweet would even be a great title or a great opening paragraph. Opinions like, “launching with Techcrunch is silly” or “by no means construct a social community, it’s simply too arduous” — these are gold.

All the interviews went right into a spreadsheet tracker like this, which linked to particular person notes for every, plus a bit of abstract.

In the tip, I ended up with 200+ interviews from folks within the business, and pages and pages of opinions and ideas. It was absolute chaos. But I may additionally inform there was one thing fascinating in there. I finally interviewed some senior of us within the business — the founders/CEOs of Slack, YouTube, Twitch, Tinder, Dropbox, Zoom, Linkedin, and will others — these all ended up being tremendous enjoyable, and had been the showcase tales within the guide. Getting time with these of us ended up being among the most memorable moments whereas writing the guide.

Month 12: How to jot down the preliminary the define, then the mega-outline — discovering the system
If you have got a whole lot of pages of random notes from interviews, plus pages of analysis, and a jumble of concepts in your individual head — what do you do? You want some form of organizing precept that makes all these concepts readable. I figured there was most likely a system in among the greatest corporate affairs books on the market, and so I re-read Lean Startup, Crossing the Chasm, Innovator’s Dilemma, and lots of others.

What you discover it that the bones of the guide typically look one thing like this:

• Opening story
• Describe a giant downside/dilemma/query
• Present a framework
• Go by way of one a part of the framework
  • Start with an anecdote
  • Then describe the speculation
• Go by way of one other half
• Then one other half
• Then once more…
• Conclusion

This isn’t all corporate affairs books, however look, it’s fairly ubiquitous. And so I believed I’d begin by structuring my preliminary define form of like this, which is how I ended up with the next brief model of the define. The first book outline.

Btw, Ryan Holiday has an ideal dialogue of how he wrote his guide, with tons of pictures, and I want to link that here. He has a photograph of a field representing each subject/concept on this guide, each in a notice card, categorized into sections:

I type of ended up doing the digital model of this, the place I created a doc that I referred to as my “Mega Outline” — the place I took each opinion/level that I wished to make within the guide, and constructed out the primary 2-3 ranges of bullets in a a lot bigger model.

Here’s the primary web page, so you will get a way:

I’ve linked your entire Mega outline right here if you wish to peruse — it’s 30 pages the place every web page wanted to most likely be 10x’d. That is, 1 web page of define = 10 pages of written prose, which I shortly discovered as I started to jot down the primary few chapters. There’s a humorous George RR Martin dialogue (he’s the Game of Thrones man) the place he talks about how some writers are Architects, and a few are Gardeners. The architects do what Ryan Holiday and I each do — we have now some chaos in the beginning, which we attempt to ruthlessly suppress, and use some organizing rules to place it collectively. Once there’s a construction, then that’s like a basis of a constructing — the architects then write, flooring by flooring, and construct the entire thing. Plus some polish on the finish. It seems that GRRM describes himself as the opposite archetype, the gardener, the place you type of plant some fascinating factors right here and there, then revisit them as you write. But that’s why his books are wonderful and take 10 years to jot down.

Month 12-24: The very messy center, the trough of sorrow, the arduous slog, adopted by trench warfare (sure, it’s 3-5 years to jot down a guide)
This entire center part after the primary 12 months offers me PTSD so I received’t dwell an excessive amount of on it, and simply cowl the teachings discovered. The mechanics of this section are fairly easy — you actually simply must translate the mega define bullet by bullet into pages of written prose. But listed below are all the issues you’ll face:

• Your regular instruments usually are not good for writing a guide. Most writing that you just do each day, like e-mail, is perhaps composed of some paragraphs. That’s straightforward. If you want an extended doc, then you definitely may need a number of sections that comprise a number of paragraphs every, and also you’ll use Microsoft Word or GDocs. But what when you’ve got a guide with 7-10 elements that comprise 5-10 chapters every, that comprise 3-4 main sections that themselves comprise numerous paragraphs? And what if midway by way of, you notice all of the stuff you’re writing in a single part ought to really belong as a chapter in one other part? Also what if you wish to do a phrase depend of various chapters or sections? It’s all a ache. In the tip, I used Ulysses which at the very least has the idea of nested folders, after which every chapter could be a folder that will then comprise information containing every half. The app then sync’d all of it to a bunch of Markdown information in a Dropbox, in order that I may work on it from a number of areas
• You write on a pc, and your pc may be very distracting. You want a browser to do analysis, however your browser can also be the place you may test what’s taking place on social media. You can’t totally flip off the web, since you could do analysis. And typically you could go to YouTube to look at an interview, however proper subsequent to the video you’re presupposed to be watching is a gadget assessment for one thing you would possibly need to to purchase. So what do you do?
• Distraction free units and treating your self like a child. Eventually I began to attempt to purchase a bunch of various instruments to maintain myself centered. I purchased a plexiglass timer safe thing and I’d lock my private cellphone away for an hour or two at a time. I purchased a separate laptop computer, and put it in a unique location, and turned on all of the child-safe filters in order that I couldn’t go to Reddit, Twitter, and many others. If I wanted to search for analysis, I might typically simply print out pages and pages of it, in order that I might keep analog and never fiddle. I purchased a sequence of e-ink Android tablets called the BOOX that might run a Markdown editor, connect with Dropbox, and will pair a pleasant keyboard.
• Say goodbye to holidays, weekends, and night time. To hit the deadlines I had set for myself, I ended up changing plenty of my holidays and weekends into writing time. It’s arduous to jot down for greater than, 3-4 hours in a row, so you continue to can go someplace good and sunny — however I discovered that I wanted to get up, work out, and get writing earlier than midday, as a way to make progress. You get your evenings, but it surely’s robust. And weekends are like that too.

Here’s a humorous photograph of one in every of these kSafe timers I’d cover my cellphone into throughout my writing instances — by the tip, I had 5 (!!!) of those in numerous writing spots, in order that if I used to be feeling within the temper I might throw my cellphone in:

I’ve to confess, it was a grind. Not straightforward in any respect. If there was a degree the place I may have gotten caught and stop, this is able to have been it.

Month 24-36: Why you’ll really feel insecure concerning the inventive course of
One of the craziest issues about writing a guide is that it’s such an extremely solitary expertise, and there’s ultimately a degree the place you’ve written sufficient that you just really feel sorta okay about the place it’s going, however nobody else has seen it but. And so it’d suck. But you’re actually unsure. I acquired acquired to this about 2 years into writing the guide. I had written the primary ~10 chapters (out of 35), and I had plenty of questions for myself:

• Is this guide any good?
• Am I saying stuff folks already know?
• Or is that this guide too nerdy, and going into particulars which are pointless?
• Are the tales really fascinating, or too apparent? Have folks heard them already?

And to be trustworthy, you form of don’t know till you are taking a half accomplished model of the guide and ask a couple of trusted associates to learn it. I acquired a bunch of very excellent suggestions — thanks specifically to Lenny Rachitsky, Sachin Rekhi, and many of us at a16z for taking the primary crack — and it was additionally the primary time my writer and agent had been studying it. I acquired a bunch of helpful conceptual suggestions, for instance that the primary few chapters felt a bit of sluggish to get into the motion. It felt too theoretical at elements. There had been sure particular matters that felt trite. Some sections felt repetitive. And so on. Brutal honesty is what you want right here. In the tip I additionally felt like, beneath the scruff, was a guide that I might actually take pleasure in studying myself, and that it simply wanted to be tightened.

I’ll say, probably the most painful refactoring taking place on this interval. As I neared completion of tough variations of all the varied chapters, I ended up with a roughly 100,000 phrase guide (which is regular, seems). Sometimes it takes 3-5 years to completely get to this, and the very fact I had a demanding day job and was capable of end in ~3 years — that’s nice. But if my fear was that if I needed to considerably rewrite parts half means by way of, it will change into a 5 years course of, which I’ve discovered is just not unusual. This form of refactoring notably comes when you have got a full size guide and then you definitely resolve to mix a chapter or two. Or to take a theme that’s showing in a couple of spots, and make it into its personal part. And then it’s a must to replace all the pieces within the guide in order that it flows correctly. It’s best to do with a weblog publish, or a doc, or one thing like that, however with a 35 chapter guide — that turns into a heavy carry. But so it goes.

Final months: Just ship it already
By the tip of the writing course of, I used to be useless drained. Honestly, I acquired to a degree the place I used to be each concurrently feeling good concerning the supplies, notably the primary few chapters that I had polished up. But additionally the method was lengthy and arduous and I used to be prepared to simply ship it. The downside with books, nevertheless, is that they’re actually developed in a waterfall course of for good motive — when you submit the guide, and it’s printed, that’s that!

One enjoyable forwards and backwards occurred as I began to work on selecting the ultimate cowl. I labored with a designer who had completed plenty of work on Stripe Press books, which I at all times cherished — nevertheless, they’re boutique operation which provides them plenty of latitude on what will be completed, and the designs typically had very small textual content on the duvet (in any case, the title will probably be someplace on the net web page in a digital-first expertise, proper?), or prescribed bizarre supplies. It was a negotiation to determine what was really doable.

I additionally discovered that the majority the US hardcover books are printed at one firm (loopy???) and right here’s an excerpt about that from a Vox article:

Most guide printing occurs within the US. Books with heavy colour printing, like image books, are despatched to China, however as a way to hold the price of transport low, most publishers do the remainder of their printing domestically. That’s getting increasingly tough to handle.

Until 2018, there have been three main printing presses within the US. Then one in every of them, the 125-year-old firm Edwards Brothers Malloy, closed. The remaining large two, Quad and LSC, tried to merge in 2020, however then the Justice Department filed an antitrust lawsuit. Quad responded by getting out of the guide corporate affairs totally; LSC filed for chapter and offered off quite a few its presses. Smaller printers have continued to function, however the development projects to maintain up with the demand for printed books in North America is in shambles.

Crazy proper? Couple different fascinating issues I discovered on the finish:

• You solely want ~10,000 preorders to be a bestseller — far beneath what it was once
• There are tons of books that change into best-sellers as a result of folks purchase many, many copies of their very own books — typically by way of nameless networks of consumers to obscure what’s taking place (I didn’t do that, btw)
• The US is just not really the first marketplace for corporate affairs books, at the very least by models — it’s China. There’s often 3:1 ratio of books offered there versus the US
• The common guide has 250-500 books offered in its lifetime (!!!) — and possibly the median is extra like a couple of thousand. But both means it’s fairly low

Anyway, as the ultimate months approached, I traded a bunch of revisions with Hollis and her crew at Harper Business. Even although I used to be very drained at this level, I had the unbelievable assist of Olivia Moore at a16z who did a as soon as over on the finish, that basically polished issues up, in addition to my agent Chris, and lots of others. There are means too many individuals to thank, so I encourage you to take a look at the acknowledgements 🙂

It was solely within the closing months that I began to consider advertising the guide. I even have a ton of notes there 🙂 Will share extra later. In the meantime, hopefully y’all discovered this fascinating! It was a great 3+ years of my life and there’s lastly sufficient distance to mirror now.

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