Founders at Work, by Jessica Livingston. 2007.

Last weekend I sat down at Bay Cities Deli in Santa Monica with my friend Justin Brandon for input on my idea for Vverdant. I wanted to meet with him, because I greatly respect his opinion on web related projects. He worked at Google and has developed several great websites, including The Road to Fondwa site for a film he directed and produced. Justin thought the concept for Vverdant seemed pretty solid and told me to go for it. He also turned me on to several great websites including the Four Hour Workweek Blog, and Venture Hacks.

Additionally, he let me borrow a copy of Founders at Work, by Jessica Livingston. So far I’ve read write-ups on: Apple, Gmail, Craigslist, and Flickr. It’s one of those perfectly timed reads and I can’t put it down. It’s amazing to read these narratives of people who succeeded at doing exactly what I’m trying to do: follow their passion, build a company, and create value for people.

LinkedIn Founder & CEO, Reid Hoffman.

I was happy to read that Reid Hoffman, Founder and CEO of LinkedIn, also studied Philosophy before entering the business world.

I studied Architecture with a supplementary major in Philosophy at Notre Dame, and Reid earned a masters in Philosophy at Oxford. Some of my favorite thinkers are Socrates, Ayn Rand, and Friedrich Nietzsche.

Reid is a great role model. He has dominated in Silicon Valley, helping to finance over 60 companies, 25+ from initial conception. He has been an angel investor for:

facebook.com, digg.com, bioscale.com, nanosolar.com, lulan.com, taxipass.com, naseeb.com, technorati.com, grassroots.com, friendster.com, socialtext.com, realtravel.com, rhythmnetworks.com, ravenflow.com, targetedgrowth.com, wink.com, wikia.com, adventsolar.com, bioscale.com, ning.com, tagged.com, tinypictures.us, etology.com, winster.com, rupture.com, jaxtr.com, kongregate.com, powerset.com, care.com, funnyordie.com, ironport.com, flixster.com, flickr.com, last.fm, grockit.com, and sixapart.com

These are some major Internet powerhouses. Ironically, I had a temp position at Ironport in 2006 before they were acquired by Cisco. I was living in Oakland at the time and temping in “The City.” It was a fun experience — data entry into Excel spreadsheets for eight hours at a time, hahah…. I also temped at Wired magazine during that period (answering the phone at the reception desk = BIG TIME BABY!) before I moved to Los Angeles in 2007.

Getting Reid Hoffman to invest in Vverdant, would be the equivalent of an up-and-coming rapper getting a co-sign from Jay-Z. Let me go brush my shoulders off….