Shawn Livermore - Average Joe: Be the Silicon Valley Tech Genius

1. Chapter 1
2. Chapter 2
3. Chapter 3
4. Chapter 4
5. Chapter 5
6. Chapter 6
7. Chapter 7
8. Chapter 8
9. Chapter 9
10. Chapter 10
11. Chapter 11

Shawn Livermore

Average Joe

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Copyright 2021 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana

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ISBN: 978-1-119-61887-4
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ISBN: 978-1-119-61904-8 (ebk)

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To Colleen.

Thank you for your endless support and your perfect love. I could not have done this without you. I love you.

Shawn Livermore is a tech startup founder, entrepreneur, and technology consultant for over 20 years. He's written books on software development and writes software in at least ten different programming languages. After raising investment capital for his startups six times, Shawn began to look beyond the code to see the bigger picturesystems, patterns, and mental models that most deserve our attention. Instead of hype and hustle, Shawn focuses on tangible, factual, and replicable bits and bytes that most people wouldn't see or pay attention to. From small fragments, Shawn assembles larger stories, and helps people think, speak, and create like a tech genius.

Colleen, for putting up with my ideas that turn into projects, and projects that turn into time investments. Thank you for staying up with me each night and joining me on the journey. Thank you for your faithful edits and your creative ideas. I appreciate your partnership and your friendship. You're the real MVP.

El, for your faithful encouragement and support. Our Snapstreak is going strong at 194 days. Let's keep it going.

Hope, for consistently interrupting each chapter with just the right amount of oxytocin I needed.

Bill and Melinda Marks, for your continued support and kindness.

Troy Hoffman, for being a friend, and for calling me a tech genius for 13 years and counting.

Thomas Cirtin, for keeping me on the rails.

Jim Minatel, for believing in my vision for this book.

Sean Ellis, for your valuable time and your incredible story.

Dr. Jesse Rissman, for the many long hours of investment into this framework, and for our ever-entertaining that's-not-how-the-brain-works conversations.

Jesse Rissman, PhD

Colleen Livermore

Shellie McCurdy

Dana Hallstrom

Trevor McNeil

Joseph Nguyen

Jeremy Lavin

Never underestimate a nerd with a good story.

Shawn Livermore

Some ideas are harmless. They carry from person to person but never stickthey never sink in. Other ideas, however, have staying power and are deceptively insidious. They slither into our minds and seep into our bloodstream, steering our thoughts, setting our behavior, and influencing our decisions.

There is one particular idea that has worked its way into the hearts and minds of nearly everyone who sets foot in the tech industry. The idea is formative, sculpting the very shape and sound of tech, for it is by this narrativethis philosophythat the inner workings of tech are played out every day. It determines who is able to lead and who must follow. It dumps everyone into buckets of winners and losers, separating the sheep from the goats. It sets the tone in meetings and drives the pace of innovation. It determines who speaks up and who is expected to stay silent. The idea isn't included in the standard corporate email signature templateit's implied. It is unspoken, yet ever present.

So what's the idea? This salacious and contagious notion is called the tech genius of Silicon Valley. The theory is that some entrepreneurs, software developers, and technology CEOs are endowed with special, inexplicable, and mysterious abilities. They are brilliant and talented wizards who contrive new tech products and start new tech companies that effortlessly go viral and amass millions of users. The tech geniuses of Silicon Valley are the elite special few who can simply whisper secrets to investors and conjure millions in funding. They can wave their magic wands at any problem domain and cause it to wimper into submission.