The Year Without Pants: WordPress.com and the Future of Work

A behind-the-scenes look at the firm behind WordPress.com and the unique work culture that contributes to its phenomenal success

50 million websites, or twenty percent of the entire web, use WordPress software. The force behind WordPress.com is a convention-defying company called Automattic, Inc., whose 120 employees work from anywhere in the world they wish, barely use email, and launch improvements to their products dozens of times a day. With a fraction of the resources of Google, Amazon, or Facebook, they have a similar impact on the future of the Internet. How is this possible? What's different about how they work, and what can other companies learn from their methods?

To find out, former Microsoft veteran Scott Berkun worked as a manager at WordPress.com, leading a team of young programmers developing new ideas. The Year Without Pants shares the secrets of WordPress.com's phenomenal success from the inside. Berkun's story reveals insights on creativity, productivity, and leadership from the kind of workplace that might be in everyone's future.

Offers a fast-paced and entertaining insider's account of how an amazing, powerful organization achieves impressive results. The Year Without Pants shares what every organization can learn from the world-changing ideas for the future of work at the heart of Automattic's success.

Included in True Stories.

Design Crazy: Good Looks, Hot Tempers, and True Genius at Apple

This Fast Company/Byliner Original is unlike any other book about Apple. Author Max Chafkin led a team of “Fast Company” reporters that spent months interviewing more than fifty former Apple execs and insiders, many of whom had never spoken publicly about their work. The result is a compelling and deeply revealing oral history of how design evolved at the most creative enterprise of our time, the company that one entrepreneur says “taught the world taste.”

In these interviews, former colleagues describe Jobs at his most brilliant and bombastic—hurling unsatisfactory products across the lab and insulting employees, yet also singling out and celebrating craftsmanship and original work. Without a doubt, Jobs is the single most important figure in the company’s history. But overlooked in Apple’s carefully cultivated mythology are the other ingenious men and women who’ve left an indelible mark on Apple, some of whom think they deserve much more of the credit. At Apple, the stakes were big, and so were the egos.

“Design Crazy” takes us behind the mystique and reveals Apple to be a deeply misunderstood company. And the greatest business story of the past two decades is far from over. Two years after the death of Steve Jobs, with many of his former colleagues now at startups like Tesla, Evernote, and Nest Labs, some think the end of Apple’s dominance is only a matter of time. The company has risen to the challenge before, but still the question lingers: Can Apple be Apple without Jobs?

Included in True Stories.

Without Their Permission: How the 21st Century Will Be Made, Not Managed

As Alexis Ohanian learned when he helped to co-found the immensely popular reddit.com, the internet is the most powerful and democratic tool for disseminating information in human history. And when that power is harnessed to create new communities, technologies, businesses or charities, the results can be absolutely stunning. 

In this book, Alexis will share his ideas, tips and even his own doodles about harnessing the power of the web for good, and along the way, he will share his philosophy with young entrepreneurs all over the globe. 

At 29, Ohanian has come to personify the dorm-room tech entrepreneur, changing the world without asking permission. Within a couple of years of graduating from the University of Virginia, Ohanian did just that, selling reddit for millions of dollars. He's gone on to start many other companies, like hipmunk and breadpig, all while representing Y Combinator and investing in over sixty other tech startups. WITHOUT THEIR PERMISSION is his personal guidebook as to how other aspiring entrepreneurs can follow in his footsteps.

Included in True Stories.

Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple's Greatest Products

In 1997, Steve Jobs returned to Apple as CEO with the unenviable task of turning around the company he had founded. One night, Jobs discovered a scruffy British designer toiling away at Apple’s corporate headquarters, surrounded by hundreds of sketches and prototypes. It was then that Jobs realized he had found a talent who could reverse the company’s long decline. 

That young designer was Jony Ive. 

Jony Ive’s collaboration with Jobs would produce some of the world’s most iconic technology products, including the iMac, iPod, iPad, and iPhone. The designs have not only made Apple a hugely valuable company, they’ve overturned entire industries, built a loyal fan base, and created a globally powerful brand. Along the way, Jony Ive has become the world’s leading technology innovator, won countless design awards, earned a place on the 2013 Time 100 list, and was even knighted for his “services to design and enterprise.” 

Yet despite his triumphs, little is known about the shy and soft-spoken whiz whom Jobs referred to as his “spiritual partner” at Apple. Jony Ive reveals the true story of Apple’s real innovator-in-chief. 

Included in True Stories.