The Monk and the Riddle: The Art of Creating a Life While Making a Life: The Art of Creating a Life While Making a Living [Englisch] [Taschenbuch]

So, here's my attempt at summarizing the book. It's a story about a business plan being pitched by a budding entrepeneur that Komisar is reviewing for a VC friend. The (factitious...I presume) story includes Komisar's personal perspectives about how one's career interacts with one's life and passions, how his own career, life, and passions have evolved together, and how VC's look at business plans / ideas. The story is well written and not the typical Harvard Business School Press book, in that all of the wisdom and content are presented neatly within a story.

If you need more from your job than a wage, you will likely find some pearls of wisdom in this story. If you like what you read here, check out Komisar's article in the March/April '00 HBR. If you're interested in some insight into how VC's look at business ideas, there is certainly plenty of information within this story for you too.

Finally, about the five stars, the book is absolutely deserving of them. This story hit me right between the eyes in so many ways, was so elegantly presented, and so refreshing, that I highly recommend it.

So deep in fact, that many readers and reviewers may miss their significance for three simple reasons:

First, the book doesn't give answers. This is a brilliant insight which frustrates 'inside the box thinkers' no end. After you've written a dozen business plans and pitched a hundred venture capitaliists, you quickly discover the conribution of 'dumb luck' in getting a company funded and through a liquidity event. The hubris which generally accompanies fast millions blinds most people to the mere veneer of control they exert on the destiny of a business.

Second, some people won't get the cosmic joke. Using the vehicle of a pseudo dotcom called Funerals.com, the book gently makes fun of the absurdity of monomaniacal obsession with business, contrasted to the shortness of life. Again, the authors allow the reader to explore the journey of a startup in ways which few others dare imagine.

Third: they permit the struggle to appear deceptively easy. Randy glosses over how the passions of the founders are quickly subsumed by the demands of capital, perhaps the only shortcoming that bears mention.

If Randy or a top tier business school could develop an algorithm that properly values passion on the balance sheet, inspired founders everywhere would be more likely to adopt his guidance from day one.

Implicit in the message is the question: "What do you have to become to be successful?" Their insights may help you avoid a Faustian bargain. That is a gift you'll want to savor and pass on to others.

Most of the book is a fable about a stiff would-be entrepreneur named Lenny who seeks Mr. Komisar's advice. To get some idea of this fable, Lenny starts his pitch by saying that his business concept is to put the fun in funerals. Through the course of the book, Lenny learns (with a lot of prodding from Mr. Komisar and Lenny's co-founder) to connect to his original passion, to provide a place on the Web where geographically-dispersed families can connect to grieve when a loved one dies. They can also get advice on how to handle the grief and the funeral. Mr. Komisar interspaces his own experiences with the fable to provide context for his observations.

The fable is so far-fetched that it works well, because it allows you to see the differences more easily between serving an empowering vision that excites you, investors, potential employees, and customers and just trying to make a bundle.

For those who want to know a little more about fund-raising for start-ups, the fable is filled with worthwhile advice. If you want to know more, read Confessions of a Venture Capitalist (which I also reviewed).

At another level, the book makes the point that the reason to be an entrepreneur is to avoid the stultification of companies without a soul, operating only to meet the numbers. But you will have learned bad habits of forgetting about your soul-felt needs in mainstream corporate America, so you've got to regear as you enter entrepreneurship.

The book is very well written, and you'll get through it very quickly.

A good related book is Who Am I? which will give you tools to help you identify what you really want to get out of life.

You should also use this book as an opportunity to reexamine your beliefs about life and relationships. You may have lots of stalled thinking outside of your working life, as well.