Hacker News Books

Yvon Chouinard mentions this in his excellent book “Let My People Go Surfing,” where he says the furthest you can get from a road in the lower 48 is about 20 miles, near the headwaters of the Snake River in Wyoming. Cool to see some methodology that lines up with that estimate.

*Edit: Let My People Go Surfing is the name of the book.

(Couldn’t edit the original)

"Made in America" by Sam Walton turned out to be an unexpectedly good read.

"Let my people go surfing" by Yvon Chouinard (climber and founder of Patagonia) is an all-time favorite.

I decided to buy Let My People Go Surfing after someone recommended it on HN. At that point I didn't even know what Patagonia was but after reading this book I can say that it was the most impactful business book I've read.

If anyone of you read this book I'm very curious about your opinions!

Both "Let My People Go Surfing" [0] and the slightly more CEO-palatable "The Responsible Company" [1] are must-reads for people who run things / buy things.

[0]: https://amzn.to/31SyWY0
[1]: https://amzn.to/2Z80ZFS

I highly recommend Chouinard's book Let My People Go Surfing. It's part autobiography, part a history of Patagonia, part an explanation of his business and management philosophy.

I'm not sure if they publish their finances, but being employee friendly and boosting their supply chain is kind of a large part of their identity as a company. Maybe you consider it to be simply propaganda, but you are aware of the founder's book titled Let My People Go Surfing?

I don't remember if it was in his book[1] or if it came up when I was discussing the book with someone. Climate change basically ruins all the outdoors stuff so it's tied pretty directly to his business.

[1] Let My People Go Surfing by Yvon Chouinard; the founder of Patagonia

If you're interested in how this works in practise, I recommend reading "Let My People Go Surfing" by Yvon Chouinard, who founded Patagonia, which is run along these lines.

In his book Let My People Go Surfing, Yvon Chouinard makes a distinction between invention and innovation. Innovation is the application of an invention to solve a problem and create a marketable product.

Chouinard is one of the most innovative folks in the history of the climbing industry, having introduced a lot of now-standard technologies like curved ice axe picks, polyester long underwear, and polyester fleece for warmth. I highly recommend the book.

If that's from "Let My People Go Surfing"[0], it's a light-weight (easy reading) book with what seem to be some pretty profound simple business observations and accounts of how Patagonia made decisions. I certainly enjoyed the book, but I think I don't have a deep enough business acumen to say whether or not the book is realistic for more than just Patagonia.

[0] http://www.patagonia.com/ca/product/let-my-people-go-surfing...

Edit: linked

A good read also would be Let My People Go Surfing[0], which explains a little bit more of the philosophy of the company and decisions like this, as well as why they decided to try to run their business in a sustainable way. The founder of the company really didn't have a goal to dominate the market he was in, he just wanted to sell some items to fund what he really enjoyed doing.

It would be a good read for this crowd.

[0] http://www.patagonia.com/let-my-people-go-surfing.html

Only after reading "Let my People go surfing" by Yvon Chouinard I realized the potential scale of this issue. I now think twice before buying clothes and I'm willing to pay extra for better quality that will last me longer.

Anyone has an idea what would happen to economy if we stopped buying things we don't need? Would we see a total market collapse?

Chouinard's book Let My People Go Surfing is an excellent overview of the history and philosophy of Patagonia, as well Chouinard's thoughts on innovation. I would highly recommend it to any entrepreneur.

I think Patagonia is growing primarily because they make really nice stuff, and a little bit because of their great PR. Basically, their products deliver on the promise of their PR. They really do work well and last a long time. I have Patagonia jackets, gloves, socks, even lightweight cotton Hawaiian shirts from the late 90s that I still wear today.

For those not familiar with Patagonia, they are a clothing company with a long history of environmental consideration and action. Some of their famous decisions were to donate 1% of their revenues to environmental causes, and to shift their entire cotton clothing line to organic cotton. They did an audit of their entire supply chain and were surprised to find that cotton--not nylon or polyester--did the most environmental harm because of the heavy use of pesticides.

Their founder's book is an entertaining business book: Let My People Go Surfing, by Yvon Chouinard.

Thank you for the support guys. It is definitely a hard thing to experience -- the first reaction was definitely profoundly 'fuck' followed by 'this sucksssss'.

but at the end of the day, these guys have spent a long time building an incredible company, their designs are really awesome, and everything from their videos to their site design just screams 'rad'.

We're really stoked to build a company the way we want to.. making the decisions we feel are right. Yvon Chouinard wrote a book called 'Let My People Go Surfing' that was really inspirational to us.

Another company renowned for treating its employees well is Patagonia. The founder, Yvon Chouinard, wrote a book about it ("Let My People Go Surfing") and speaks about it here:

https://youtu.be/EHS2X-KoN_w (edited version)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EHS2X-KoN_w (full version)

I can't think of any other companies off the top of my head, but I'm hope there are plenty that I'm just ignorant about.

Here's a quote from his amazing book, Let My People Go Surfing:

"When I look at my business today, I realize one of the biggest challenges I have is combating complacency. I always say we're running Patagonia as if it's going to b e here a hundred years from now, but that doesn't mean we have a hundred years to get there! Our success and longevity lie in our ability to change quickly. Continuous change and innovation require maintaining a sense of urgency--a tall order, especially in Patagonia's seemingly laid-back corporate culture. In fact, one of the biggest mandates I have for managers at the company is to instigate change. It's the only way we're going to survive in the long run."

I've been broadly thinking about ways to take a bite out of this challenge. I've visited a couple of 1% for the planet[1] companies and been really inspired by what I've seen. In short, these companies pledge 1% of revenue to environmental causes. As the company scales it has a massive effect on their culture. I visited New Belgium Brewing (makers of Fat Tire) for instance, and a huge number of their employees are solely responsible for thoughtfully putting that money into action and funneling it into worthy causes. Imagine the impact that a double-digit percentage of the workforce of your successful company whose job it is to stand up for the things you decided were important _besides profit_. It's really incredible.

I really like the idea of setting up guard-rails like this to embody cultural values early on in ways that keep the organization accountable to them at scale and I wonder if something similar could help OSS. It's not hard to imagine a similarly structured pledge being adopted by companies and being popular with developers. It could be structured in hours or money, executed with developer time, donations, or hosting OSS developers like Stripe has done.

If I allow myself the thought exercise of what happens if something like this started to see adoption, I imagine we'd see projects beginning to license themselves favorably to companies who make this pledge in a variety of ways.

At any rate. That's roughly what I've been noodling around with regard to this problem.

[1] http://onepercentfortheplanet.org/ and I highly recommend Yvon Chouinard's book Let My People Go Surfing, which was where I was first exposed to the idea http://www.patagonia.com/us/product/let-my-people-go-surfing...

If you want to understand Yvon Chouinard as a person beyond reading Let My People Go Surfing, you should watch "180 Degrees South: Conquerors of the Useless"[0]. While Yvon only appears for about twenty minutes within the movie, his presence is woven all throughout the film.

Part of what made Patagonia as a company different is the no BS mentality instilled within him from his dirt bagging days spent climbing around California, Patagonia, and New Hampshire. There's a wonderful moment in the movie where Jeff Johnson and Yvon are climbing some first ascent and Jeff asks "what should we name it when we're done?" and Yvon replies, "nothing, just climb it, be done, and go home".

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/180_Degrees_South%3A_Conqueror...

Yvon's book Let My People Go Surfing [1] is absolutely one of my favorite business books, and it gives quite a bit of color and insight into how he thinks about their business and the culture that they've built there.

EDIT: Another anecdote - In 2010 I bought one of Patagonia's new wetsuits. At 600$ it was twice as expensive as the nicest suits on the market, I'm lucky enough to live near a Patagonia store though and they had a yearly wetsuit sale so I paid 450$. Still an outrageous price for a suit. Most wetsuits last me about three seasons, I still wear that first Patagonia suit though. It was starting to show it's age last year so I brought it to the store and they shipped it to their repair shop up north, and then back to my house. They replaced all of the inside seams, a zipper, and added a key loop (a feature the original didn't even have). They did all this FOR FREE.

I wouldn't describe them as anti-consumerism, because they sell stuff. I do think the brand encourages thoughtful consumerism though, and mostly by producing products and services that reset your bar for value against cost.

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Let-People-Surfing-Education-Businessm...

Check out "Let My People Go Surfing", Chouinard's business text, for a recounting of Patagonia's history.

Their history is also recounted here: http://www.patagonia.com/us/patagonia.go?assetid=3351

> Remember, work has to be fun. We value employees who live rich and rounded lives. We run a flexible workplace, and we have ever since we were a blacksmith shop that shut down whenever the waves were six feet, hot and glassy. Our policy has always allowed employees to work flexible hours, as long as the work gets done with no negative impacts on others. A serious surfer doesn't plan to go surfing next Tuesday at two o'clock. You go surfing when there are waves and the tide and wind are right.

From Let My People Go Surfing by Yvon Chouinard.

Yes! I like your attitude and I think that many companies could use it. I was inspired into thinking along these lines after reading "Let my People Go Surfing" and if I ever start a proper company then I'd love to hold similar values to yours.

Right now I'm working as a consultant, early on I decided that I'm going to donate 1% of my revenue to 1% For The Planet. One other value that I chose to follow was that health > work and having this attitude I visit the gym 3 times a week, no matter how things are at my consultancy.

I hope that I can keep these values as I move to setting up a proper company out of my activity.

This is the ultimate problem with how we've structured public corporations/LLCs in the US. When markets are working correctly in an environment of low innovation, companies themselves becomes the product, and the company's product itself just become a cashflow on a balance sheet. Grow the company (and its userbase) to a point where it can be harvested (go public) and then processed while you get paid out.

Nothing else in the environment matters if it's not on the balance sheet (most notably pollution, social disruption, and general human suffering). Yvon Chouinard has a great perspective on this in his book "Let My People Go Surfing" where he meditates on the paradox of running a private business that fights itself by automatically giving away portions of its revenue to charity rather than paying out shareholders/reinvesting in growth. What do you do when you see every sale your company makes as a failure in the fight against consumption/towards sustainability?

One thing the article does not mention is Chouinard's 1% For The Planet association (member companies pledge to donate 1% of gross annual sales to specific environmental organizations). Chouinard's approach to environmental lobbying and nonprofits is very outcome focused. If you run a business I recommend joining 1% For The Planet: https://www.onepercentfortheplanet.org/

A lot of details on environmentalism are described in Chouinard's Let My People Go Surfing, which I highly recommend reading. It is a great book about quality, technology, supply chain, and ethics in business.

The founder of Patagonia, Yvon Chouinard, writes about a related topic on the supply side in his book, "Let My People Go Surfing." The way he phrases it is, "What is the company's real product?" and he defines product as that which the company makes its decisions around.

Some of it is a little simplistic, but the points that have stayed with me are 1) the product of a large publicly traded company is its stock price, and 2) the product of a small scrappy start up is the start up itself.