Books Recommended by Ari Iaccarino

I’m currently reading The Devils by Dostoevsky, and I expect to glean absolutely nothing from it but the pleasure of disconnecting from any other literature that requires me to learn a skill for the company. The overburdening characters and plethora of words for something that could otherwise be said in an instant is a type of therapeutic brain massage in an environment where saying as little as possible with maximum effect is the plow that tills the soil in startup atmosphere.

The Glass Bead Game by Hermann Hesse played a pivotal role in helping me decide to become a teacher and in further pursuits afterwards. There are various interpretations of the text and many conclusions I could personally draw from, but the general theme entails following the life of a man in an institution of academic-like monks who study various subjects for the sake of knowledge itself - nothing done for money, “progress”, or technological advancement. In an age where academics is constantly pressured to lead students towards a job, I found that to be refreshing for me, especially as I had been living in Spain post-college trying to find some purpose beyond teaching English.

Learning to learn is beautiful and meaningful by itself, and in terms of how that relates to Ridj-it, this attitude has helped me to engage with the company in finding it to be rewarding for what it is, not because it serves some other external purpose. Investors don’t want to hear that, nor does anyone else relying on your existence, but thinking as such helps defend against dwelling on future scenarios and thoughts that inherently have no reality because, quite honestly, they don’t exist. The consequence of this commitment to the “now” is focus on the task at hand and the inevitable quality that follows. I’m not sure if I could have personally gotten to that point if I hadn’t committed myself to education via Hesse’s book.

My favorite business book is Marketing Outrageously by John Spoelstra, as he talks about his time being the Marketing Director for various sports teams and the philosophy of courage when it comes to even being a small company. We are not Coca-Cola - we don’t have the name they do, so why would we think investing money via social media or Google AdWords would ever bring us any results based on our mostly non-recognizable brand?

One quote in particular about this helps guide me along when a Google Account Manager tries to get us to purchase more ad credit: “If you run ads only to build identity, you’ve got a lot of cute little ads, but they’re very difficult to measure...However, if you ask the ad to build identity and buy now, then it’s easy to measure.” This idea is fairly fundamental now, but back in 2001 when he wrote the book and internet was starting to become a mainstream household item, that was a big deal. Be brave - and branding for the sake of branding is a waste of money for startups.

I’ve been on a Russian Classics reading whirl the past two years, and that was inspired by reading a six-book series named “My Struggle” by Norwegian essayist Karl Ove Knausgaard. He is the definition of a masterful writer in that almost everything he discusses is of the most mundane nature; shopping at a grocery store, dealing with crying children, and the awkwardness of just being alive. Yet at the same time his wordsmithing brings an aesthetic so realistic to the mind that you feel you are living in Kristiansand or Bergen, throwing glass bottles around, being hit by an abusive father, eating weird spreads and drinking beer throughout dark winter months. His use of quality inspires me with Ridj-it in that even our most mundane processes should be thoughtful, meaningful, and beautiful (although many are not), because in a lifetime generally dominated by mediocrity, you can choose to be a beacon of light, or be another startup trying to just collect a bunch of services together into one platform or another referral company.

There’s room for that, and you can make a bunch of money appealing to the most basic desires and thoughts of the populace and market. However, reading pieces like My Struggle remind me that in the one life we have to live, I’d rather work to make something new, something that brings quality in the form of access to nature, human experience and relationships, and the potential for satisfying the insatiable sense of adventure that only a book can fulfill sometimes. I’m still very much trapped between being an educator and entrepreneur where one purpose that has kept me going has been my desire to expand consciousness both personally and for the people around me.