Does this book cover remind you of anything?

It’s meant to resemble a pioneering device called the Rocket eBook—one of the first e-readers.

Here’s what it looked like:

The Rocket eBook was built in 1997. The company got pretty big, and the founders sold it for $187,000,000 after just 3 years. Later on, members of the Rocket team helped build the Kindle and Nook.

If you’re like me, you find this interesting.

But it gets better.

The two co-founders of this e-reader company—Martin Eberhard and Marc Tarpenning—went on to start Tesla Motors. Elon Musk joined only after those two had already started building it!

A few months ago, I had the honor of interviewing Marc Tarpenning about his e-reader company. The conversation went in some amazing directions—including how Marc thinks about startup ideas, what has (and hasn’t) changed in publishing, and the biggest lessons that carried over from the Rocket eBook to Tesla. This interview was so fascinating that my team published it in a cool little 52-page book.​

One thing I found interesting was how closed-minded people used to be about e-reading. Back when Marc and Martin were pitching the idea, countless people dismissed it saying, “I would NEVER read ANYTHING on a screen!” ⬇️ Pretty ridiculous in hindsight.

All this makes me think about the stickiness of the status quo. The future is something that people have to create—actively push forward—or else it won’t happen.

Be well,

- Ellen Fishbein
editor: William Jaworski

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P.S. — I wrote this poem called “Futurist” sometime after my second company failed, before I was able to figure out how to start Altamira. I bookmarked this page for Marc when I gave him a copy of my book.