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Eric has created his own software empire through hard work and sacrificing all of his time and energy to it, despite having a wife and two daughters. While he is vacationing with his friend Bill, engine trouble sends the two into a nosedive, and Eric’s life flashes before his eyes before Bill regains control of his plane. Realizing his lack of preparation for leaving his company and his fortune behind, and how little time he’s spent doing things he enjoys with the people he loves, Eric is determined to turn his life around. Yet all he knows is the workaholic ethic that made him a multi-millionaire. Over a series of Friday breakfast meetings, the veteran Bill advises Eric how to avoid becoming another riches-to-rags tale in the fast-moving world of Silicon Valley.
Written as a series of short vignettes that tell a larger fable, this story works both as a piece of fiction and also as a cautionary handbook for the young and successful. Most of the action takes place between Eric and Bill, whether they’re sitting down to eat or taking a breather in Baja. Each meeting lasts just a few pages, and this staccato storytelling is perfect for the target audience who might only be able to spare a minute or two between meetings or conference calls. Framing financial advice into a narrative is something that few attempt, and it works to take a potentially dry subject and humanize it, presenting the urgency in a very clear and direct way. Using just a small, intimate cast and practical information for first-generation financial successes, this is a great work of light reading married with high-gravity lessons.