My last flight over the Pacific gave me ample time to read through Jessica Livingstons collection of interviews.

It's good stuff and Jessica certainly got to the famous people. The interviews usually cover the founders insight on why and how they started their company. Most entrepreneurs give a humble account of their own success. Many recognize that thing could have turned out otherwise and each startup had their hard times and was bankrupt several times (with the exception of Flickr maybe :).

Nothing unexpected but striking in its magnitude is how different some business evolved. Paypal raised money on being a PalmPilot application to become the biggest online payment processors aided by a fraud detection mechanism nobody incl. the founders and investors knew they even needed.

For me the best interviews are Mark Levchin's honest and down to earth account on how Paypal made it work and Paul Bucheit's account of building Gmail and Adsense as an entrepreneur inside giant Google.

Some interviews are strangely boring or unreadable (i.e Steve Wozniak) or shine with self parading. However it's good stuff and if you are interested in setting out as an entrepreneurs it surely helps.