Tim O’Reilly is one of the people who inspired me to write for several blogs and proffer analysis and commentary to an unsuspecting public. The CEO of O’Reilly Media, a $100M company and growing, O’Reilly is a guy who’s completely devoid of pretense. He’s not playing the game for anyone other than his own passions, and as esoteric as that is, it comes across in his net persona. He is, in everyday parlance, one of the good guys.
Inc.’s Max Chafkin has a superb profile of O’Reilly, which everyone interested in the intellectualism and leadership of Silicon Valley should read.
“This is a lifestyle business that got out of control,” O’Reilly said when we first met. O’Reilly is 55 and has a craggy, weatherworn face, and he speaks with the warm self-confidence of someone who knows a lot more than you do but is happy to share. “My original business model — I actually wrote this down — was ‘interesting work for interesting people.’ “
Worth reading yourself, and certainly worth passing on.