I'm terrified and excited that my third novel, Exit Strategy, comes out today. It's the conclusion to The Uncommon Series, a tech startup thriller trilogy that follows Mara Winkel and her best friend James Chen as they drop out of college to start a startup and end up getting sucked into an international conspiracy along the way.
The books are distributed to every Techstars founder and I've been humbled by the feedback we've received from folks like @bfeld, @micah, @davidcohen, @daniellemorrill, and so many others. Organic word-of-mouth has sent them to #1 in their category on Amazon and we've tried to think like scrappy entrepreneurs in how we share the story: we serialized the entire first book and posted it on Medium, the fictional protagonist has penned opeds and done interviews for tech publications, and Foundry Group even syndicated the fictional startup's Series B financing.
I started writing the book because I thought that fiction could provide a special window into the minds and hearts of entrepreneurs. Over the course of writing it, I learned an enormous amount about not only the process of bringing a tech company all the way to IPO but also how vulnerable our public and financial institutions are. For example, the United Nations estimates that organized crime brings in $2 trillion a year in profits and that the black market represents 15-20% of global GDP. The antagonists behind these dark trends are what turned this story into a page-turner.
Looking forward to hearing what you think, you can find the full Uncommon Series here: http://www.amazon.com/Eliot-Pepe...
The @producthunt team was kind enough to invite me to do an AMA next Tuesday and I can't wait to field your questions. They have an incredible list of authors coming up that you can check out here: http://www.producthunt.com/books...
Neon Fever Dream