HACKER'S EDGE

Tech entrepreneur Merket tells the story of a life guided by a hacking spirit.

After a brief prologue, the book opens on the author’s years as a whip-smart kid in the 1980s and ’90s, cracking videogame codes in the Texas Hill Country and embracing the hacker anti-establishment mindset. He spent his teens dropping in and out of school, partying, and finding community with a global team of hackers whom he never met in person. He later attended Oklahoma Wesleyan University, where the pull of hacking continued, even as he found grounding from a mentor, professor David Cochran, and his then-girlfriend Jenn, whom he’d later marry. His discomfort around censorship at the conservative university led him and Jenn to establish an anonymous newspaper and web forum that lauded open dialogue. In the 2000s, the pair moved to San Francisco, and Merket found himself a part of the startup world. He was invited to join the early developer community at Facebook, was recruited to work at DotSpotter, and later took jobs at Reddit and then Amazon, all while launching his own startups. The fast pace started to take a toll as Merket balanced caring for a newborn with bouts of atrial fibrillation. He “jumped aboard” a startup company called Goodfair and later started Mission Labs, and he grappled with their lack of success. His loyalty to his friends and family forced him to reconsider the pace of his life, eventually prompting a move to Austin, Texas. Merket says that he still has the hacker’s mindset as a mentor and an angel investor, but his role as a father of two children remains his greatest priority.

Much of Merket’s memoir offers a nostalgia-tinged glimpse at the adrenaline-fueled early days of the Silicon Valley startup bubble. The lure of hacking and its influence on business have been explored at length elsewhere, but this book is no less enjoyable for addressing it. Merket’s direct, honest tone is a good match for the story he tells; his use of anecdotes and his exploration of his motivations effectively balance an account of the major career successes and challenges. It results in a memoir that’s also an enjoyable guide for aspiring entrepreneurs. Merket also doesn’t shy away from addressing his personal values; for example, he explains his reasons for disliking the policies of Donald Trump and his theory that the president uses an “us vs. them” mentality as a central operating principle. However, readers may wish that the author more effectively established the differences between the early startup days and the current entrepreneurial climate. His story of a hacker-turned-coder in the tech-business world is a compelling one, but the cutting contemporary remarks in his final chapters lack the nuanced approach of the rest of the work. Merket justifiably considers his political views to be relevant to his business experience, but he doesn’t fully explain why the worlds of politics and startups must be considered together, and how they influence each other. Without this, his final chapters don’t mesh well with the rest of the narrative.

A fast-paced, compelling remembrance that loses focus at the end.