A PRACTICAL WAY TO GET RICH...AND DIE TRYING

A tech entrepreneur’s account of his hyper-ascent to fortune and equally spectacular crash into crisis.

Roa’s entrepreneurial gifts manifested early. “I’ve always been able to get a quick emotional read on anyone to whom I’m speaking and deliver my message with a ferocious confidence,” he writes. “This skill exists on a scale ranging from charm to manipulation. Even as a child, I would speak to adults as their equal, and pick them apart in the process.” When he entered high school, he discovered natural aptitudes for both technology and rebellion. His first business venture, an on-call computer repair company, grew to include “scam” activities that used hacker skills Roa developed alongside a fellow techie and business partner who eventually seized control of the business for himself. Dropping in and out of college over the next several years before finally earning a bachelor’s degree in sales, Roa began a second, highly successful media company that catered to the online gaming community. He then briefly went to work for a Chicago web design firm, which inspired him to start another business in 2010 that would make him “the design guru” for startup companies. Using personal charisma and a gift for “reimagin[ing]…cemented way[s] of doing things,” Roa built a multimillion-dollar company he christened ÄKTA, run by a crew of “genius misfits.” By 2015, both ÄKTA and its creator were headed on a “collision course.” While the company was nearing the cliff “when risk would completely outweigh…gain,” the now overstressed Roa had begun drinking heavily and abusing cocaine and Xanax to keep him “1 percent above a breakdown.” As the author engages with the fascinating question of whether “entrepreneurs are born or made,” he depicts a cutthroat, unhealthy, sometimes bizarre world rarely discussed by insiders. For young entrepreneurs seeking to win the glittering—but personally destructive—startup game, it is essential reading.

A candid and disturbing memoir of the ups and downs of entrepreneurship.