Derek Sivers started CD Baby in 1998 as a favor to musician friends who needed a way to sell their CDs online. He never wrote a business plan. He never took funding. He ran the company himself, built the website himself, and eventually sold it for $22 million, donating the proceeds to a charitable trust for music education.
Anything You Want is the compressed version of what he learned along the way. At about 90 pages, it is one of the shortest business books you will find, and every page earns its place. Sivers writes in short, punchy chapters that each make one point.
Some of the lessons: If it is not a “hell yes” it is a “no.” Business is not about money; it is about making dreams come true for others. When you make a business, you are making a little world where you control the laws. The best plans start as side projects of something you are already doing. Delegate, but do not abdicate. And: a business plan should never take more than a few hours of a nap-free afternoon.
Sivers’s philosophy is the opposite of the growth-at-all-costs startup mentality. He built CD Baby to be useful and fun, not to be big. He turned down investment offers because he did not want a board or shareholders. He kept the team small because he liked knowing everyone. When the business stopped being fun, he sold it.
For founders, the book is a counterbalance to the default narrative that bigger is always better. Not every company needs to be a unicorn. Not every founder needs to raise capital. Sivers makes a convincing case that building a small, profitable business that you control and enjoy is a perfectly valid outcome, and in many ways a better one.
Jason Fried, Tim Ferriss, and Sahil Lavingia have all recommended this book. Lavingia, who wrote The Minimalist Entrepreneur, has cited Sivers as a direct influence. The book reads in about an hour, but the ideas stick. It is the kind of book you recommend to friends who are overthinking their first business.
