Eric Redmond's Deep Tech Opened the Door to a Nike Executive Role, MIT, and His Own Startup
“Since publishing with Scribe my life has changed substantially. I was promoted at work thanks in large part to the book, leveraged that into building Nike’s Tech Innovation Office, leveraged that into acceptance at MIT, via classmates at MIT I built a project that earned me millions, which I have now leveraged into another even bigger startup. All from a little book!”
Eric Redmond, Founder of Permeta
Eric Redmond calls himself the Forrest Gump of technology, the guy standing just off to the side of every big moment in tech, from the first Bitcoin miners to big data to the arrival of AI. He has written eight books. The one he published with Scribe, Deep Tech, set off a chain he can draw a straight line through: a Nike executive promotion, admission to MIT Sloan, a project that earned him millions, and the energy startup he runs today.
A career built at the edge of every new technology
For about ten years Eric worked at Nike, where he co-founded and led the technology innovation office. The team was small, five people, operating like an internal startup: prove an emerging technology solved a real business problem, then scale it. Deep Tech grew directly out of that work. It started as a series of internal memos explaining emerging technologies to non-technical colleagues, one on AI he wrote back in 2016 and 2017, others on 3D printing, the Internet of Things, and quantum computing.
Someone told him the memos should be a book. By then he had already published several titles through traditional tech publishers. This time he wanted something different.
Why he chose Scribe over his previous publishers
Eric had been through the traditional route, and the thing that pushed him toward Scribe was control. On an earlier book, a publisher pushed back on his writing because it did not fit the voice of their imprint. His response: but this is my voice. With Deep Tech, he wanted the final product to be his, without giving up the support a publisher provides.
“When I ran across Scribe I was like, this kind of is perfect. It solves my problems, and it gave me a lot of opportunity to steer the narrative in the direction that I wanted to go.”
— Eric Redmond, Founder of Permeta
He kept the control and still got the full machine behind the book.
“I still had all the benefits. Marketers and PR and the editors were great, and type layout and deploying it into stores and all of that.”
— Eric Redmond, Founder of Permeta
He also owns the rights, which turned into a revenue stream of its own.
“Owning the book rights has been fantastic, because I’ve sold the foreign language rights to other publishers in other countries. So there’s a Korean version of my book, there’s a German version, there’s a Russian version.”
— Eric Redmond, Founder of Permeta
What the book produced
The favorite question on Author Hour is the unexpected great thing that happened because of the book. For Eric, the honest answer is a chain of them. It started inside Nike.
“The book inside the company gave me the visibility that actually was a big driver of the promotion that I got, the final promotion, that put me in the kind of executive level.”
— Eric Redmond, Founder of Permeta
The promotion led somewhere he did not plan. He had been working with MIT professors on technology research, and they suggested he apply for an MBA. The new executive role and the book became part of his pitch.
“Then also I have this book. So that was just part of my pitch to get into that program. And I was accepted into Sloan, which has a really, really low acceptance rate.”
— Eric Redmond, Founder of Permeta
MIT is where the next link formed. Through the program he met people in the energy industry, which led to Halliburton after Nike, which led to the company he runs now.
“While I was there, I got to meet a lot of folks in the energy industry, and that ended up how I ended up working with Halliburton after Nike. And so that kind of got me into the energy space, and I really liked that work. And so that was when I started the company that I’m currently running, which is called Permeta.”
— Eric Redmond, Founder of Permeta
“Looking back, there was a pretty clear road that kind of started with the book.”
— Eric Redmond, Founder of Permeta
A book that still opens doors five years later
More than five years after launch, Deep Tech is still working. Eric uses it the way the best business books get used, as a calling card that makes people remember him.
“When you hand somebody a book, they tend to remember that. And so I’ve made a lot of great connections, a lot of great friends and customers and investors and mentors.”
— Eric Redmond, Founder of Permeta
It also changed how people treat him before he says a word.
“When you write a book you’re now an expert. Not because you necessarily know anything more, but because everybody assumes the one who wrote the book is the expert. And that really helps open doors. It still opens doors.”
— Eric Redmond, Founder of Permeta
“There have been quite a few cases where I’ll just run into somebody at a conference or some other event, and people will be like, I read your book, I really liked it. It’s like being a celebrity for five seconds.”
— Eric Redmond, Founder of Permeta
His advice to anyone sitting on a book
Eric is blunt about the work. The draft is the start, not the finish, and the edit is where the book gets good.
“You’re an amateur writer until you’ve had your heart ripped out by an editor.”
— Eric Redmond, Founder of Permeta
“Anybody can write a book. What’s hard is rewriting it five times before it’s publishable and something you’re proud of and you want people to read.”
— Eric Redmond, Founder of Permeta
He compares writing a book to running a marathon, and the right partner to the pace runners who carry an elite marathoner to the finish.
“That’s probably a good analog for what a business like yours can do, is just be those runners that can block some of the wind, keep you on pace, and then eventually you’re gonna reach that finish line.”
— Eric Redmond, Founder of Permeta
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