I've gone through a few name changes. I didn't start out calling it Startups Open Sourced, I think it started out as "Founders in School" or something close to that back in February, and then it changed to "In the Trenches" and I worried that "In the Trenches" sent an overhyped message, or set the wrong tone as this aggressive, war-story type of book. When the idea of "Startups Open Sourced" came to me, I thought it seemed appropriate, because it's like you're looking at and understanding how each of these founders work on a personal and professional level. You get inside their head and they put it all out there for you to analyze. Hiring, fundraising, finding cofounders, staying motivated, all that is talked about in depth.
As far as the process of writing the book, I'll actually 'open source' that process next weekend. I'll cover everything, from the e-mail templates I sent, to the way I recorded and transcribed the calls and edited everything.
The 'open sourced' connotation was mostly aimed at the process of doing a startup, opening up all the complexities of that from the founders perspective and allowing others to see it and possible reuse those techniques in their own startup. Sorry if I've confused anyone on the nature of that. If I had to give it a more generic name it'd probably just be "Interviews with Startup Founders." If you want to share it with your friends, there's nothing that I can really do about that--I would just say that if you like it enough, try to purchase it.
Then quit abusing the term "open source". It has a specific meaning. The other word in the title is "Startups", would you do interviews with only established multinational companies and call it "startups"? Would you publish a cookbook and call it "startups"? Don't use "open source" unless you mean it.
I don't think the word open source means what you think it means. It is a particular philosophy of writing software (or doing creative work).
Using open source in the title seems disingenuous.