Writer, founder of CD Baby.
Contemporary · New Zealand
Install Derek's frameworks in Claude Code
/plugin marketplace add adamtpang/summon.guide
/plugin install siversInstalls 7 skills from Derek, plus the rest of summon.guide. Source on GitHub.
Sivers was born in 1969 in Berkeley, California, and moved almost every year for his first six years following his physicist father's work. He began music training at seven and programming at nine, and decided at fourteen he wanted to be a professional musician. He studied at Berklee College of Music in Boston, graduating in 1990, and spent a decade as a circus ringleader and musician alongside his early music career, including a 1992 tour of Japan and Europe as Ryuichi Sakamoto's guitarist.
In 1998 Sivers built a webpage to sell his own CD, and when friends asked him to sell theirs too, CD Baby grew almost by accident into the largest online seller of independent music, eventually serving over 150,000 musician clients and 100 million dollars in sales. In 2008 he sold the company for 22 million dollars, but not directly: he first transferred ownership into the Independent Musicians Charitable Trust, then had the trust complete the sale, so the proceeds fund music education causes rather than his own accounts. He has given four TED talks with over seven million combined views. Since 2011 he has written five short, self published books, each under 135 pages, distilling specific lessons from founding and selling CD Baby into standalone arguments: that execution multiplies ideas rather than the reverse, that a decision worth making should feel like a hell yeah, that contradictory ways of living can both be true at once, and most recently that a belief is worth holding not because it is true but because it is useful.
Sivers turned one company's origin story into five distinct short books rather than one long memoir, each built around a single reusable claim rather than a general account of his career. His decision to route CD Baby's sale through a charitable trust, giving away money he could have kept, is frequently cited alongside his writing as evidence the ideas are not merely marketing for a personal brand. He does not currently have a standalone Wikipedia article, a 2022 deletion discussion found insufficient independent secondary coverage, so his own site, sive.rs, remains the most complete record of his own work.
Frameworks distilled from Derek’s life, packaged as Claude Code skills. Each skill is invoked with a slash command and grounded in the primary biographies listed under References.
/sivers:siversRun a decision, an idea, or a belief through the same short tests Sivers built out of founding and selling CD Baby: is it a hell yeah, is it actually useful, and have you executed on it at all.
Source: Derek Sivers, across Anything You Want, Hell Yeah or No, How to Live, and Useful Not True, Recurring across all five books
/sivers:hell-yeah-or-noIf the honest answer to a decision is not a hell yeah, the answer is no. Most overcommitment comes from saying yes out of fear, not desire.
Source: Hell Yeah or No by Derek Sivers, Title essay, originally published August 26, 2009, expanded into the 2020 book
/sivers:obvious-to-you-amazing-to-othersYou are a bad judge of your own ideas, because what you already know feels too obvious to be worth saying. Put it out and let other people decide.
Source: Derek Sivers, essay Obvious to You. Amazing to Others., sive.rs/obvious
/sivers:execution-multiplierA brilliant idea with no execution is worth nothing. Build to solve your own problem first, and let the next problem, not a plan, decide what you build next.
Source: Anything You Want by Derek Sivers, The CD Baby origin story, built to sell his own CD before anyone else asked
/sivers:hold-the-contradictionTwo fully opposite ways of living can both be true. Argue each side completely on its own terms instead of collapsing into one rule too early.
Source: How to Live by Derek Sivers, 27 chapters, each fully convinced of a different way to live
/sivers:earn-what-cant-be-givenMastery is the one goal the rich cannot buy, the impatient cannot rush, and the privileged cannot inherit. Aim at it specifically because nobody can hand it to you.
Source: How to Live by Derek Sivers, Chapter, Master something
/sivers:useful-not-trueAsk whether a belief is useful to hold right now, not whether it is objectively true. Treat beliefs as tools you pick up and put down, not as claims you must defend.
Source: Useful Not True by Derek Sivers, The book's central argument
Install in Claude Code
/plugin marketplace add adamtpang/summon.guide
/plugin install siversBring Derek’s frameworks into your terminal. One install registers every guide’s skills.
Each Claude Code skill above is grounded in a specific passage of a specific book. These are the primary sources we drew from for Derek.
Derek Sivers · 2011
Forty short lessons from founding and selling CD Baby: business as accidental problem solving, ideas as a multiplier of execution rather than a substitute for it, and staying small and controlled on purpose rather than chasing growth.
Derek Sivers · 2020
Marketing and reputation lessons drawn from CD Baby, reframed for any creator: marketing as an extension of the art itself, being considerate as a form of being memorable, and proudly excluding most people to matter more to the few.
Derek Sivers · 2020
The expansion of a 2009 essay into a full decision filter: if it is not a hell yeah, it is a no. Argues most overcommitment comes from saying yes to too many medium options out of fear rather than genuine desire.
Derek Sivers · 2021
Twenty seven short chapters, each fully convinced of a different and often contradictory way to live. Independence and commitment, mastery and always staying a beginner, are each argued completely on their own terms rather than resolved into one rule.
Derek Sivers · 2024
Argues that a belief is worth holding not because it is objectively true but because holding it is useful right now. A short, deliberately uncomfortable case for treating beliefs as tools rather than as claims about reality.
“If you're not saying HELL YEAH about something, say no.”
“Ideas are just a multiplier of execution. The most brilliant idea is worthless with no execution.”
“Everybody's ideas seem obvious to them.”
Their voice on summon.guide is grounded in:
Other guides
