I have been a founder, CEO, venture capitalist, buyout specialist, Chairman, author, consultant, and coach. I’ve seen the startup world from every angle and also seen how destructive it can be if we don’t take care of our inner lives. My work now is to help people understand how we can transform ourselves to transform our businesses. These books were helpful to me when I needed them most and shaped not only my leadership approach but also my life.
I wrote
Reignition: Transforming Stuck Startups Into Breakout Winners
This book came out when I was a struggling founder CEO and hit me in the right way. Steve is clearly a polarizing leader, and for good reason. He’s complex and deeply flawed, but he also created magic products that changed the world. As a founder, you must constantly step back and question your motivations, as they will subconsciously drive your decisions in ways you don’t always consider.
For me, this was a call to action to understand what it takes to inspire teams to greatness, but it was also a warning to approach it from the right source of inspiration.
From bestselling author Walter Isaacson comes the landmark biography of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs. In Steve Jobs: The Exclusive Biography, Isaacson provides an extraordinary account of Jobs' professional and personal life.
Drawn from three years of exclusive and unprecedented interviews Isaacson has conducted with Jobs as well as extensive interviews with Jobs' family members, key colleagues from Apple and its competitors, Steve Jobs: The Exclusive Biography is the definitive portrait of the greatest innovator of his generation.
I was lucky enough to work with Ben at a16z and found him to be a very thoughtful and brilliant guy with deeply held beliefs and perspectives on how to build great technology and organizations.
This book helped me navigate the line between knowing the answers and being stuck in the hardness in my writing and leadership development. It’s also more vulnerable than many other books and serves as a good reminder of why we do it, how hard it can be, and that we’re not alone in that path.
Ben Horowitz, cofounder of Andreessen Horowitz and one of Silicon Valley's most respected and experienced entrepreneurs, offers essential advice on building and running a startup-practical wisdom for managing the toughest problems business school doesn't cover, based on his popular ben's blog. While many people talk about how great it is to start a business, very few are honest about how difficult it is to run one. Ben Horowitz analyzes the problems that confront leaders every day, sharing the insights he's gained developing, managing, selling, buying, investing in, and supervising technology companies. A lifelong rap fanatic, he amplifies business lessons with…
Bright but unassuming Marilyn Jones has some grown-up decisions to make, especially after Mama goes to prison for drugs and larceny. With no one to take care of them, Marilyn and her younger, mentally challenged brother, Carol, get tossed into the foster care…
Sometimes, we just need an escape. This fiction book takes place in the Dutch trading post of Dejima in Nagasaki Harbor, Japan. The novel follows the story of Jacob de Zoet, a young and honest Dutch clerk seeking to make his fortune and return to the Netherlands to marry his fiancée.
It’s a fun, escapist read that appeals to founders and builders like me. We follow this self-made hero who is drawn into a complex world he is forced to confront. It’s a journey of personal growth and morality set against a fascinating historical backdrop.
The Sunday Times Number One Bestseller, from the author of CLOUD ATLAS and THE BONE CLOCKS.
Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2010
'Brilliant' - The Times 'A masterpiece' - Scotsman
Be transported to a place like no other: a tiny, man-made island in the bay of Nagasaki, for two hundred years the sole gateway between Japan and the West. Here, in the dying days of the 18th-century, a young Dutch clerk arrives to make his fortune. Instead he loses his heart.
Step onto the streets of Dejima and mingle with scheming traders, spies, interpreters, servants and concubines as two…
Being “lonely at the top” is often a problem of being stuck inside an infinite loop of cycling voices in your head. I can get insanely maniacal about the little things and have difficulty breaking out of the cycle.
This book came at a time when I was deep in one of those cycles. It was a mind-blowing look into why we are who we are and how homo sapiens systematically took over the planet. It was such an “aha” moment for me that it made all the voices go away, and I could see why and how my life was playing out in this way.
100,000 years ago, at least six human species inhabited the earth. Today there is just one. Us. Homo sapiens. How did our species succeed in the battle for dominance? Why did our foraging ancestors come together to create cities and kingdoms? How did we come to believe in gods, nations and human rights; to trust money, books and laws; and to be enslaved by bureaucracy, timetables and consumerism? And what will our world be like in the millennia to come?
In Sapiens, Dr Yuval Noah Harari spans the whole of human history, from the very first humans to walk the…
What happens when a person is placed into a medically-induced coma?
The brain might be flatlining, but the mind is far from inactive: experiencing alternate lives rich in every detail that spans decades, visiting realms of stunning and majestic beauty, or plummeting to the very depths of Hell while defying…
If there’s one thing I needed more of as a founder CEO (and didn’t know I needed), it was self-compassion. Tara’s amazing book is a calming, kind, and loving “friend” of a book that helps you connect with what matters and how our minds can get in our way.
To get in the best “athletic shape” as a leader, we need self-compassion lest we burn ourselves and our teams out and kill our companies in the process. This book was better than any medication I could have taken to calm my nervous system and make me a better leader.
For many of us, feelings of deficiency are right around the corner. It doesn’t take much--just hearing of someone else’s accomplishments, being criticized, getting into an argument, making a mistake at work--to make us feel that we are not okay. Beginning to understand how our lives have become ensnared in this trance of unworthiness is our first step toward reconnecting with who we really are and what it means to live fully. —from Radical Acceptance
“Believing that something is wrong with us is a deep and tenacious suffering,” says Tara Brach at the start of this illuminating book. This suffering…
Nine out of ten startups fail, but founders believe they have an 82 percent chance of success. This disconnect fuels blind optimism and rampant fundraising and kills otherwise promising companies. It doesn't have to be that way. There are consistent patterns that can be corrected or avoided.
An entrepreneur, investor, advisor, and humble contrarian, Dave Hersh (GP, Metamorph; founding CEO of Jive; former board partner, Al6Z) has spent over thirty years building lean, profitable, mission-driven businesses. Bolstered by stories of successes and failures, Reignition is a clear and practical playbook for companies with revenue between $1M and $100M that have seen success but need a second act.
This delightful fable about the Golden Age of Broadway unfolds the warm story of Artie, a young rehearsal pianist, Joe, a visionary director, and Carrie, his crackerjack Girl Friday, as they shepherd a production of a musical version of A Midsummer Night's Dream towards opening night.
This book is set in Montauk, under looming threat from a warming climate and overdevelopment. Now outsider Clancy, a thirty-six-year-old claims adjuster scarred by his orphan childhood, has inherited an unexpected legacy: the power to decide the fate of Montauk’s last parcel of undeveloped land. Everyone in town has a…
