(Last updated: 11 Mar 2024)

A list of books I’ve found useful. Other books I have read: GoodReads.

Biographies & Start-up Stories

• Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of NIKE - Phil Knight
• Return to the Little Kingdom: Steve Jobs, the Creation of Apple, and How It Changed the World - Michael Moritz
• The History of the Future: Oculus, Facebook, and the Revolution That Swept Virtual Reality - Blake J. Harris
• Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal - Nick Bilton
• Who Is Michael Ovitz? - Michael Ovitz
• Lost and Founder: The Mostly Awful, Sometimes Awesome Truth about Building a Tech Startup - Rand Fishkin
• Steve Jobs - Walter Isaacson
• Marissa Mayer and the Fight to Save Yahoo! - Nicholas Carlson
• Becoming Steve Jobs: The Evolution of a Reckless Upstart into a Visionary Leader - Brent Schlender
• The Airbnb Story: How Three Ordinary Guys Disrupted an Industry, Made Billions . . . and Created Plenty of Controversy - Leigh Gallagher
• Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly - Anthony Bourdain
• Startupland: How Three Guys Risked Everything to Turn an Idea Into a Global Business - Mikkel Svane, Carlye Adler
• The Space Barons: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and the Quest to Colonize the Cosmos - Christian Davenport
• Leading: Learning from Life and My Years at Manchester United - Alex Ferguson, Michael Moritz
• Reset: My Fight for Inclusion and Lasting Change - Ellen Pao
• How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life - Scott Adams
• Alibaba: The House That Jack Ma Built - Duncan Clark
• The Upstarts: How Uber, Airbnb, and the Killer Companies of the New Silicon Valley Are Changing the World - Brad Stone
• Chaos Monkeys: Obscene Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon Valley - Antonio García Martínez
• The PayPal Wars: Battles with eBay, the Media, the Mafia, and the Rest of the Planet Earth - Eric M. Jackson
• Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future - Ashlee Vance
• Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose - Tony Hsieh
• Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration - Ed Catmull, Amy Wallace
• Live Work Work Work Die: A Journey into the Savage Heart of Silicon Valley - Corey Pein
• The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon - Brad Stone
• In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives - Steven Levy
• Founders at Work: Stories of Startups’ Early Days - Jessica Livingston
• Blood, Sweat, and Pixels: The Triumphant, Turbulent Stories Behind How Video Games Are Made - Jason Schreier
• I’m Feeling Lucky: The Confessions of Google Employee Number 59 - Douglas Edwards
• Startup: A Silicon Valley Adventure - Jerry Kaplan
• Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber - Mike Isaac
• The Ride of a Lifetime: Lessons Learned from 15 Years as CEO of the Walt Disney Company - Robert Iger
• Grinding It Out: The Making of McDonald’s - Ray Kroc
• No Filter: The Inside Story of Instagram - Sarah Frier
• Big Billion Startup: The Untold Flipkart Story - Mihir Dalal
• How to Turn Down a Billion Dollars: The Snapchat Story - Billy Gallagher
• How to Get Rich - Felix Dennis
• The New New Thing: A Silicon Valley Story - Michael Lewis
• Attention Factory - Matthew Brennan
• Amazon Unbound - Brad Stone
• We Are The Nerds - Christine Lagorio-Chafkin
• The Contrarian: Peter Thiel and Silicon Valley’s Pursuit of Power - Max Chafkin
• After Steve - Tripp Mickle
• On the Firing Line - Gil Amelio
• Elon Musk - Walter Isaacson

Company Building Playbook

• Running Lean: Iterate from Plan A to a Plan That Works - Ash Maurya
• The Fixer: My Adventures Saving Startups from Death by Politics - Bradley Tusk
• High Growth Handbook - Elad Gil
• Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies - James C. Collins, Jerry I. Porras
• Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t - James C. Collins
• Insanely Simple: The Obsession That Drives Apple’s Success - Ken Segall
• Be Our Guest: Perfecting the art of customer service - Walt Disney Company
• Always Day One: How the Tech Titans Plan to Stay on Top Forever - Alex Kantrowitz
• Playing to Win: How Strategy Really Works - A.G. Lafley
• No Rules Rules: Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention
• Invent and Wander: The Collected Writings of Jeff Bezos - Jeff Bezos, Walter Isaacson
• Working Backwards - Colin Bryar, Bill Carr
• $100M Offers - Alex Hormozi
• Amp It Up - Frank Slootman

Leading & Managing

• High Output Management - Andrew S. Grove
• The Making of a Manager: What to Do When Everyone Looks to You - Julie Zhuo
• The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers - Ben Horowitz
• The New One Minute Manager - Kenneth H. Blanchard
• It’s Your Ship: Management Techniques from the Best Damn Ship in the Navy - D. Michael Abrashoff
• Radical Candor: Be a Kickass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity - Kim Malone Scott
• Measure What Matters - John Doerr
• Managing Oneself - Peter F. Drucker
• Powerful: Building a Culture of Freedom and Responsibility - Patty McCord
• The Coaching Habit: Say Less, Ask More & Change the Way You Lead Forever - Michael Bungay Stanier
• Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action - Simon Sinek
• Principles - Ray Dalio
• Work Rules!: Insights from Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live and Lead - Laszlo Bock
• Tribal Leadership: Leveraging Natural Groups to Build a Thriving Organization - Dave Logan
• How to Win Friends and Influence People - Dale Carnegie
• Managing Humans: Biting and Humorous Tales of a Software Engineering Manager - Michael Lopp
• Making Things Happen: Mastering Project Management - Scott Berkun
• Trillion Dollar Coach: The Leadership Playbook of Silicon Valley’s Bill Campbell - Eric Schmidt, Jonathan Rosenberg
• The Manager’s Path: A Guide for Tech Leaders Navigating Growth and Change - Camille Fournier
• The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups - Daniel Coyle
• Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win - Jocko Willink
• The Score Takes Care of Itself: My Philosophy of Leadership - Bill Walsh
• An Elegant Puzzle: Systems of Engineering Management - Will Larson

Product & Strategy

• The Messy Middle: Finding Your Way Through the Hardest and Most Crucial Part of Any Bold Venture - Scott Belsky
• Only the Paranoid Survive - Andrew S. Grove
• Blitzscaling: The Lightning-Fast Path to Building Massively Valuable Companies - Reid Hoffman
• Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future - Peter Thiel, Blake Masters
• Creative Selection: Inside Apple’s Design Process During the Golden Age of Steve Jobs - Ken Kocienda
• Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant - W. Chan Kim
• The Power of Glamour: Longing and the Art of Visual Persuasion - Virginia Postrel
• Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products - Nir Eyal
• The Innovator’s Dilemma: The Revolutionary Book that Will Change the Way You Do Business - Clayton M. Christensen
• Lean Analytics: Use Data to Build a Better Startup Faster - Alistair Croll, Benjamin Yoskovitz
• The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses - Eric Ries
• Platform Revolution - Geoffrey G. Parker, Marshall W. Van Alstyne, Sangeet Paul Choudary
• 7 Powers: The Foundations of Business Strategy - Hamilton Wright Helmer
• Shape Up: Stop Running in Circles and Ship Work that Matters - Ryan Singer, Jason Fried
• Obviously Awesome: How to Nail Product Positioning so Customers Get It, Buy It, Love It - April Dunford
• Escaping the Build Trap: How Effective Product Management Creates Real Value - Melissa Perri
• Competing Against Luck - Clayton M. Christensen
• Understanding Michael Porter: The Essential Guide to Competition and Strategy - Joan Magretta
• Start at the End: How to Build Products That Create Change - Matt Wallaert
• Inspired - Marty Cagan
• Good Strategy Bad Strategy - Richard P. Rumelt

Life, Living & Mindset

• Being Mortal: Medicine and What Matters in the End - Atul Gawande
• Meditations - Marcus Aurelius
• How Will You Measure Your Life? - Clayton M. Christensen, James Allworth, Karen Dillon
• Awareness: Conversations with the Masters - Anthony de Mello
• Striking Thoughts: Bruce Lee’s Wisdom for Daily Living - Bruce Lee, John Little
• 30 Lessons for Living: Tried and True Advice from the Wisest Americans - Karl Pillemer
• What I Talk About When I Talk About Running - Haruki Murakami
• When Breath Becomes Air - Paul Kalanithi
• A Complaint Free World: How to Stop Complaining and Start Enjoying the Life You Always Wanted - Will Bowen
• The Courage to Be Disliked: How to Free Yourself, Change your Life and Achieve Real Happiness - Ichiro Kishimi, Fumitake Koga
• The Mental Game of Poker - Jared Tendler
• The Art of the Good Life - Rolf Dobelli
• The Second Mountain - David Brooks
• Reboot: Leadership and the Art of Growing Up - Jerry Colonna
• Hell Yeah or No: what’s worth doing - Derek Sivers
• Atmamun: The Path To Achieving The Bliss Of The Himalayan Swamis. And The Freedom Of A Living God - Kapil Gupta
• Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World - Cal Newport
• Man’s Search for Meaning - Viktor E. Frankl
• The Almanack of Naval Ravikant: A Guide to Wealth and Happiness - Eric Jorgenson
• Hell Yeah or No: what’s worth doing - Derek Sivers
• Designing Your Life: Build a Life that Works for You - Bill Burnett, Dave Evans
• Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, Her Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed - Lori Gottlieb
• The Key to Happiness: How to Find Purpose by Unlocking the Secrets of the World’s Happiest People - Meik Wiking
• The Art of Making Memories: How to Create and Remember Happy Moments - Meik Wiking
• Die with Zero: Getting All You Can from Your Money and Your Life - Bill Perkins
• The 4-Hour Workweek - Timothy Ferriss
• A Million Miles in a Thousand Years - Donald Miller
• Think on These Things - J. Krishnamurti
• The Art of Noticing - Rob Walker
• Four Thousand Weeks - Oliver Burkeman
• From Strength to Strength - Arthur C. Brooks

Health, Habits & Productivity

• Tools of Titans: The Tactics, Routines, and Habits of Billionaires, Icons, and World-Class Performers - Tim Ferriss
• Tribe of Mentors: Short Life Advice from the Best in the World - Tim Ferriss
• My Morning Routine: How Successful People Start Every Day Inspired - Benjamin Spall
• Daily Rituals: How Artists Work - Mason Currey
• Smarter Faster Better: The Secrets of Being Productive in Life and Business - Charles Duhigg
• Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World - Cal Newport
• Seeking Wisdom: From Darwin To Munger - Peter Bevelin
• The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right - Atul Gawande
• What I Talk About When I Talk About Running - Haruki Murakami
• The Productivity Project: Accomplishing More by Managing Your Time, Attention, and Energy - Chris Bailey
• Atomic Habits - James Clear
• The 4-Hour Body - Timothy Ferriss
• Storyworthy - Matthew Dicks

Investing & Personal Finance

• Narrative and Numbers: The Value of Stories in Business - Aswath Damodaran
• You Can Be a Stock Market Genius: Uncover the Secret Hiding Places of Stock Market Profits - Joel Greenblatt
• The Zurich Axioms - Max Gunther
• More Than You Know: Finding Financial Wisdom in Unconventional Places - Michael J. Mauboussin
• Charlie Munger: The Complete Investor - Tren Griffin
• The 5 Mistakes Every Investor Makes and How to Avoid Them: Getting Investing Right - Peter Mallouk
• Bulls, Bears and Other Beasts - Santosh Nair
• One Up On Wall Street: How to Use What You Already Know to Make Money in the Market - Peter Lynch, John Rothchild
• I Will Teach You to Be Rich - Ramit Sethi
• Let’s Talk Money - Monika Halan
• Stock Market Wizards: Interviews with America’s Top Stock Traders - Jack D. Schwager
• A Random Walk Down Wall Street: The Time-Tested Strategy for Successful Investing - Burton G. Malkiel
• The Dhandho Investor: The Low-Risk Value Method to High Returns - Mohnish Pabrai
• From the Rat Race to Financial Freedom - Manoj Arora
• Financial Intelligence: A Manager’s Guide to Knowing What the Numbers Really Mean - Karen Berman, Joe Knight, John Case
• The Psychology of Money - Morgan Housel
• How I Invest My Money - Joshua Brown, Brian Portnoy
• How to Be a Capitalist Without Any Capital - Nathan Latka
• What I Learned Losing a Million Dollars - Jim Paul
• The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life - Alice Schroeder
• The Millionaire Fastlane - M.J. DeMarco
• Richer, Wiser, Happier - William P. Green

Venture Capital

• The Power Law - Sebastian Mallaby
• Done Deals: Venture Capitalists Tell Their Stories - Udayan Gupta
• Angel: How to Invest in Technology Startups: Timeless Advice from an Angel Investor Who Turned $100,000 into $100,000,000 - Jason Calacanis
• Mastering the VC Game: A Venture Capital Insider Reveals How to Get from Start-up to IPO on Your Terms - Jeffrey Bussgang
• Venture Deals - Brad Feld

Writing

• On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction - William Zinsser
• Eats, Shoots & Leaves: The Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation - Lynne Truss
• Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life - Anne Lamott
• On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft - Stephen King
• The Elements of Style - William Strunk Jr
• The Minto Pyramid Principle - Barbara Minto
• Words Like Loaded Pistols - Sam Leith

UX and Customer development

• The Mom Test: How to talk to customers & learn if your business is a good idea when everyone is lying to you - Rob Fitzpatrick
• Designing for Emotion - Aarron Walter
• Talking to Humans - Giff Constable
• Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days - Jake Knapp
• Don’t Make Me Think, Revisited: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability - Steve Krug
• Emotional Design: Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday Things - Donald A. Norman
• The Design of Everyday Things - Donald A. Norman

Visual Design, Art & Branding

• Paul Rand: A Designer’s Art - Paul Rand
• Thoughts on Design - Paul Rand
• Design as Art - Bruno Munari
• Ways of Seeing - John Berger
• Hello, My Name Is Awesome: How to Create Brand Names That Stick - Alexandra Watkins
• Logo Design Love: A Guide to Creating Iconic Brand Identities - David Airey
• The Graphic Design Idea Book: Inspiration from 50 Masters - Steven Heller, Gail Anderson

Marketing & Sales

• Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die - Chip Heath, Dan Heath
• Difference: The one-page method for reimagining your business and reinventing your marketing - Bernadette Jiwa
• SPIN Selling: Situation Problem Implication Need-payoff - Neil Rackham
• Trust Me, I’m Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator - Ryan Holiday
• Marketing Warfare - Al Ries, Jack Trout
• Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable - Seth Godin
• The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs - Carmine Gallo

Psychology & Negotiations

• Negotiating the Impossible: How to Break Deadlocks and Resolve Ugly Conflicts (Without Money or Muscle) - Deepak Malhotra
• Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High - Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, Al Switzler, Stephen R. Covey
• Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life - Marshall B. Rosenberg, Arun Gandhi
• Never Split the Difference - Chris Voss

Meta reads

• Power: Why Some People Have it and Others Don’t - Jeffrey Pfeffer
• Moral Mazes: The World of Corporate Managers - Robert Jackall
• Rising to Power: The Journey of Exceptional Executives - Ron A. Carucci
• The 50th Law
• What Got You Here Won’t Get You There: How Successful People Become Even More Successful - Marshall Goldsmith
• The 48 Laws of Power - Robert Greene
• Corporate Confidential: 50 Secrets Your Company Doesn’t Want You to Know—and What to Do About Them - Cynthia Shapiro
• The Gervais Principle - Venkatesh G. Rao
• The Art of Seduction - Robert Greene
• Workplace Poker: Are You Playing the Game, or Just Getting Played? - Dan Rust
• Stealing the Corner Office - Brendan Reid
• Be Slightly Evil: A Playbook for Sociopaths - Venkatesh G. Rao
• The Laws of Human Nature - Robert Greene
• The 33 Strategies of War - Robert Greene
• The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life - Kevin Simler, Robin Hanson
• The Halo Effect: And the Eight Other Business Delusions That Deceive Managers - Philip M. Rosenzweig
• Wanting: The Power of Mimetic Desire in Everyday Life - Luke Burgis
• 7 Rules of Power - Jeffrey Pfeffer
• The Kremlin School of Negotiation - Igor Ryzov
• Hardball - Chris Matthews

Decision Making

• The 5 Elements of Effective Thinking - Edward B. Burger, Michael Starbird
• Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don’t Have All the Facts - Annie Duke
• Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work - Chip Heath, Dan Heath

Career

• Cracking the PM Interview: How to Land a Product Manager Job in Technology - Gayle Laakmann McDowell
• So Good They Can’t Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love - Cal Newport
• Catalyst: The ultimate strategies on how to win at work and in life - Chandramouli Venkatesan
• Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? - Seth Godin
• The CEO Next Door: The 4 Behaviours that Transform Ordinary People into World Class Leaders - Elena L. Botelho, Kim Powell, Tahl Raz
• The McKinsey Edge: Success Principles from the World’s Most Powerful Consulting Firm - Shu Hattori
• The Charisma Myth: How Anyone Can Master the Art and Science of Personal Magnetism - Olivia Fox Cabane
• The McKinsey Engagement: A Powerful Toolkit for More Efficient and Effective Team Problem Solving - Paul N. Friga
• McKinsey Mind - Ethan M. Rasiel, Paul N. Friga
• The Alliance: Managing Talent in the Networked Age - Reid Hoffman
• The Third Door: The Wild Quest to Uncover How the World’s Most Successful People Launched Their Career - Alex Banayans
• The Start-Up of You: Adapt to the Future, Invest in Yourself, and Transform Your Career - Reid Hoffman
• The First 90 Days: Critical Success Strategies for New Leaders at All Levels - Michael D. Watkins
• Your Next Five Moves: Master the Art of Business Strategy - Patrick Bet-David
• The 3-Minute Rule - Brant Pinvidic
• Captivate - Vanessa Van Edwards

History

• Valley of Genius: The Uncensored History of Silicon Valley As Told by the Hackers, Founders, and Freaks Who Made It Boom - Adam Fisher
• Make It New: A History of Silicon Valley Design (The MIT Press) - Barry M. Katz, John Maeda
• Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China - Evan Osnos
• Maximum City: Bombay Lost and Found - Suketu Mehta

Mind Broadening

• Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind - Yuval Noah Harari
• Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow - Yuval Noah Harari
• Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets - Nassim Nicholas Taleb
• Games Indians Play: Why We Are the Way We Are - V. Raghunathan

Crypto

• The Infinite Machine - Camila Russo
• Digital Gold - Nathaniel Popper
• Kings of Crypto - Jeff John Roberts

Epic Tales

• American Kingpin: The Epic Hunt for the Criminal Mastermind Behind the Silk Road - Nick Bilton
• Billion Dollar Whale: The Man Who Fooled Wall Street, Hollywood, and the World - Tom Wright, Bradley Hope
• When the Wolves Bite: Two Billionaires, One Company, and an Epic Wall Street Battle - Scott Wapner
• Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup - John Carreyrou
• Black Edge: Inside Information, Dirty Money, and the Quest to Bring Down the Most Wanted Man on Wall Street - Sheelah Kolhatkar
• Red Notice: A True Story of High Finance, Murder, and One Man’s Fight for Justice - Bill Browder
• Liar’s Poker - Michael Lewis
• The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine - Michael Lewis
• MBS: The Rise to Power of Mohammed bin Salman - Ben Hubbard
• Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco - Bryan Burrough, John Helyar
• The Key Man - Simon Clark, Will Louch
• The Cult of We - Eliot Brown, Maureen Farrell
• Blood and Oil - Bradley Hope, Justin Scheck

Fiction

• Lonesome Dove - Larry McMurtry
• Harry Potter - J.K. Rowling
• Siddhartha - Hermann Hesse
• 1Q84 - Haruki Murakami
• The Three-Body Problem (Remembrance of Earth’s Past #1) - Liu Cixin
• Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (Blade Runner #1) - Philip K. Dick
• Ready Player One - Ernest Cline
• The Forty Rules of Love - Elif Shafak
• The Museum of Innocence - Orhan Pamuk
• The Illicit Happiness of Other People - Manu Joseph
• The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
• A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
• A Fraction of the Whole - Steve Toltz
• The Reluctant Fundamentalist - Mohsin Hamid
• A Case of Exploding Mangoes - Mohammed Hanif
• Looking for Alaska - John Green
• The Lowland - Jhumpa Lahiri
• Kafka on the Shore - Haruki Murakami
• The Stranger - Albert Camus
• A Man Called Ove - Fredrik Backman
• Flowers for Algernon - Daniel Keyes
• Dark Matter - Blake Crouch
• Sharp Objects - Gillian Flynn
• Stoner - John Williams
• The House in the Cerulean Sea - T.J. Klune
• Circe - Madeline Miller
• City of Thieves - David Benioff
• Passage West - Rishi Reddi
• A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
• Sea of Tranquility - Emily St. John Mandel