Best Practices & Reading List
Over the years we have collected books, ideas, essays, and mental models that we often share with founders. Below is a curated list of some of the most useful resources:Essays / Articles / Blogs
- All Markets Are Not Created Equal: 10 Factors To Consider When Evaluating Digital Marketplaces and Above the Crowd Archives — Bill Gurley
- The Only Thing That Matters (Product-Market Fit) and The Pmarca Guide to Startups — Marc Andreessen Still super relevant, this should be the focus until you have found PMF. The pmarca archives are a treasure trove
- Luck and the Entrepreneur: The four kinds of luck — Marc Andreessen A favorite of mine... drive luck through motion, awareness and uniqueness
- Startup Guides and Resources — Tom Tunguz
- How to Raise Money — Paul Graham All of PG's essays are great, but these are a few I share most frequently with founders...
- How to Do Great Work — Paul Graham
- How to Start a Startup — Sam Altman / Paul Graham
- A Student's Guide to Startups — Paul Graham
- Default Alive or Default Dead — Paul Graham
- Do Things That Don't Scale — Paul Graham
- Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule — Paul Graham
- Startup = Growth — Paul Graham
- The Hardest Lessons for Startups to Learn — Paul Graham
- What You Can't Say — Paul Graham
- Good and Bad Procrastination — Paul Graham
- The Bus Ticket Theory of Genius — Paul Graham
- Why to Not Not Start a Startup — Paul Graham
- The Startup Playbook — Sam Altman Lots of good foundational startup best practices and information here
- Greenlea Public Essays — Josh Tarasoff I don't know Josh, but like his public essays, I'm aligned with a lot of his views
- Fred Wilson — AVC Blog Archives The NY GOAT, there is gold in these archives for founders and investors alike
- Jeff Bezos Shareholder Letters A masterclass in clear articulation of business goals and focus
- 50¢ Dollars Substack — Adhi Rajaprabhakaran on Prediction Markets ex-Kalshi Trader with lots of knowledge on PMsVideos
- Peter Thiel - Competition Is For Losers - Stanford CS 183B Autumn Quarter 2014-2015 Brilliant articulation of where to focus effort as a startup founder
- Runnin' Down a Dream — Bill Gurley We should all spend more time understanding purpose and true passion. You will work way harder on something you love
- Steve Jobs' 2005 Stanford Commencement Address If you only read/watch one thing here, it should be this
- Jerry Seinfeld | Duke's 2024 Commencement AddressPodcasts
- The Focused Few — David Senra on Invest Like The Best David is maniacal and I love it
- Jeremy Giffon: Special Situations in Private Markets — Invest Like The Best Extremely coherent, articulate and contrarian thinking about investing, purpose, focus and resiliency
- Josh Koppelman on Uncapped One of the best overviews on the early stage venture capital landscape from one of the best
- Founders Podcast - David Senra These are pure gold for anyone building a business they care about, especially startup founders
- Acquired - Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal
- Invest Like The Best Podcast - Patrick O'Shaughnessy
- Ben & Mark PodcastBooks- ReWork — Jason Fried Quick read with a lot of independent thinking and testing of business assumptions. Jason also has a great podcast with David Senra
- A Random Walk Down Wall Street — Burton Malkiel
- The Almanack of Naval Ravikant
- High Output Management — Andy Grove One of the greatest practical business management books of all time, lots of simple best practices in here
- Insanely Simple — Ken Segall Key principles on marketing as well as running effective teams. A fun read because lots of Steve Jobs stories baked in
- What I Talk About When I Talk About Running — Haruki Murakami A memoir on finding purpose and rhythm in work and life, by one of Japan's most prolific novelists. Potent lessons applicable to founders or anyone honing their craft
- Novelist as a Vocation — Haruki Murakami Similar content to WITAWITAR directly above, but focused solely on novel writing
- Zero to One — Peter Thiel All startup founders and VCs should read and truly absorb the lessons of this book
- Fooled by Randomness — Nassim Taleb
- The Black Swan — Nassim Taleb Very applicable probability framework for venture capital
- Thinking, Fast and Slow — Daniel Kahneman
- Let My People Go Surfing: The Education of a Reluctant Businessman — Yvon Chouinard An extremely admirable and purpose-driven founder who built based on his truth
- Poor Charlie's Almanack — Charlie Munger Brilliant. Coherent. The 25 cognitive biases can not be overstudied
- 7 Powers — Hamilton Helmer
- The Score Takes Care of Itself — Bill Walsh
- The Creative Act: A Way of Being — Rick Rubin A heady exploration of creativity from a prolific tastemaker
- The Lessons of History — Will & Ariel Durant Perspective
- All I Want To Know Is Where I'm Going To Die So I'll Never Go There — Peter Bevelin More Munger brilliance
- Four Steps to the Epiphany — Steve Blank Classic
- Grit - The Power of Passion and Perseverance — Angela Duckworth So important for startup founders. Grit can be learned and improved.
- The Checklist Manifesto — Atul Gawande Productivity gem. Probably as important as ever as we rely more on AI tools.
- Read Write Own: Building the Next Era of the Internet — Chris Dixon A must if interested in crypto
- Complexity: Life at the Edge of Chaos Interesting cross section of the ~1960-1990's thinking around complex systems, and a fun backdrop for modern AI
- Autobiography of Andrew Carnegie & The Gospel of Wealth - Andrew Carnegie So many timeless business maxims. Carnegie was a unique character. Considered a "robber baron" but benevolent and very creative. A pioneering philanthropist as well
- Liar's Poker — Michael Lewis Really fun read. One of the early business books that I couldn't put down
- The Eternal Pursuit of Unhappiness — David Ogilvy Ogilvy beautifully promotes inspired talent and the creative act
