Curated Reading List
8 books: how the best operators decide, build and lead.
A note from the concierge
Eight highly rated books on the job itself: founding a company, running one, and keeping your nerve when there is no easy answer.
Start with a story if you want to be pulled in, or with Grove if you want a working manual. These are the books operators keep recommending to each other.
The Concierge
8 books
Phil Knight, 2016
The founder of Nike tells how a young runner with a crazy idea about Japanese running shoes built a company, and nearly lost it more than once.
Consider: What does building something cost the people in Shoe Dog, and who pays for it?
Robert Iger, 2019
Fifteen years as Disney's CEO, told as a set of bets: Pixar, Marvel, Lucasfilm, Fox, and the kind of optimism it takes to make those calls.
Consider: What does building something cost the people in The Ride of a Lifetime, and who pays for it?
Andrew S. Grove, 1983
Intel's former CEO treats management as a production process: meetings, one-to-ones and decisions as the levers that multiply a team's output.
Consider: What does building something cost the people in High Output Management, and who pays for it?
Jocko Willink, 2015
Two Navy SEAL officers argue that when a team fails, the leader owns it, then show how that habit works in combat and in a company.
Consider: Who holds power in Extreme Ownership, and how do they use it?
Ed Catmull, 2014
Pixar's co-founder on how to keep a creative studio honest: candour in the room, protection for half-formed ideas, and a culture that can survive success.
Consider: What does Creativity, Inc. say about why people make beautiful things?
Ben Horowitz, 2014
A founder who nearly lost his company writes the parts other business books skip: layoffs, hiring, wartime decisions and the loneliness of the top job.
Consider: What does building something cost the people in The Hard Thing About Hard Things, and who pays for it?
Walter Isaacson, 2011
The authorised life of Apple's co-founder: the taste, the temper, and the insistence that design and technology belong in the same sentence.
Consider: What does building something cost the people in Steve Jobs, and who pays for it?
Peter Thiel, 2014
A short argument that the valuable companies are the ones that create something new, not the ones that copy what already works.
Consider: What does building something cost the people in Zero to One, and who pays for it?
Practical
Read together, these 8 books come to about 70 hours. That is a comfortable month at roughly 18 hours a week.
If you want more
Readers who love this list tend to enjoy the following. Each is chosen for how closely it shares the mood and themes of the books above.
Robert T. Kiyosaki, 1997
A personal-finance primer built around two father figures with opposite attitudes to money, work and investing, and what the author says he learned from each. Shares self-help & money and thought-provoking with The Ride of a Lifetime.
Tara Westover, 2018
Raised in a survivalist household in rural Idaho, the author teaches herself enough to reach university, and pays a heavy price for the education. Shares memoir and gripping with Shoe Dog.
Mel Robbins, 2024
A practical guide to releasing control over what other people say and do, and spending that energy on your own choices instead. Shares self-help & money and thought-provoking with Shoe Dog.