What I'm Reading Today
The books that built
the people who built
the companies.
A weekly notebook of the books that entrepreneurs, founders, and operators actually return to — the ones underlined, annotated, loaned out and never returned. One featured entrepreneur each week. One book that changed how they work.
Featured Entrepreneur
Sergio de la Canal
The principles look simple on the page. They only get difficult when you try to live them for a decade. — Sergio de la CanalRead the Full Feature
Issue 16
Essential reading, by shelf.
On Starting Something
The first year. The cold start. The problem of making something from nothing.
Zero to One
On why most progress is horizontal — and why the real work is building something that didn't exist.
The Lean Startup
The loop that replaced the business plan: build, measure, learn — repeat until something works.
The Hard Thing About Hard Things
Honest accounting of the decisions no one prepared you to make. Required reading for the second year.
Shoe Dog
A memoir that reads like a novel. On the decades you don't see when you only see the logo.
On Leading People
The part no one teaches in business school: what happens after you hire them.
Radical Candor
The argument that caring personally and challenging directly aren't opposites — they're the same move, done honestly.
High Output Management
The closest thing to a manual for the job. Grove on leverage, meetings, and the art of being useful.
The Making of a Manager
The first-year manager's handbook. Clear, humane, and honest about what changes when you stop being the expert.
Team of Teams
Why the command structure quietly became a network — and what that asks of the people at the top.
On Strategy & the Long Game
The books you read once, misunderstand, and only really read the second time.
Good Strategy / Bad Strategy
The cure for the word "strategy" being used to mean "a list of things we hope will happen."
Principles
A systematizer's approach to living and working. Either a revelation or completely not for you — worth finding out which.
Let My People Go Surfing
The Patagonia founder on building a company that outlives its enthusiasms. Unexpectedly radical.
Thinking in Bets
A former poker pro on separating good decisions from good outcomes. Rewires how you review your track record.