The Strategic Founder reads lots of books because learning is his second nature. He meditates a lot on what the great astronomer, planetary scientist, cosmologist, astrophysicist, astrobiologist, author, and science communicator, Carl Edward Sagan, believed about books: “Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other, citizens of distant epochs. Books break the shackles of time. A book is a proof that humans are capable of magic.”
Here are a few 103 books that The Strategic Founder might find useful.
1. The Strategic Minds: 31 Hacks Strategists Apply to Stay Ahead of the Masses by Philemon Nwigwe
2. The Mom Test: How to Talk to Customers and Learn If Your Business Is A Good Idea When Everyone is Lying to You by Rob Fitzpatrick
3. Zero to One: How to Build the Future by Peter Thiel
4. The Lean Startup by Eric Ries
5. Rework by Jason Fried
6. Principles by Ray Dalio
7. Innovation and Entrepreneurship by Peter Drucker
8. Growth Hacker Marketing by Ryan Holiday
9. The Four Steps to Epiphany by Steve Blank
10. The Entrepreneurs Guide to Customer Development by Brant Cooper and Patrick Vlaskovits
11. The Innovator’s Dilemma by Clayton M. Christensen
12. The Innovator’s Solution by Clayton M. Christensen
13. Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns by Clayton M. Christensen
14. Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey Moore
15. Inside the Tornado by Geoffrey Moore
16. Lean Thinking By J.P Womack
17. The People’s Tycoon by Steven Watts
18. The One Best Way by Robert Kanigel
19. The Principles of Scientific Management by Fredrick Winslow Taylor
20. Certain to Win by Chet Richards
21. Out of Crisis by Edward Deming
22. My Years With General Motors by Alfred Sloan
23. Getting to Plan B by John Mullins
24. Einstein’s Mistakes by Hans Ohanian
25. A Whole New Mind by Daniel Pink
26. Competitive Strategy by Michael E. Porter
27. Competitive Advantage by Michael E. Porter
28. The Effective Executive by Peter F. Drucker
29. Managing Oneself by Peter F. Drucker
30. Purple Cow by Set Godin
31. The Laws of Human Nature by Robert Greene
32. Blue Ocean Strategy by Renee Mauborgne and W. Kim Chan
33. Seeing What Others Don’t by Gary Klein
34. Do the Work by Stephen Pressfield
35. The War of Arts by Steven Pressfield
36. The Art of Thought by Graham Wallas
37. The Soul Art of Persuasion by Jason Harris
38. Hooked by Nir Eyal
39. Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini
40. The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell
41. Emotional Intelligence by Daniel Goleman
42. Social Intelligence by Daniel Goleman
43. Seven Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey
44. Founders at Work by Jessica Livingston
45. Good to Great by Jim Collins
46. HBR on Strategy by hbr.com (check for the current edition)
47. The Art of The Start by Guy Kawasaki
48. How to Write a Business Plan by Mike Mckeever
49. Meditations by Marcus Aurelius
50. How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie
51. Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill
52. The Art of War by Sun-Tzu
53. David and Goliath by Malcolm Gladwell
54. The 33 Strategies of War by Robert Greene
55. Man’s Search for Meaning Viktor E. Frankl
56. The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz
57. The 10X Rule by Grant Cardone
58. Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown
59. Tools of Titans by Tim Ferriss
60. Tribe of Mentors by Tim Ferriss
61. Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss
62. Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink
63. The Art of the Deal by Donald Trump
64. Words That Work by Frank Luntz
65. Skin in the Game by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
66. Antifragile by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
67. Give and Take by Adam Grant
68. Start with Why by Simon Sinek
69. The One Minute Manager by Ken Blanchard and Spencer Johnson
70. The One Thing by Gary Keller
71. Mastery by Robert Greene
72. The Road Less Traveled by Scott Peck
73. The Obstacle Is the Way by Ryan Holiday
74. Win-Win for the Greater Good by Bruce Burtch
75. The Theory of Economic Development: An Inquiry into Profits, Capital, Credit, Interest, And the Business Cycle by Joseph A. Schumpeter
76. Story by Robert McKee
77. The Mythical Man-Month by Fred Brooks
78. Blitzscaling- The Lightning-Fast Path to Building Massively Valuable Companies by Chris Yeh and Reid Hoffman
79. Succeeding by John Reed
80. Deep Work by Cal Newport
81. Perennial Seller: The Art of Making and Marketing Work that Lasts by Ryan Holiday
82. The Startup Playbook by David S. Skidder
83. The Prosperity Paradox: How Innovation Can Lift Nations Out of Poverty by Clayton Christensen et al
84. Toward a Neo-Schumpeterian Theory of the Firm by Sidney Winter
85. Deliberate Learning and the Evolution of Dynamic Capabilities by Sidney Winter
86. How the Economic Machines Work by Ray Dalio
87. The Power of Self Compassion: Using Compassion Focused Therapy to End Self Criticism and Build Self-Confidence by Mary Welford
88. Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk by Peter L. Bernstein
89. Twelve Against the Gods: The Story of Adventure by William Bolitho Ryall
90. The Hero With A Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell
91. The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell
92. Heroes of History: A Brief History of Civilization from Ancient Times to the Dawn of the Modern Age by Will Durant
93. Critical Path by Buckminster Fuller
94. Power and Prosperity by Mancur Olson
95. Wealth, Poverty and Politics by Thomas Sowell
96. Built to Last by Jim Collins
97. Only the Paranoid Survive by Andy Grove
98. High Output Management by Andy Grove
99. A Fuller View – Buckminster Fuller’s Vision of Hope and Abundance for All by Steven L. Sieden.
100. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions by Thomas S. Kuhn
101. Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth by Buckminster Fuller
102. The Great CEO Within by Matt Mochary
103. Rules for Radicals: A Practical Primer for Realistic Radicals by Saul Alinsky
(More on that here.)