curated list
books recommended by tech founders
What the founders of Stripe, Airbnb, Tesla, OpenAI, Spotify, Dropbox, Y Combinator, and other defining tech companies actually read — every recommendation linked to its source.
Aggregated across 38 people we track · 60 books ranked by how many on this list have publicly recommended each one.
most recommended books on this list
- 7 people
The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers
Ben Horowitz · 2014
7 recommenders
- 7 people
The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail (Management of Innovation and Change)
Clayton M. Christensen · 2003
7 recommenders
- 5 people
Poor Charlie's Almanack: The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger, Expanded Third Edition
edited by Peter Kaufman · 2006
5 recommenders
- 4 people
The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses
Eric Ries · 2011
4 recommenders
- 4 people
Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future
Peter Thiel · 2014
4 recommenders
- 3 people
“Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman!”: Adventures of a Curious Character
Richard P. Feynman · 2018
3 recommenders
- 3 people
Becoming Steve Jobs: The Evolution of a Reckless Upstart into a Visionary Leader
Brent Schlender · 2015
3 recommenders
- 3 people
Blitzscaling: The Lightning-Fast Path to Building Massively Valuable Companies
Reid Hoffman · 2018
3 recommenders
- 3 people
Einstein: His Life and Universe
Walter Isaacson · 2007
3 recommenders
- 3 people
Good To Great : Why Some Companies Make The Leap and Others Don't
Jim Collins · 2001
3 recommenders
- 3 people
Measure What Matters: How Google, Bono, and the Gates Foundation Rock the World with OKRs
John Doerr · 2018
3 recommenders
- 3 people
Mindset: The New Psychology of Success
Carol S. Dweck · 2006
3 recommenders
- 3 people
Mythical Man-Month, The: Essays on Software Engineering, Anniversary Edition
Frederick P. Brooks Jr. · 1995
3 recommenders
- 3 people
Outliers: The Story of Success
Malcolm Gladwell · 2008
3 recommenders
- 3 people
What You Do Is Who You Are: How to Create Your Business Culture
Ben Horowitz · 2019
3 recommenders
- 2 people
21 Lessons for the 21st Century
Yuval Noah Harari · 2018
2 recommenders
- 2 people
AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley, and the New World Order
Kai-Fu Lee · 2018
2 recommenders
- 2 people
Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup
John Carreyrou · 2018
2 recommenders
- 2 people
Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst
Robert M. Sapolsky · 2017
2 recommenders
- 2 people
Blueprint: The Evolutionary Origins of a Good Society
Nicholas A. Christakis MD PhD · 2019
2 recommenders
- 2 people
Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies (Good to Great, 2)
Jim Collins · 2004
2 recommenders
- 2 people
Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling Disruptive Products to Mainstream Customers
Geoffrey A. Moore · 2006
2 recommenders
- 2 people
Destined for War: Can America and China Escape Thucydides's Trap?
Graham Allison · 2017
2 recommenders
- 2 people
Energy: A Beginner's Guide (Beginner's Guides)
Vaclav Smil · 2006
2 recommenders
- 2 people
Founders at Work: Stories of Startups' Early Days
Jessica Livingston · 2007
2 recommenders
- 2 people
How to Win Friends and Influence People
Dale Carnegie, Robert Petkoff, Donna Dale Carnegie, Simon & Schuster Audio · 1998
2 recommenders
- 2 people
Lenin: The Man, the Dictator, and the Master of Terror
Victor Sebestyen · 2017
2 recommenders
- 2 people
Liftoff: Elon Musk and the Desperate Early Days That Launched SpaceX
Eric Berger · 2021
2 recommenders
- 2 people
Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture
David Kushner · 2004
2 recommenders
- 2 people
Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
Yuval Noah Harari · 2015
2 recommenders
- 2 people
Skin in the Game: Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life (Incerto)
Nassim Nicholas Taleb · 2018
2 recommenders
- 2 people
Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies
Nick Bostrom · 2014
2 recommenders
- 2 people
Technological Revolutions and Financial Capital: The Dynamics of Bubbles and Golden Ages
Carlota Perez · 2003
2 recommenders
on this list
Elon Musk
Sam Altman
Bill Gates
Garry Tan
Jack Dorsey
Patrick Collison
Tim Cook
Reid Hoffman
Peter Thiel
Ben Horowitz
Naval Ravikant
Vinod Khosla
Andrew Chen
Chamath Palihapitiya
Dustin Moskovitz
Eric Schmidt
Jeff Bezos
Larry Page
Marc Andreessen
Mark Zuckerberg
Paul Graham
Satya Nadella
Sergey Brin
Michael Dell
Balaji Srinivasan
Drew Houston
Daniel Ek
Brian Chesky
Tobi Lütke
Scott Belsky
Marc Benioff
Jensen Huang
Evan Spiegel
Stewart Butterfield
Fred Wilson
Shaan Puri
Alex Hormozi
John Collison
other curated lists
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