Reading List
Tell us your business model, industry and stage, or how you invest, and get the books worth your time, picked from 30,000 on building and backing companies. Chosen by ratings and what they are about.
Atomic HabitsJames Clear · 4.31★
FreakonomicsSteven D. Levitt · 4.01★
The Tipping PointMalcolm Gladwell · 4.01★
Rich Dad Poor DadRobert T. Kiyosaki · 4.08★
BlinkMalcolm Gladwell · 3.96★
Thinking, Fast and SlowDaniel Kahneman · 4.16★
The Art of WarSun Tzu · 3.94★The best matches for everything you told us, ranked.
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
Powerful Lessons in Personal Change
Stephen R. Covey · 1989
4.16843,480 ratings · Goodreads
Focus and resilienceCompany building
In The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, author Stephen R. Covey presents a holistic, integrated, principle-centered approach for solving personal and professional problems. With penetrating insights and pointed anecdotes, Covey reveals a step-by-step…

Business Made Simple
60 Days to Master Leadership, Sales, Marketing, Execution, Management, Personal Productivity and More
Donald Miller · 2021
4.192,054 ratings · Goodreads
Focus and resilienceFirst salesMarketing and growth
Is this blue book more valuable than a business degree? Most people enter their professional careers not understanding how to grow a business. At times, this makes them feel lost, or worse, like a fraud pretending to know what they're doing. It's hard to be…

The Ultimate Sales Machine
Turbocharge Your Business with Relentless Focus on 12 Key Strategies
Chet Holmes · 2007
3.979,181 ratings · Goodreads
Focus and resilienceFirst salesCompany building
Chet Holmes has been called “one of the top 20 change experts in the country.” He helps his clients blow away both the competition and their own expectations. And his advice starts with one simple concept: focus! Instead of trying to master four thousand…

The Power of Consistency
Prosperity Mindset Training for Sales and Business Professionals
Weldon Long · 2013
4.25644 ratings · Goodreads
Focus and resilienceFirst salesCompany building
How to achieve wealth, happiness, and peace of mind through personal responsibility The Power of Consistency is based on the fundamental premise that private declarations dictate future actions. In other words, we tend to take actions with the thoughts and…

Million Dollar Habits
Proven Power Practices to Double and Triple Your Income
Brian Tracy · 1999
4.003,669 ratings · Goodreads
Focus and resilienceCompany building
A guide to winning habits in business shows readers how to set and achieve goals quickly, organize their life, manage time, increase income, and tap inner power reserves--all in the service of improved productivity.

80/20 Sales and Marketing
The Definitive Guide to Working Less and Making More
Perry Marshall · 2013
4.191,904 ratings · Goodreads
Focus and resilienceFirst salesMarketing and growth
Stop "Just Getting By" ... Master The 80/20 Principle And Make More Money Without More Work. When you know how to walk into any situation and see the 80/20's, you can solve almost ANY marketing problem. 80/20 can demolish any sales and advertising problem.…

Master of Change
How to Excel When Everything Is Changing – Including You
Brad Stulberg · 2023
4.012,429 ratings · Goodreads
Focus and resilienceCompany building
NATIONAL BESTSELLER A revelatory book on rethinking change, creating a rugged and flexible mindset and identity, and developing habits for life's intensifying flux. From social disruptions like economic recessions, pandemics, and new technologies to…
The books most about focus and resilience.

The Outward Mindset
Seeing Beyond Ourselves
The Arbinger Institute · 2016
4.023,545 ratings · Goodreads
Focus and resilience
The Arbinger Institute has helped millions with their books Leadership and Self-Deception and The Anatomy of Peace. Their newest book, The Outward Mindset, reflects their latest research and experience and offers a new and intuitive way to teach people how to…

Millionaire Success Habits
The Gateway To Wealth & Prosperity
Dean Graziosi · 2016
4.063,061 ratings · Goodreads
Focus and resilience
Millionaire Success Habits is a book designed with one purpose in mind: to take you from where you are in life to where you want to be in life by incorporating easy-to-implement "Success Habits" into your daily routine. Legendary business coach Dean Graziosi…

Mindset
The New Psychology of Success
Carol S. Dweck · 2006
4.09182,500 ratings · Goodreads
Focus and resilience
A newer edition of this book can be found here. After decades of research, world-renowned Stanford University psychologist Carol S. Dweck, Ph.D., discovered a simple but groundbreaking idea: the power of mindset. In this brilliant book, she shows how…

Achieve Anything in Just One Year
Be Inspired Daily to Live Your Dreams and Accomplish Your Goals
Jason Harvey · 2010
4.02658 ratings · Goodreads
Focus and resilience
A self improvement book about achieving success through daily motivation and self-examination. Achieve Anything In Just One Year will be the last self improvement book you will ever need. You will learn to make small daily choices that will transform your…

Rich AF
The Winning Money Mindset That Will Change Your Life
Vivian Tu · 2023
4.0610,220 ratings · Goodreads
Focus and resilience
When Vivian Tu started working on Wall Street fresh from undergrad, all she knew was that she was making more money than she had ever seen in her life. But it wasn’t until she found a mentor of her own on the trading floor that she began to understand what…

Time Management from the Inside Out
The Foolproof System for Taking Control of Your Schedule--and Your Life
Julie Morgenstern · 2000
3.952,875 ratings · Goodreads
Focus and resilience
A thoroughly updated and expanded edition of the definitive guide to managing and freeing up time Applying the groundbreaking from-the-inside-out approach that made Organizing from the Inside Out a New York Times bestseller, Julie Morgenstern set a new…
Published in the last three years, newest first, for what you told us.

Intentional
How to Finish What You Start
Chris Bailey · 2026
3.86368 ratings · Goodreads
Focus and resilienceCompany building
From author of Hyperfocus and productivity expert Chris Bailey, a new approach to finishing what you start.Most of us have no problem setting goals. We know what we want, and we have a pretty good sense of what it takes to get it. But consistently making…

Slow Productivity
The Lost Art of Accomplishment Without Burnout
Cal Newport · 2024
3.6627,060 ratings · Goodreads
Focus and resilienceCompany building
Do fewer things. Work at a natural pace. Obsess over quality. From the New York Times bestselling author of Digital Minimalism and Deep Work, a groundbreaking philosophy for pursuing meaningful accomplishment while avoiding overload. Our current…

Buy Back Your Time
Get Unstuck, Reclaim Your Freedom, and Build Your Empire
Dan Martell · 2023
4.365,076 ratings · Goodreads
Focus and resilienceCompany building
Wall Street Journal Bestseller Learn to conquer the one real hurdle to scaling your company and growing Time How you use your free time will make or break your success. The secret? It’s not about working harder or finding more time to do work. It’s about…

Lean Marketing
More Leads. More Profit. Less Marketing.
Allan Dib · 2024
4.31452 ratings · Goodreads
Focus and resilienceMarketing and growthCompany building
Bigger Results with Less Marketing You keep being told to do more marketing―more complex, more aggressive, and more expensive marketing. Chasing the latest bright, shiny object is exhausting. Increased efforts keep leading to disappointment. The overwhelm…

The First-Time Manager
Sales
Mike Weinberg · 2023
4.43282 ratings · Goodreads
Focus and resilienceFirst salesCompany building
The First Time Manager Series has sold over 500,000 copies and is a go-to guide for new and aspiring sales managers on what to expect and how to succeed. The jump from sales superstar to sales manager has made or broken many a sales career. As a…
Right Thing, Right Now
Justice in an Unjust World
Ryan Holiday · 2024
4.136,450 ratings · Goodreads
Focus and resilience
In his New York Times bestselling book, Discipline Is Destiny, Ryan Holiday made the Stoic case for a life of self-discipline. In this much-anticipated third installment in the Stoic Virtues series, he argues for the necessity of doing what’s right – even…
How companies like yours were actually built, from the people who built them.
Shoe Dog
A Memoir by the Creator of Nike
Phil Knight · 2016
4.45389,310 ratings · Goodreads
Founder storiesCompany building
In this candid and riveting memoir, for the first time ever, Nike founder and CEO Phil Knight shares the inside story of the company’s early days as an intrepid start-up and its evolution into one of the world’s most iconic, game-changing, and profitable…

Never Die Easy
The Autobiography of Walter Payton
Walter Payton · 2000
4.231,581 ratings · Goodreads
Founder stories
"Never die easy. Why run out of bounds and die easy? Make that linebacker pay. It carries into all facets of your life. It's okay to lose, to die, but don't die without trying, without giving it your best." His legacy is towering. Walter Payton, the man they…
Elon Musk
Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future
Ashlee Vance · 2015
4.12456,221 ratings · Goodreads
Founder storiesCompany building
Elon Musk, the entrepreneur and innovator behind SpaceX, Tesla, and SolarCity, sold one of his internet companies, PayPal, for $1.5 billion. Ashlee Vance captures the full spectacle and arc of the genius's life and work, from his tumultuous upbringing in…
Steve Jobs
Walter Isaacson · 2011
4.161,391,990 ratings · Goodreads
Founder storiesCompany building
Walter Isaacson's worldwide bestselling biography of Apple cofounder Steve Jobs. Based on more than forty interviews with Steve Jobs conducted over two years--as well as interviews with more than 100 family members, friends, adversaries, competitors, and…

Sam Walton
Made in America
Sam Walton · 1992
4.1527,178 ratings · Goodreads
Founder storiesCompany building
As Sam Walton himself said, this is "...a story about entrepreneurship, and risk, and hard work, and knowing where you want to go and being willing to do what it takes to get there. And it's a story about believing in your idea even when maybe some other…

Walt Disney Imagineering
A Behind the Dreams Look At Making the Magic Real
The Imagineers · 1996
4.121,961 ratings · Goodreads
Founder storiesCompany building
Making dreams come true is what Disney does best -- and the Imagineers unite art and science to create a world in which reality surpasses imagination. The Imagineers are like Santa's elves: they are the nuts-and-bolts workers who allow Disney's magic to take…
What founders at seed keep coming back to, if you have not read them yet.

Crossing the Chasm
Marketing and Selling High-Tech Products to Mainstream Customers
Geoffrey A. Moore · 2002
4.0332,109 ratings · Goodreads
Marketing and growthCompany buildingFirst sales
Here is the bestselling guide that created a new game plan for marketing in high-tech industries. Crossing the Chasm has become the bible for bringing cutting-edge products to progressively larger markets. This edition provides new insights into the realities…

The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing
Violate Them at Your Own Risk
Al Ries · 1993
4.0522,738 ratings · Goodreads
Marketing and growthCompany building
There are laws of nature, so why shouldn't there be laws of marketing? As Al Ries and Jack Trout, the world-renowned marketing consultants and bestselling authors of Positioning, note, you can build an impressive airplane, but it will never leave the ground if…

The Long Tail
Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More
Chris Anderson · 2006
3.8330,263 ratings · Goodreads
Company buildingFirst sales
The New York Times bestseller that introduced the business world to a future that s already here -- now in paperback with a new chapter about Long Tail Marketing and a new epilogue. Winner of the Gerald Loeb Award for Best Business Book of the Year. In…

To Sell is Human
The Surprising Truth About Moving Others
Daniel H. Pink · 2012
3.8726,914 ratings · Goodreads
Company buildingFirst sales
From the bestselling author of Drive and A Whole New Mind comes a surprising--and surprisingly useful--new book that explores the power of selling in our lives.According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, one in nine Americans works in sales. Every day…
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From the record
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