Dive into our curated reading list, featuring must-read books on entrepreneurship, start-up growth, and investing. Whether you’re a founder building your vision or an investor seeking insights into venture opportunities, these resources offer valuable guidance and inspiration to help you navigate the dynamic world of start-ups.
Zero to One (by Peter Thiel)
The great secret of our time is that there are still uncharted frontiers to explore and new inventions to create. In
Zero to One, legendary entrepreneur and investor Peter Thiel shows how we can find singular ways to create those new things.
Thiel begins with the contrarian premise that we live in an age of technological stagnation, even if we're too distracted by shiny mobile devices to notice. Information technology has improved rapidly, but there is no reason why progress should be limited to computers or Silicon Valley. Progress can be achieved in any industry or area of business. It comes from the most important skill that every leader must master: learning to think for yourself.
Doing what someone else already knows how to do takes the world from 1 to n, adding more of something familiar. But when you do something new, you go from 0 to 1. The next Bill Gates will not build an operating system. The next Larry Page or Sergey Brin won't make a search engine. Tomorrow's champions will not win by competing ruthlessly in today's marketplace. They will escape competition altogether, because their businesses will be unique.
Zero to One presents at once an optimistic view of the future of progress in America and a new way of thinking about innovation: it starts by learning to ask the questions that lead you to find value in unexpected places.
The Power Law (by Sebastian Mallaby)
Innovations rarely come from "experts." Jeff Bezos was not a bookseller; Elon Musk was not in the auto industry. When it comes to innovation, a legendary venture capitalist told Sebastian Mallaby, the future cannot be
predicted, it can only be discovered. Most attempts at discovery fail, but a few succeed at such a scale that they more than make up for everything else. That extreme ratio of success and failure is the power law that drives venture capital, Silicon Valley, the tech sector, and, by extension, the world.
Drawing on unprecedented access to the most celebrated venture capitalists of all time, award-winning financial historian Sebastian Mallaby tells the story of this strange tribe of financiers who have funded the world's most successful companies, from Google to SpaceX to Alibaba. With a riveting blend of storytelling and analysis,
The Power Law makes sense of the seeming randomness of success in venture capital, an industry that relies, for good and ill, on gut instinct and personality rather than spreadsheets and data. We learn the unvarnished truth about some of the most iconic triumphs and infamous disasters in the history of tech, from the comedy of errors that was the birth of Apple to the venture funding that fostered hubris at WeWork and Uber to the industry's notorious lack of women and ethnic minorities.
Now the power law echoes around the world: it has transformed China's digital economy beyond recognition, and London is one of the top cities for venture capital investment. By taking us so deeply into the VCs' game, The Power Law helps us think about our own future through their eyes.
Made To Stick (by Chip & Dan Heath)
Mark Twain once observed, 'A lie can get halfway around the world before the truth can even get its boots on.' His observation rings true: urban legends, conspiracy theories, and bogus news stories circulate effortlessly. Meanwhile, people with important ideas - entrepreneurs, teachers, politicians, and journalists - struggle to make them 'stick'.
In Made to Stick, Chip and Dan Heath reveal the anatomy of ideas that stick and explain how to make ideas stickier, such as applying the Velcro Theory of Memory, using the human scale principle and creating curiosity gaps. Along the way, they reveal that sticky messages of all kinds - from the infamous 'kidney theft ring' hoax, to a coach's lessons on sportsmanship, to a vision for a new product at Sony - draw their power from the same six traits.
Made to Stick reveals the vital principles behind winning ideas - and tells us how we can apply these rules to making our own messages stick. It will transform the way you communicate.
Secrets of Power Negotiating (by Roger Dawson)
Roger Dawson changed the way business thinks about negotiating.
Secrets of Power Negotiating covers every aspect of the negotiating process with practical, proven advice, from beginning steps to critical final moves: how to recognize unethical tactics, key principles of the Power Negotiating strategy, why money is not as important as everyone thinks, negotiating pressure points, understanding the other party and gaining the upper hand, and analyses of different negotiating styles.
Discover all of Roger’s best tactics, including:
20 sure-fire negotiating gambits, listening to hidden meanings in conversation, what “powers” you have (such as situational, expertise, information, or charismatic) and how to handle the different personalities you’ll encounter in negotiating