The Founder Bookshelf
Books founders recommend to each other. Browse by topic or by where you are as you grow, mark what you've read, and add what's next.
7 books on Investing for idea & validation
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Why thinking differently and better beats being smart.
Drawn from Howard Marks's celebrated investor memos, the book distills his philosophy into themes like second-level thinking, the price-value relationship, and...
1 founder recommends Get the book ↗
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Doing well with money is about behavior, not intelligence.
Through a series of short stories, Morgan Housel argues that financial success is less about what you know and more about how you behave. He explores how greed, fear,...
1 founder recommends Get the book ↗
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Automate your money and spend guilt-free on what you love.
A practical six-week program that teaches young professionals to optimize credit cards, banks, investing, and spending through automation. Sethi argues for spending...
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Solve big problems and test ideas with customers in five days.
Sprint lays out a five-day process, developed at Google Ventures, for solving hard problems and validating ideas before investing heavily in them. Each day has a...
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Find your top strengths and build your life around them.
An upgrade of Gallup's strengths assessment, the book pairs a short read with an online code that unlocks the CliftonStrengths test. After taking it, readers receive...
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Cheap, fast experiments beat big, untested ideas.
Schrage argues that organizations get more innovation value from running many cheap experiments than from chasing a few good ideas. He introduces the 5x5 framework:...
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Buy low-cost index funds and stop overthinking it.
Written originally as letters to his daughter, Collins lays out a straightforward approach to building wealth through low-cost broad-market index funds. He explains...
Questions, answered
What books do founders recommend?
Founders on the eChai network recommend titles like The Most Important Thing, The Psychology of Money, and I Will Teach You to Be Rich. The bookshelf ranks books by how many founders have read them.
Where can I find a startup reading list?
The eChai founder bookshelf is a curated, founder-recommended reading list you can browse by topic (fundraising, product, hiring) and by stage.
How is the bookshelf ordered?
By recommendation: the more founders mark a book read, the higher it ranks. You can also sort by newest or A to Z.
