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.
14 books on Leadership & Management for idea & validation
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What separates enduring great companies from the merely good ones.
Based on a six-year study at Stanford, the book compares eighteen visionary companies against close competitors to find what made them last for decades. The authors...
1 founder recommends Get the book ↗
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A compact field guide for new managers in tech.
Lara Hogan offers a short, practical handbook for first-time and growing managers, especially in technology. She covers building trust, running effective one-on-ones,...
1 founder recommends Get the book ↗
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Great design dies in the meeting unless you can explain it.
This book focuses on the conversation that happens after the design is done, when you have to defend and explain your decisions to clients, executives, and teammates....
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Leaders own everything in their world, no excuses.
Two former SEAL officers translate combat leadership into business principles, pairing battlefield stories with management applications. The core idea is extreme...
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A manager's output is the output of their whole organization.
Andy Grove distills the management principles he used to run Intel into a practical operating manual for managers at any level. He frames management around leverage:...
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Great leaders sacrifice their comfort to keep their people safe.
Drawing on the Marine Corps principle that officers eat last, Sinek argues that the best leaders create a 'circle of safety' so their people can focus on shared goals...
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Care personally and challenge directly to lead better.
Scott argues that great management comes from Radical Candor: caring personally about people while challenging them directly. She contrasts it with the failure modes...
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How a doubted idea became Netflix, told by its first CEO.
Marc Randolph recounts the founding of Netflix, from the brainstorming that produced the idea through the scrappy early days of a DVD-by-mail startup. He is candid...
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Twenty-one timeless laws that govern how leadership actually works.
Maxwell argues that leadership follows consistent, learnable laws, each illustrated with stories and examples. From the Law of the Lid (leadership ability caps...
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How Bezos turned a bookstore into an everything machine.
Brad Stone chronicles Amazon's rise from a 1990s online bookstore through the dot-com crash to the inventions of Prime, Kindle, and AWS. Drawing on interviews with...
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Great teammates are humble, hungry, and smart.
Told first as a fable and then as a practical model, this book identifies three virtues that make someone an ideal team player: humble, hungry, and smart (in the...
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Five evidence-based practices that exemplary leaders share.
Based on research into what people did when at their personal best as leaders, Kouzes and Posner distill leadership into five practices: Model the Way, Inspire a...
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A field guide for the suddenly-in-charge new manager.
Drawing on her own path from new manager to design VP at Facebook, Zhuo writes an honest, practical guide to the early years of managing people. She covers the real...
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Set the standard, and the winning takes care of itself.
Bill Walsh shares the leadership philosophy he used to turn the worst team in football into a dynasty. His core idea is the Standard of Performance: define and...
Questions, answered
What books do founders recommend?
Founders on the eChai network recommend titles like Built to Last, Resilient Management, and Articulating Design Decisions. 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.
