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.
10 books on Leadership & Management for leading at scale
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Honest advice for the brutal decisions running a company forces on you.
Ben Horowitz shares hard-won lessons from building, running, and selling Opsware through dot-com collapse and constant crisis. Rather than offering tidy formulas, he...
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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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A founder returns to rescue the company he built.
Howard Schultz tells how he returned as CEO of Starbucks in 2008 to lead a turnaround as the company faltered amid overexpansion and the financial crisis. He recounts...
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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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Effectiveness is a habit anyone can learn.
Drucker argues that effectiveness, doing the right things, is a discipline that can be learned rather than an innate talent. He lays out practices including managing...
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Master the first three months of any new role.
Watkins lays out a structured plan for the critical first ninety days in a new leadership role, when momentum or failure is set early. He covers accelerating learning,...
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Five interlocking dysfunctions that quietly sink any team.
Told as a business fable about a struggling tech company's new CEO, the book lays out a pyramid of five dysfunctions: absence of trust, fear of conflict, lack of...
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A stage-by-stage map from engineer to technical executive.
Camille Fournier walks through each step of the technical leadership ladder, from mentoring and tech lead to manager, director, and CTO. Each chapter gives practical,...
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Eight contrarian CEOs who crushed the market by mastering capital allocation.
The book profiles eight unconventional CEOs (including Warren Buffett, Tom Murphy, and Katharine Graham) whose companies dramatically outperformed the S&P 500. Their...
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The coaching principles behind Silicon Valley's most valuable mentor.
The authors distill the leadership lessons of Bill Campbell, the executive coach who quietly guided leaders at Google, Apple, and beyond. They show how Campbell built...
Questions, answered
What books do founders recommend?
Founders on the eChai network recommend titles like The Hard Thing About Hard Things, Articulating Design Decisions, and Onward. 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.
