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.
5 books on Founder Memoirs for timeless
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An inside look at the drive and chaos behind Musk's empire.
Isaacson spent two years shadowing Elon Musk across Tesla, SpaceX, the founding of his AI work, and the takeover of Twitter. The book traces Musk's traumatic...
2 founders recommend Get the book ↗
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The raw, unvarnished story of how Nike almost didn't make it.
Phil Knight recounts the founding of Nike, from importing Onitsuka Tiger shoes as a young entrepreneur to building a global brand. The memoir is candid about the...
2 founders recommend Get the book ↗
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The biography of the man who invented venture capital.
Spencer Ante tells the life story of Georges Doriot, the French immigrant, Harvard Business School professor, and World War II general who founded American Research...
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An insider's account of 1980s bond-trading excess.
Liar's Poker is Michael Lewis's memoir of his years as a bond salesman at Salomon Brothers during the boom of the 1980s. It captures the brash, money-obsessed culture...
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How Sony turned bold product bets into a global brand.
Akio Morita recounts founding Sony in postwar Japan and building it into a global electronics powerhouse. He describes the conviction-driven product decisions behind...
Questions, answered
What books do founders recommend?
Founders on the eChai network recommend titles like Elon Musk, Shoe Dog, and Creative Capital. 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.
