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.
11 books on Founder Memoirs
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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 adventurer's guide to building a brand by saying yes.
Richard Branson's autobiography traces his path from a dyslexic teenager launching Student magazine to building the sprawling Virgin empire. He recounts the...
1 founder recommends Get the book ↗
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The authorized, unflinching life of Apple's relentless founder.
Based on more than forty interviews with Steve Jobs and over a hundred with those around him, Isaacson chronicles Jobs's life from adoption and youth through Apple,...
1 founder recommends Get the book ↗
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An insider's account of the reforms that powered India's growth.
Backstage is part memoir and part economic history, recounting Ahluwalia's role in India's liberalization and high-growth years. He offers a behind-the-scenes view of...
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A profane, insider tell-all of building, selling, and surviving Silicon Valley.
A first-person account of the author's path from Goldman Sachs to founding the adtech startup AdGrok, raising money through Y Combinator, selling to Twitter, and then...
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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...
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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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How a small-town outsider built India's first private TV empire.
The Z Factor is the autobiography of Subhash Chandra, founder of Zee TV and the Essel Group. He recounts his rise from a family grain-trading business in Haryana to...
Questions, answered
What books do founders recommend?
Founders on the eChai network recommend titles like Elon Musk, Shoe Dog, and Losing My Virginity. 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.
