Essay
How to Be Successful
Thirteen compounding habits
Why it matters Altman's thirteen compounding habits behind outsized careers, from having almost too much self belief to getting good at sales.
Career & Learning
The Reading Room
A curated shelf of long-form writing worth a founder's time: essays, playbooks, and founder stories from across the internet. Read on the original, and save what you want to come back to.
All topics
Starting Up 34
Product & Design 52
Growth & Marketing 46
Sales & GTM 36
Fundraising & VC 22
Strategy & Moats 61
Leadership & Management 57
Hiring, Team & Culture 30
Operations & Scaling 51
Founder Life & Mindset 54
Engineering & Craft 67
AI & the Future 36
Money & Finance 48
Career & Learning 49
Essay
How to Do Great Work
A field guide to ambition
Why it matters Graham's grand unified theory of doing ambitious, original work, and the single best starting point for a founder deciding what to spend a life on.
Career & Learning
Playbook
How to Get Rich (Without Getting Lucky)
Wealth without luck
Why it matters Naval's framework for building wealth through leverage, specific knowledge, and equity, without relying on luck.
Career & Learning Money & Finance
Deep Dive
How to Pick a Career (That Actually Fits You)
Choosing work that fits
Why it matters The most thorough map ever written of how to actually choose work that fits you, worth blocking an afternoon for.
Career & Learning
Essay
Life is Short
Prune the bullshit.
Why it matters A short, sharp reminder to prune the bullshit and spend your limited time on what actually matters.
Founder Life & Mindset Career & Learning
Deep Dive
Mental Models: The Best Way to Make Intelligent Decisions
A latticework for decisions
Why it matters The case for building a latticework of mental models so you make better decisions across every part of building a company.
Career & Learning Strategy & Moats
Deep Dive
The AI Revolution: The Road to Superintelligence
Why it matters The most accessible long-form primer ever written on AI progress and where it could lead, still the best on-ramp for newcomers.
AI & the Future Career & Learning
Essay
You and Your Research
Why some do great work
Why it matters The legendary talk on why some capable people do great work and others do not, essential reading on ambition and focus.
Career & Learning
Essay
68 Bits of Unsolicited Advice
Advice worth re-reading
Why it matters A dense, re readable list of hard won life advice you will return to at different stages.
Career & Learning
Essay
Essay
Attention Is Your Scarcest Resource
Guard your attention
Why it matters Argues attention, not time, is your scarcest resource and shows how to protect it, the highest leverage habit change most people miss.
Career & Learning
Deep Dive
Augmenting Long-term Memory
Remember what you learn
Why it matters A deep, practical essay on using spaced repetition to remember what you learn, turning reading into lasting knowledge.
Career & Learning
Essay
Continuous Improvement: How It Works and How to Master It
One percent, compounded
Why it matters How tiny one percent gains compound into remarkable results, the mental model behind sustained personal growth.
Career & Learning
Essay
Don't Call Yourself A Programmer, And Other Career Advice
How companies really hire
Why it matters A candid look at how hiring decisions are truly made, essential for anyone writing job posts or offers.
Hiring, Team & Culture Career & Learning
Essay
Forget About Setting Goals. Focus on This Instead.
Systems over goals.
Why it matters Winners and losers share the same goals, so build the system instead of obsessing over the outcome.
Founder Life & Mindset Career & Learning
Playbook
Get your work recognized: write a brag document
Why it matters A simple habit that helps engineers remember and communicate their impact, which matters as much on small teams as in big companies.
Engineering & Craft Career & Learning
Deep Dive
How to Become Insanely Well-Connected
Be useful first
Why it matters A practical system for becoming genuinely well connected by being useful first, which compounds over a whole career.
Career & Learning
Playbook
How to Write Well
Why it matters A concrete guide to clear writing, the underrated craft that determines whether a technical founder's ideas actually land.
Engineering & Craft Career & Learning
Essay
Ideas Are Just a Multiplier of Execution
Ideas need execution
Why it matters Sivers on why ideas are worthless without execution, told through a memorable multiplier table every founder should internalize.
Career & Learning
Essay
I turned 30 and here's my scorecard
A founder's scorecard at 30.
Why it matters An Indian founder's candid reflection at thirty on ambition, money, and what actually made him happy.
Founder Life & Mindset Career & Learning
Essay
Junior Designers vs. Senior Designers
Why it matters Julie Zhuo's sketches show what design maturity really is, judgment and constraints over pixel polish, useful for anyone building or evaluating design.
Product & Design Career & Learning
Essay
Now Is the Time for Grimoires
Why it matters On why practical know-how, not technical depth, is what separates people who get value from AI, useful for training a whole team.
AI & the Future Career & Learning
Essay
No 'yes.' Either 'HELL YEAH!' or 'no.'
Say no to almost everything
Why it matters A simple decision rule for an overcommitted life, say no to almost everything so you can go all in on the rare yes.
Career & Learning Founder Life & Mindset
Playbook
Productivity
What to work on, and how
Why it matters A concrete look at what to work on, how to prioritize, and the physical basics, from someone running many things at once.
Career & Learning
Essay
Reject Most Advice
Discard most of it
Why it matters A useful counterweight for anyone drowning in startup advice, including this shelf, on why most of it should be discarded.
Career & Learning
Essay
Runnin' Down a Dream: How to Succeed and Thrive in a Career You Love
Passion, mentors, and luck.
Why it matters A career manifesto on passion, mentors, and luck that founders return to for perspective on the long game.
Founder Life & Mindset Career & Learning
Essay
Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years
Why it matters The antidote to learn-to-code-in-a-weekend hype, arguing that real engineering mastery is a decade of deliberate practice.
Engineering & Craft Career & Learning
Playbook
Ten Rules for Negotiating a Job Offer
Negotiate without games
Why it matters A calm, principled playbook for negotiating a job offer without games, from someone who has been on both sides.
Career & Learning Money & Finance
Deep Dive
The Almanack of Naval Ravikant
Naval, collected
Why it matters A free, well edited compendium of Naval's thinking on wealth, judgment, and happiness, a reference to return to for years.
Career & Learning Money & Finance
Playbook
The Beginner's Guide to Deliberate Practice
Practice with feedback
Why it matters The difference between mindless repetition and the focused, feedback driven practice that actually builds skill.
Career & Learning
Playbook
The Best Leaders Are Feedback Magnets, Here's How to Become One
Pull feedback toward you
Why it matters A playbook for making people comfortable telling you the truth, the skill that keeps leaders from growing blind as they gain power.
Leadership & Management Career & Learning
Essay
The Days Are Long But the Decades Are Short
Life lessons, briefly
Why it matters A short, moving list of life lessons that reframes how you spend your finite time.
Career & Learning Founder Life & Mindset
Essay
The Engineer/Manager Pendulum
Management is not a promotion
Why it matters Reframes the move into management as a reversible swing rather than a one way ladder, which frees founders and ICs to lead without dread.
Leadership & Management Career & Learning
Essay
The Feynman Technique: The Best Way to Learn Anything
Learn by teaching
Why it matters A four step method for truly learning anything by teaching it simply, the fastest way to find the gaps in your understanding.
Career & Learning
Deep Dive
The Gervais Principle, Or The Office According to 'The Office'
How organizations really work
Why it matters A sharp, cynical, and useful theory of how organizations really work, essential for anyone deciding whether to join or start one.
Career & Learning Leadership & Management
Essay
The Making of a Manager: A Handbook for New Leaders
Your first months as a boss
Why it matters Zhuo distills what she wished she had known at 25 when she suddenly had to manage, the honest starter guide for first time leaders.
Leadership & Management Career & Learning
Essay
Theory of Change
Work backward from change
Why it matters A short, sharp argument for working backward from the change you want, so your effort actually moves the goal.
Career & Learning
Playbook
The Pmarca Guide to Career Planning: Opportunity
Do not plan your career
Why it matters Andreessen's contrarian first rule, do not plan your career, and what to do instead: stay alert to opportunity and build rare skills.
Career & Learning
Playbook
The Pmarca Guide to Personal Productivity
The anti-todo list
Why it matters A battle tested system for structured procrastination, the anti todo list, and protecting your time as a founder.
Career & Learning
Essay
The Psychology of Money
Behavior beats intelligence
Why it matters Timeless lessons on how behavior, not intelligence, drives outcomes, framed as personal growth rather than tactics.
Career & Learning Money & Finance
Founder Story
There's No Speed Limit
There is no speed limit
Why it matters A three minute story about learning far faster than anyone expects when a mentor refuses to set a speed limit.
Career & Learning
Playbook
The Ultimate Guide to Writing Online
Build a personal monopoly
Why it matters The case and the method for writing in public to build a personal monopoly, a network, and a larger luck surface.
Career & Learning Growth & Marketing
Essay
This Is Water
Choosing how you see.
Why it matters A meditation on attention and choosing how you see the world, the quiet skill behind staying sane under pressure.
Founder Life & Mindset Career & Learning
Essay
What You'll Wish You'd Known
Stay upwind
Why it matters Written for high schoolers but really for anyone deciding what to do next, on staying upwind toward the most interesting options.
Career & Learning
Essay
Why Books Don't Work
Why reading rarely sticks
Why it matters Argues that books rarely transfer knowledge and shows what actually helps ideas stick, vital for anyone serious about learning.
Career & Learning
Essay
Why Generation Y Yuppies Are Unhappy
The expectations trap.
Why it matters Why ambitious young people feel behind, and the expectations trap that quietly poisons a founder's sense of progress.
Founder Life & Mindset Career & Learning
Essay
Willingness to Look Stupid
Ask the dumb question
Why it matters Makes the case that a willingness to ask basic questions and look foolish is a quiet superpower for learning fast.
Career & Learning
Essay
Your Life in Weeks
Your life in weeks
Why it matters Your whole life drawn as a grid of weeks, a jolt that makes the abstract idea of finite time concrete.
Career & Learning
Essay
'You've got to find what you love,' Jobs says
Stay hungry, stay foolish.
Why it matters Three stories on death, love, and connecting the dots that still orient founders on why they are doing this at all.
Founder Life & Mindset Career & Learning
Questions, answered
What should founders read?
The eChai reading room curates long-form essays and articles worth a founder's time, on building, fundraising, product, and people.
Where can I find essays for startup founders?
The reading room is a hand-picked set of long reads that link out to the original source, curated for founders on eChai.
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