Books that Shape Common Early Stage Culture
Andrew Parker mentioned two of my favorite books as what he thought were important to entrepreneurs (original post). I started to think about what were some of the most important books to me that shaped me.
Here is a list in no particular order. I segmented them into five different categories. I’m starting to believe founders, teams, and their investors need to share common values (culture) in order to succeed—and these books create that “culture.”
Mentality of a Founder #
- This book got me started—interviews with founders of Web 1.0 companies, including Paul Buchheit and a bunch of very recognizable names today. It goes into the early stage of their businesses, the hardest times, etc. Livingston (author) is also Paul Graham’s wife and Partner at YCombinator
- Collection of essays by Paul Graham. Some of the observations he made around 2000 are still happening today. A lot of this I believe reflects how he thinks about founders (hackers first)
- Collection of interviews with Techstars founders—mostly anecdotal
- Great insight into decentralized style of accelerator program, hackers first
- Antithesis of a venture backed company, 37signals; this is a collection of their best advices
- I read this after I had a bit more experience; didn’t get a lot out of it. But given that it was written before a lot of other startup books that came out in the last couple of years, many still reference this as a must-read
History of Silicon Valley #
- Georges Doriot started the first VC firm in the US and seeded the entire industry
- The advent of personal computing, chronicles of hacker ethic
Understanding Modern Day Venture Capital #
- Great 101 on how to engage venture capital
- More in depth with some technical terms, but still very easy to read
Lean Startup, Be a Modern Day Startup #
- A more practical guide to applying Lean Startup
- A really really great Lean book that focuses on application and metrics
- Collection of Eric’s blog posts from 2009-2010; more theoretical than practical
Design Fiction, Where We are Going #
- We are still just at the tip (barely beginning) of cyber world (Metaverse) and we (probably) will head into a Second Life/Oculus Rift alternate reality
- A similar but slightly different take on how we access and interact with data
Summary #
Brad Feld recently wrote about investing in CEOs who are Learning Machines; reading and thinking are super important in helping me learn. I try to keep a list of what I read.
At JFDI, we have a big reading culture, too. Here is a list of readings that we put together.
Let’s make future together. JFDI’s next accelerator program begins in March 2014. Apply Now