Reading path
Start a Company
From the first risky idea to the hard middle years — a founder's reading path.
Nobody is ready for their first company; you just start and read fast. This is the order that saves you the most avoidable pain.
Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action
Before the mechanics: why does this company deserve to exist? Sinek's question is the one customers and investors are really asking.
The Lean Startup
The method. Build, measure, learn — ship the smallest test and kill your assumptions before they kill you.
Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future
Thiel's contrarian counterweight: don't copy, build something genuinely new. Competition is for losers; monopolies fund the future.
The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers
The part no one warns you about — layoffs, near-death, the calls with no good option. Horowitz is honest about the grind.
Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike
Knight's Nike memoir. Not a how-to but a reminder of how messy, improvised, and nearly bankrupt even the legends were.