An hour and a half a day of reading business books

Up until recently I had a solid 45 minute uninterrupted tube commute. This gave me about an hour and a half reading time everyday without the distraction of the internet.

I got through a lot of books.

Here are the ten business books that I found most engaging. They offer actual advice and examples, not just platitudes or the “here are 5 easy steps to success while also making you taller and more attractive” rhetoric.

1. Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz: Good for practical advice. Tone is “these are things I’ve learnt, they might help you, they might not”. Story of his own raise is less relatable.
2. Anything You Want by Derek Sivers: One technical founder’s account of accidentally building something people wanted. Funny and self-deprecating. It’s short, could read this in an hour if uninterrupted.
3. (Update: Recent events have made it hard to see his opinions as relevant) Zero to One by Peter Thiel: Good for inspiring wider thinking around assumed limits to what we should build.
4. The Lean Start-Up by Eric Ries: People at start-up events name drop this. It’s great though, discounts the old strategy of building a product for a year and then launching it. Gives examples for testing your business assumptions one by one.
5. The Art of the Start 2.0 by Guy Kawasaki: Good ideas on the marketing side without you having to read Traction (which is much longer). Really easy to read with parts in listicle form.
6. Managing Humans by Michael Lopp: This one made me laugh. A lot. The anecdotes are around managing technical teams but still relevant if you don’t. Chapter 1 is called “Don’t be a Prick”. Read a blog post of his if you think you already know how to manage. Then read the book.
7. Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey Moore: Explains how there’s a big gap between managing to get a few early customers and the mainstream market. You could read a summary of this one instead.
8. Re-work by Jason Fried & David Heinemeier Hansson: Almost soundbite sized chapters which go against a lot of the “wisdom” in the tech echo chamber on Twitter. One of the authors wrote a great spoof blog post on how making money instead of making things up hindered their valuation increase.
9. The Mom Test by Rob Fitzpatrick: Teaches you how to ask questions to potential customers and get useful information from them instead of just biasing their replies by being excited and hearing what you want to hear.
10. Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman: It’s not a business book exactly but it made me re-think the way I speak and write in a business scenario. Explains the psychology of how your brain tries to construct a coherent narrative from life leading to biases for the familiar. Useful for understanding peoples behaviour.

If there’s anything you think I might not have read that I should have then tell me on twitter.