Reading List Aspiring Founders Shouldn’t Miss Out
A list of books that will change how you see, interact and even mute the world when charging forward.
My life has always been a startup journey. It had started modestly and resolved into a contrarian one rather than striving for privileges. It has always been a great hustle full of detours and disorientations. In other words, it was filled with stress, constant self-proving, distrust, fear, and self-doubt.
But it hadn’t always been like that. Like most kids, I had a rich and loving childhood. Hopeful, curious, and naively positive.
As I gradually fought my way back later in life to become like my younger self, with a lot of help from people around me, I wouldn’t have gotten to this point without a few powerful, life-changing writing by incredible authors.
I’d like to share with you a small curated subset of those books which had enlightened and empowered me to grow back into my best productive and positive self again.
The Prophet
Dubbed the ‘other bible’, the Prophet is a masterpiece from the great Lebanese-American writer, poet, and visual artist Khalil Gibran. Through great epic and romantic storyline, it teaches how to love, parent, being parented, and work meaningfully. If I could recommend one book you’d be carrying around in a post-apocalyptic world, this would be it.
How to Win Friends and Influence People
This classic by Dale Carnegie is hard to leave out of the stack. It was one of the first self-improvement books I began reading around in my teenage years. I was full of anger, distrust, self-pity, and very lonely. The author had convinced me that I needed to become better — or open to failures and strive for trust in life to make a connection. He told his life story of someone starting from scratch, thus it is also an epic memoir into the great American Dream of yesteryears. If you have read this, let me know your favorite part. Mine was the writing on the ground in front of the factory.
The Meditations
An archaic milestone of Stoicism, this journal by the late Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius. Stoicism has surfaced quite popularly lately due to podcasts and influential work by Ryan Holiday. The teaching of Stoicism can be summed up in just one sentence — Only deal with what is within your circle of control. As simple as it is, recognizing that circle and letting go of whatever lies outside of your circle of control are one of the hardest things for us. This book documents his daily life as an Emperor, who he was grateful for, who he had forgiven, and what he had let go. By no mean was his life a lavish and easy one, hence you will learn a lot from his diary.
There are many good works of literature by great teachers of Stoicism like Seneca, who is arguably considered the father of Stoicism. However, I prefer this book by Aurelius as he had been in a leadership position where tough calls are often made.
Daring Greatly
A New York Times’ Bestseller, this book is a must-read, hard-to-put-down from-cover-to-cover kind of book. Brené Brown is a vulnerability researcher who arguably made vulnerability “cool”. Before her book, it would have been frowned upon to talk about leading with vulnerability. In this book, she challenges the norm the society put you in that has made you afraid, miserable, and lonely. It resonates with me because this book digs into why I had become the person I was (hint: it was mostly from unconscientious parenting, so NEVER forget to always learn as a parent and don’t for a second think you are right at everything. You set an example for your child by being, not talking).
Zero to One
This work by the great contrarian Silicon Valley Kingpin Peter Thiel needs no introduction. If you are very least enthusiastic about entrepreneurship, this book is a must-read (Tip: The audio version by Blake Master is very good).
There are many more great books to recommend, but I want to focus on only the life-changing and easier to read and finish instead of the more theoretical, rhetoric, or dogmatic ones.
Hope this list has inspired you to pick up on reading. Stay tuned for more.
