La Rentrée Summer Reading List
6 Book Recommendations from the Revaia Team
All good things must come to an end. And as it happens every year, the famous August break turns into the September rentrée. Back to school for the kids, back to work for the adults. But hopefully, if you planned correctly, your holiday was an ideal blend of rest, relaxation and productive reflection. Whether you were on a beach, visiting family internationally or just taking advantage of the (relatively) empty city-scape, we hope you found time to unwind and reset as we prepare for the downslope towards year end!
Undoubtedly, we have some readers in our audience. Reading and writing is a necessary hobby (some would argue skill-set) in the highly competitive world of investors. Whether you’re researching a new industry, exploring trends from experts and academics, or simply catching up on the news of the day through blogs and newsletters like this one: reading is fundamental to our work. So we thought, what better way to ease back into our routine than to share some of our favorite summer reads that you may find useful to add to your list:
- The Culture Map by Erin Meyer
- The Changing World Order by Ray Dalio
- Exponential by Azeem Azhar
- The Cold Start Problem by Andrew Chen
- How to Avoid a Climate Disaster by Bill Gates
- The Second Machine Age by Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson
#1: The Culture Map: Decoding How People Think, Lead & Get Things Done Across Cultures
The Culture Map serves as a template for anyone working in an international environment. Written by INSEAD professor Erin Meyer, she distills her experience teaching management practice and consulting work across cultures into the definitive guide on how to collaborate, build consensus and make decisions in multicultural working environments. She brings the culture map — 8 behavioral spectrums ranging from communicating to persuading to disagreeing — to life with real-life examples and stories. If you, like us, work in a diverse, international organization or with clients around the world, we cannot recommend this book enough!
#2: The Changing World Order by Ray Dalio
Billionaire co-founder and CEO of Bridgewater Capital, Ray Dalio, has consolidated his personal experience and unique vantage point through a historical lens to make sense of what’s going on in the world today. Somewhat of a sequel to his foundational Principles of Success, this book explores what it means to live and work in a rapidly changing world. Dalio considers the cycle of empires, the recent rise of China’s economy, declining American exceptionalism and how it impacts you. Despite being in his 70s, the renowned business leader (or his team) has built a ton of video content and explainers if you’re looking for a quick synopsis via YouTube or TikTok!
#3: Exponential by Azeem Azhar
Azeem Azhar is a technologist, speaker, podcaster and author focused on the implications of exponential growth in the technology sector. His discussions with industry leaders emphasize the inherently bad intuitions we humans have when it comes to accelerating change and extremely large numbers. His latest book, Exponential, synthesizes his learnings over the years about how we live in an exponential economy and how that fact will shape our world in the future — for better or for worse. Any forward looking investors and tech enthusiasts should add this to their list. Short on time? Subscribe to his podcast powered by Harvard Business Review.
#4 The Cold Start Problem by Andrew Chen
Former Uber executive and current a16z investor, Andrew Chen, unpacks the seeming mystery of network effects that make winners out of some of tech’s biggest names. He details the difficulty of getting the flywheel of a multi-sided marketplace going — the namesake cold start problem — and then highlights the exceptional power and effect it has on the companies able to overcome it. The book incorporates learnings from leaders at LinkedIn, Twitch, Zoom, Dropbox, Tinder, Uber, Airbnb, Pinterest, as well as his personal experience confronting these challenges. For anyone interested in consumer marketplaces and viral growth, this one’s for you.
#5 How to Avoid a Climate Disaster by Bill Gates
As an ESG-centric fund, there should be no surprise that we include at least one climate-oriented book on this list. In his latest book, Microsoft founder and philanthropist, Bill Gates, takes the exacting, analytical approach he is known for to one of the greatest challenges of our time: climate change. The book outlines, quite agnostically, the largest sources of greenhouse gas emissions across our economy and then provides recommendations on how to fix it. In addition, Gates talks about his own investment thesis around climate tech and where he’s placing his bets on transformational technologies that don’t yet exist. If you’re interested in a sober, data-driven analysis of our current condition, look no further!
#6 The Second Machine Age by Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson
What’s most remarkable about this book is the fact that it was published in 2014 and already so much has changed. Written by a Principal Research Scientist and the Director of the MIT Center for Digital Business, the authors examine advances in computing power, artificial intelligence and automation. From Moore’s law to magnificent intelligent machines — their research considers what our future might look like in a hyper-digitized world. Ironically, the fact that leading examples include IBM Watson and Google’s early self-driving car experiments only proves the point that we’re moving at an incredible pace that requires serious thought and sophisticated policy.
Bonus: Changer l’eau des fleurs by Valérie Perrin
If you’re looking for more of a beach read (as opposed to a business book), this novel comes highly recommended by Alice!
We certainly hope these book suggestions help get you back into your routine. If you’ve got other great book recommendations, send them our way. We are always looking for more !
