10 Summer Reads for Entrepreneurs
We want our blog to provide value for those that read it. This sounds simple enough, but in reality, that is a pretty high bar. So when it came to deciding what to write about next, I was kind of stumped. I toyed around with a bunch of ideas, but none of them truly added value. It was only when we sat down as a team, that we decided we should write about the medium that (in our view) provides the greatest educational value — books.
Here at SG we LOVE to read. In terms of balancing depth, breadth, speed and retention of information, books are an unparalleled medium for learning. So with all of that in mind, we have decided to share the books that have inspired us both professionally and personally, and we asked a few friends to chip in as well! Whilst we are a fund that is focused on Media-Tech the books below are relevant to entrepreneurs in all sectors, since they touch on omnipresent themes and issues.
We are thinking of updating this list regularly, so if you have any suggestions for other books that could be a good fit, please include them in the comments section.
Michael Sackler, Managing Partner at Supernode Global
Creativity, Inc. by Ed Catmull
“To be a truly creative company, you must start things that might fail”
Pixar is a rare beast. They achieved things that very, very few companies have ever done. They built a huge business from producing films that were both critical and commercial successes. They created long-lasting IP that resonated culturally and financially. They established the first true consumer brand in animation since Disney was formed over two generations before, despite sharing their film’s billing with Disney themselves. They did all of this despite starting life as an imaging technology department at George Lucas’s Industrial Light and Magic, and not releasing a feature film until nineteen years after they were founded.
In Creativity, Inc. Ed Catmull — Pixar’s Chief Technical Officer — gives readers the inside scoop into the Herculean effort that was required to build Pixar into the company we know today. There are many things that the book touches on, but in my opinion, where it really shines is when Catmull ruminates over the intersection of company culture and talent. In his view, management’s job is to foster a culture that not only that attracts the best talent, but gets the best out of them. This means putting into place processes that allow for creative freedom within a framework that helps the company achieve its goals.
Any entrepreneur will find a ton of useful idioms and ideas in this book (such as, “management’s job is not to prevent risk, but to build the ability to recover.”) that will help with everything from planting the roots of a company, to understanding how to build an incredibly compelling product, to figuring out who you would like to acquire your business.
Another incredible memoir charting the rise of another industry-defining company (may as well learn from the best, right?!). Shoe Dog tells the story of Nike from founding up until Nike’s IPO in 1980. The story is so fascinating, and Knight’s writing so lucid and captivating, that at times it feels like you’re reading a novel.
What Pixar and Nike have in common is that everything comes down to doing whatever is required to produce the very best product that is on the market. There is even some commonality in the creative ingenuity that goes into those products. However, where they differ is in both company culture and distribution. Whereas Pixar focuses solely on the creative element of the product and leave the distribution to Disney. Nike, on the other hand, has always been about the hustle. Knight shows how you can take on — and eventually dominate — an entire market by finding third-party products that nobody else has, and then betting everything on innovative marketing and distribution strategies.
Once Nike had made initial inroads with distribution, they realised that not only could they make better products in house, but that the economics were also more favourable. Netflix would go on to more or less use the exact same playbook thirty years later — some business strategies are timeless.
Nike was built 40 years ago, and so there are aspects of the book that are not relevant today — most entrepreneurs can’t fund their businesses with loans anymore. That said, if you approach reading it wanting to understand more about the mindset, culture, team and ability to hustle that it takes to build such an important company, Shoe Dog is the book for you. Plus, it’s really, really, entertaining.
Gina King, Head of Network at Supernode Global
“People don’t buy WHAT you do, they buy WHY you do it.”
Most leaders and companies start with WHAT and sometimes discuss HOW, but rarely do they talk about WHY. Few leaders are able to start movements and inspire loyalty beyond a transaction. The ones that do start with WHY. This approach has powerful benefits for decision making, recruiting, and sales — all of which are critical for entrepreneurs to focus on.
Measure What Matters by John Doerr
“If you don’t know where you’re going, you might not get there.” — Yogi Berra
John Doerr is a modern management master and in this book, he introduces the concept of applying OKRs. (Objectives + Key Results). He starts with the question of what is the most important in the next 3, 6, 12 months. Using OKRs solves the problem of not working on the right things, not knowing what others are working on, not knowing when you’re making progress, not knowing if you’ve accomplished what needed to be accomplished. This is an essential read for every entrepreneur, but OKRs can be applied in any pursuit, whether it be personal or professional.
Phoebe Scriven, Associate at Supernode Global
The Culture Code: The Secrets of highly successful groups by Daniel Coyle
“The difference with successful cultures seems to be that they use the crisis to crystallize their purpose. When leaders of those groups reflect on those failures now, they express gratitude (and sometimes even nostalgic desire) for those moments, as painful as they were, because they were the crucible that helped the group discover what it could be.”
In this entertaining and educational book, Coyle brings the reader into the stories behind outstanding teams and extraordinary moments of collaboration. However, the real gift is how he decodes the specific actions, decisions, and language that set the conditions for success, into small behaviours that we are all able to recreate.
Chris Lee, Angel Investor
Blackbox Thinking by Matthew Syed
Learning from failure and building a culture within your team (and yourself!) that allows failure to exist is an important part of being an entrepreneur. If you’re not failing, you’re not trying hard enough, moving quickly enough or taking enough risks. Failure won’t kill your start-up, but ignoring it and hiding it will. Blackbox Thinking provides powerful insight into industries where failure is tackled head-on vs industries where it’s hidden and how each has either grown, improved or stagnated as a result.
Mawuli Ladzekpo, Partner at Supernode Global
The Song Machine: How to Make a Hit by John Seabrook
This book tells the story of some of the biggest pop songs of the last 30 years. As the subtitle says, this book is about “how to make a hit” — a very relevant topic for entrepreneurs and investors as we’re all in the business of trying to make, or find, hits. The big takeaway from the book is that hits don’t have to be accidental or strokes of luck, although sometimes they are. More often than not, hits songs are carefully engineered products; the result of a strategy and a thought-process. This is such a good read for media and tech entrepreneurs on so many levels.
Innovator’s Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail by Clayton Christensen
How do small companies disrupt big companies, seemingly against the odds?
What kind of small companies are able to do this?
How can you predict when this will happen?
How can you do this yourself, or prevent it from happening to you?
If any of these questions interest you, you need to read Innovator’s Dilemma.
Jack Schulze, CEO & Founder of Playdeo
To Pixar and Beyond by Lawrence Levy
Levy debunks the myth that Pixar succeeded purely on the back of “creativity”. As ever, Jobs was an instrumental figure in the project's success.
Just as Ive is revered for the iPhone and Lassetter for Toy Story, both narratives usually omit Jobs’ role as a creative. Jobs is correctly admired for his business instincts, but that is actually fairly common in the valley and something he shares with most leading figures in California today. What he also understood (probably from spending time with nerds and hippies, as well as the Atari soldering production line) was cultural and craft-based values, I would say that’s separate from “product instincts” that many other entrepreneurs have in abundance. Which other CEO would devolve his own power and judgement to an unproven filmmaker at any cost to a business he has already poured a lifetimes worth of his own capital into? Someone rare. Someone rarer than Lassetter and Ive combined.
Joe Schaeppi, Founder & CEO of 12traits
Trillion Dollar Coach by Bill Campbell
Bill Campbell, a former football coach, turned into a Silicon Valley legend after gaining the trust and becoming the personal coach for individuals like Steve Jobs and Eric Schmidt. The Book Trillion Dollar Coach — which is also written by Eric Schmidt in addition to Jonathan Rosenberg, and Alan Eagle — takes a deep dive into the importance of not only having advisors or mentors, but a coach. The data is quite clear — having a coach or psychologist (and indeed being open to coaching) vastly increases the chances that your startup will succeed. This is something that so many startups overlook. After all, it often doesn’t seem like a critical component when you are trying to build a parachute having already jumped out of a plane!
From keeping your mental health in check as a founder to maintaining a growth mindset, a highly skilled coach goes a long way. It’s a ‘physician heal thyself’ sort of scenario. Most founders often think that they can use their own thoughts to get unstuck or advance certain parts of their business. One of the challenges to this is the same thinking patterns that are causing issues are not the same ones that are going to get us out of them. This is where a great coach comes into play.
Additionally, founders often don’t consider how closely their own health is tied to the business. I once read that running a company is a lot like riding a lion and making everyone that’s watching you think, “that actually looks safe and fun!”. In order to achieve that, you need a lot of support and guidance from those who have made mistakes before you. You don’t have to learn the hard way, and a great coach is a step in the right direction. Trillion Dollar Coach outlines what an incredible coach looks like, gives some brilliant advice on how to run a business, and stresses that it really does take a village to build something great: there’s nothing wrong with learning from others if you want to stand on the shoulders of giants.
