Here’s my annual post sharing some of the books I’ve read in the previous year. In 2022 I focused on reading more biographies and it was great to get to see people in action. You can’t go wrong with most of these books…
📚 No filter ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️
The Instagram journey from founding to getting acquired by Facebook and becoming central in culture.
📚 The Innovation Stack ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️
The story of Square’s early days and then moves on to show other companies who have used a similar pattern.
📚 Managing Oneself ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️
The third time I’m reading this small book and there was always something important that spoke to me.
📚 Making Ideas Happen ⭐️ ⭐️
Not sure what I was expecting, but this was a bit too much “how to” and a defined process for creating ideas.
📚 The Cold Start Problem ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️
Tackles the problem of supply and demand in new networks for a tech product. Andrew Chen uses many examples from his time at Uber. And loads of other examples from LinkedIn, Twitch, Zoom, Dropbox, Tinder, Airbnb, and Pinterest.
📚 Super Pumped: The battle for Uber ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️
Perfect segway from “The Cold Start Problem”. The story of Uber and the crazy culture and product ideas. Worth reading, but 3 stars as it’s written like a journalistic piece, and a bit dry.
📚 Zero to One ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️
Notes on Startups and how to build.
📚 Hatching Twitter ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️
The story of the people building Twitter and the Journey. Perfect for this year’s Elon acquisition.
📚 The Everything store ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️
The story of Jeff Bezos and the history of Amazon
📚 12 Rules for Life ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️
Just read it, think and learn. You don’t have to agree with everything.
📚 Shape up ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️
Inside look into Basecamp’s way of building. Very tactical and good practical ideas.
📚 Speed & Scale ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️
A Global action plan for Solving our climate crisis. It’s a much more complex issue. It’s science AND politics AND business AND personal AND too many things to work on without prioritisation.
📚 The Founders ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️
Quite a long read on the Story of Paypal and the Paypal Mafia. You should read it for industry knowledge.
📚 Caffeine ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️
A short book on the history of Caffeine, and how it enables the world.
📚 Masters of Scale ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️
It’s the best section of the “Masters of Scale Podcast”. Practical stuff.