Learning how others have done it before us is a critical shortcut to success. With that in mind, I’ve been focusing on reading more about startup stories.
This is what I’ve read in the first 3 months of this year… maybe you’ll get some ideas for what to read next.
📚 The Little Prince ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️
A fable to set you thinking about what’s really important.
📚 No filter: The inside story of Instagram ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️
The Instagram journey from founder to getting acquired by Facebook and becoming central in culture.
📚 The Innovation Stack: Building an unbeatable business one crazy idea at a time ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️
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, 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 gave it 3 stars as it’s written like a journalistic piece, and a bit dry.
So those were the books from Q1 of 2022.