Favorites
Books and articles I've enjoyed. Always a work in progress.
Articles
Career
- You and your research
Lecture transcript from a talk by Richard Hamming on how to do great work.
- Liquid vs Illiquid careers
Thinking about careers like financial markets. What makes some easier to price than others.
Operating
- How I've run major projects
A practical guide to project management in high velocity orgs.
Startups
- The idea maze
Good startups are multi-year plans and consider many versions of the world.
- Subtle Differentiation (or why there are no 10x products in fintech)
Fintech is about doing 100 things 2x better, not any one things 100x better
Venture Capital
- The visions of Neil Mehta
Profile of one of the great investors of our time.
- Foxes and Hedgehogs
Two archetypes of founders and why one tends to outlast the other.
- Making markets in time
How 'temporal arbitrage' explains Silicon Valley.
Books
- Snow Crash — Neal Stephenson
- The Last Town — Blake Crouch
- Wayward — Blake Crouch
- Pines — Blake Crouch
- What to Make of a Life: Cliffs, Fog, Fire and the Self-Knowledge Imperative — Jim Collins
- The 5 Types of Wealth: A Transformative Guide to Design Your Dream Life — Sahil Bloom
- Elantris — Brandon Sanderson
- Runnin' Down a Dream: How to Thrive in a Career You Actually Love — Bill Gurley
- Warbreaker — Brandon Sanderson
- Breakneck: China's Quest to Engineer the Future — Dan Wang
- Fair Play: A Game-Changing Solution for When You Have Too Much to Do — Eve Rodsky
- Company K — William March
- The Score Takes Care of Itself: My Philosophy of Leadership — Bill Walsh
- High Output Management — Andrew S. Grove
- 1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History and How It Shattered a Nation — Andrew Ross Sorkin
- Morning Star — Pierce Brown
- Golden Son — Pierce Brown
- Red Rising — Pierce Brown
- Seneca's Letters from a Stoic — Seneca
- Wind and Truth — Brandon Sanderson
- Abundance — Ezra Klein, Derek Thompson
- The Scaling Era: An Oral History of AI — Dwarkesh Patel
- How to Know a Person — David Brooks
- Oathbringer — Brandon Sanderson
- Co-intelligence — Ethan Mollick
- The Technological Republic — Alexander Karp
- Four Thousand Weeks — Oliver Burkeman
- The Upside of Stress — Kelly McGonigal
- Cable Cowboy — Mark Robichaux
- Onyx Storm — Rebecca Yarros
- Edgedancer — Brandon Sanderson
- Words of Radiance — Brandon Sanderson
- Letters from a Self-Made Merchant to His Son — George Horace Lorimer
- Boom — Byrne Hobart
- The Way of Kings — Brandon Sanderson
- Men and Rubber — Harvey S. Firestone
- The Hero of Ages — Brandon Sanderson
- The Well of Ascension — Brandon Sanderson
- Mistborn — Brandon Sanderson
- The Prophet — Kahlil Gibran
- Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow — Gabrielle Zevin
- Powerful — Patty McCord
- Generations — Jean M. Twenge
- 2034 — Elliot Ackerman
- Who — Geoff Smart
- Getting Things Done — David Allen
- Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows — J.K. Rowling
- The Great CEO Within — Matt Mochary
- Babel — R.F. Kuang
- Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince — J.K. Rowling
- Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix — J.K. Rowling
- Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire — J.K. Rowling
- Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban — J.K. Rowling
- Excellent Advice for Living — Kevin Kelly
- Iron Flame — Rebecca Yarros
- Fourth Wing — Rebecca Yarros
- Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets — J.K. Rowling
- Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone — J.K. Rowling
- The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy — Douglas Adams
- Ficciones — Jorge Luis Borges
- Recursion — Blake Crouch
- VC — Tom Nicholas
- Foundation — Isaac Asimov
- The Great Stagnation — Tyler Cowen
- Outlive — Peter Attia
- Project Hail Mary — Andy Weir
- The Pluri Society — Sherry Ning
- Chip War — Chris Miller
- Lessons from the Titans — Scott Davis
- The Ministry for the Future — Kim Stanley Robinson
- Invent and Wander — Jeff Bezos
- Deep Work — Cal Newport
- Death's End — Cixin Liu
- The Dark Forest — Liu Cixin
- Freedom at Midnight — Dominique Lapierre
- The Three-Body Problem — Liu Cixin
- Exhalation — Ted Chiang
- Scaling People — Claire Hughes Johnson
- The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse — Charlie Mackesy
- The Creative Act — Rick Rubin
- Amp It Up — Frank Slootman
- What's Our Problem? — Tim Urban
- High Growth Handbook — Elad Gil
- The Anatomy of the Swipe — Ahmed Siddiqui
- Dune Messiah — Frank Herbert
- Dune — Frank Herbert
- The Field Guide to Global Payments — Sophia Goldberg
- Steve Jobs — Walter Isaacson
- Build — Tony Fadell
- Leonardo da Vinci — Walter Isaacson
- The Return of the King — J.R.R. Tolkien
- The Power Law — Sebastian Mallaby
- The Two Towers — J.R.R. Tolkien
- The Fellowship of the Ring — J.R.R. Tolkien
- The Hobbit, or There and Back Again — J.R.R. Tolkien
- This Is Your Mind on Plants — Michael Pollan
- The Wires of War — Jacob Helberg
- Amazon Unbound — Brad Stone
- The Everything Store — Brad Stone
- The Lessons of History — Will Durant
- The Color of Law — Richard Rothstein
- Atomic Habits — James Clear
- Kitchen Confidential — Anthony Bourdain
- Red Notice — Bill Browder
- Emergency — Neil Strauss
- Caste — Isabel Wilkerson
- Flash Boys — Michael Lewis
- Liar's Poker — Michael Lewis
- Open — Andre Agassi
- Travels with Charley — John Steinbeck
- What I Talk About When I Talk About Running — Haruki Murakami
- Six Easy Pieces — Richard P. Feynman
- Greenlights — Matthew McConaughey
- Tao Te Ching — Lao Tzu
- The Almanack of Naval Ravikant — Eric Jorgenson
- Here — Richard McGuire
- The Psychology of Money — Morgan Housel
- Born a Crime — Trevor Noah
- Talking to Strangers — Malcolm Gladwell
- Lying — Sam Harris
- Between the World and Me — Ta-Nehisi Coates
- Reunion — Fred Uhlman
- Pachinko — Min Jin Lee
- The Dutch House — Ann Patchett
- Essentialism — Greg McKeown
- The Hard Thing About Hard Things — Ben Horowitz
- The Water Dancer — Ta-Nehisi Coates
- The 4-Hour Workweek — Timothy Ferriss
- I Will Teach You to Be Rich — Ramit Sethi
- The Precipice — Toby Ord
- Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World — Jack Weatherford
- King of Capital — David Carey
- Win Bigly — Scott Adams
- Love Yourself Like Your Life Depends on It — Kamal Ravikant
- White Fragility — Robin DiAngelo
- Maybe You Should Talk to Someone — Lori Gottlieb
- The Dreamers — Karen Thompson Walker
- Vagabonding — Rolf Potts
- Too Big to Fail — Andrew Ross Sorkin
- The Moment of Lift — Melinda French Gates
- Originals — Adam M. Grant
- Loonshots — Safi Bahcall
- Tiny Beautiful Things — Cheryl Strayed
- Siddhartha — Hermann Hesse
- To Kill a Mockingbird — Harper Lee
- The Signal and the Noise — Nate Silver
- Katerina — James Frey
- Range — David Epstein
- Why We Sleep — Matthew Walker
- How to Stop Worrying and Start Living — Dale Carnegie
- Educated — Tara Westover
- Trillion Dollar Coach — Eric Schmidt
- Lean In — Sheryl Sandberg
- The Defining Decade — Meg Jay
- Being Mortal — Atul Gawande
- 10% Happier — Dan Harris
- Becoming — Michelle Obama
- Hunger — Roxane Gay
- Leadership — Doris Kearns Goodwin
- Bad Blood — John Carreyrou
- When — Daniel H. Pink
- When Breath Becomes Air — Paul Kalanithi
- The Fifth Risk — Michael Lewis
- Boomerang — Michael Lewis
- The Happiness Project — Gretchen Rubin
- Levels of the Game — John McPhee
- Shoe Dog — Phil Knight
- Hillbilly Elegy — J.D. Vance
- Zero to One — Peter Thiel
- Life Is So Good — George Dawson
- How to Change Your Mind — Michael Pollan
- Black Klansman — Ron Stallworth
- Killers of the Flower Moon — David Grann
- What Happened — Hillary Rodham Clinton
- The Alchemist — Paulo Coelho
- Astrophysics for People in a Hurry — Neil deGrasse Tyson
- Gods at War — Steven M. Davidoff
- The Ascent of Money — Niall Ferguson
- Sapiens — Yuval Noah Harari
- Man's Search for Meaning — Viktor E. Frankl
- Option B — Sheryl Sandberg