See also book reviews and other recommended products.
Mindfulness
Self-enquiry books for those that are inclined to prefer these type of books (and / or authors).
The books are in order from the most approachable towards more in-depth insights.
The bonus books are for fun and flavour at the end of the list.
Fragments of Reality: Daily Entries of Lived Life
This is my practical workbook type of take on the matter. I never wrote an intro book to this one 🙂
Jonathan Livingston Seagull: The Complete Edition
A bonus book in the kit
Siddhartha: A Novel
This is a bonus book in this kit.
The Alchemist: 25th Anniversary Edition
A bonus book
Startup books
What to expect, experiences and practical examples.
The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers
What you should know before you need to know it
Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future
Classic that puts you on right track with your ambition level
Startup CEO: A Field Guide to Scaling Up Your Business
A must-read for startup CEOs
With a few more words: https://www.petrikajander.com/startup-ceo/
Founders at Work: Stories of Startups' Early Days
Very influential and inspiring read
Startup, Scaleup, Screwup: 42 Tools to Accelerate Lean and Agile Business Growth
Practical handbook with the very latest knowhow combined with interviews from the Northern European startups
See my review: https://www.petrikajander.com/startup-scaleup-screwup/
Loops: Building Products with Clarity & Confidence
How to build products?
There are two ways to build a product. Either you start with a solution in mind and launch it to the market or you start with a group of people with a problem and then solve it for them.
This book is about the latter.
I have also written a few words about it: https://www.petrikajander.com/loops/
Category Creation: How to Build a Brand that Customers, Employees, and Investors Will Love
Great guide when considering your positioning
See my review: https://www.petrikajander.com/category-creation/
Startup Boards: Getting the Most Out of Your Board of Directors
What you need to know when it's time to build a professional board, and before
High Stakes, No Prisoners : A Winner's Tale of Greed and Glory in the Internet Wars
90's Internet and how to make it
The New New Thing: A Silicon Valley Story
High tech scene in the 90's
Eat People: And Other Unapologetic Rules for Game-Changing Entrepreneurs
Think big and find innovations worth building
Brilliant, Crazy, Cocky: How the Top 1% of Entrepreneurs Profit from Global Chaos
Global entrepreneurship is the future
Valley of Genius: The Uncensored History of Silicon Valley (As Told by the Hackers, Founders, and Freaks Who Made It Boom)
It's good to know how innovations are built. Timing matters, luck matters, and hard work matters. Current legends were just mostly regular people before their success who did extraordinary things.
How the Internet Happened: From Netscape to the iPhone
There are never too many stories and you can always learn from the past experiences. The history does not repeat but it rhymes and helps you to figure out your next moves (see Range for why 🙂
Survival to Thrival: Building the Enterprise Startup - Book 2 Change or Be Changed
The internal change within the organisation and the people
Unleash Your Inner Company: Use Passion and Perseverance to Build Your Ideal Business
A practical guide for nurturing your idea into business
Startup Communities: Building an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem in Your City
Startup Communities is about the inspiring story and the message that you can build a vibrant startup ecosystem anywhere. If you can do it with a small 100 000 inhabitant city in Colorado it can be done elsewhere.
Read more: https://www.petrikajander.com/startup-communities/
Startup funding essentials
Startup finance classics
This is a very short list on purpose. If you have more time and interest it's easy to elaborate on each topic with a book or two but it's important to have an overall perspective first.
Venture Deals: Be Smarter Than Your Lawyer and Venture Capitalist
If you read one book pick this one.
Secrets of Sand Hill Road: Venture Capital and How to Get It
Excellent and contemporary
See my review https://www.petrikajander.com/secrets-of-sand-hill-road/
High Tech Start Up, Revised and Updated (text only) Rev Upd Su edition by J. L. Nesheim
Classic but have good info even thought it is rather old in startup years
Technology
Books about innovation and technology
How Innovation Works: And Why It Flourishes in Freedom
Whether you want to learn about various innovation stories or understand better the interconnected nature of the innovation system Ridley shines light to the crucial area of our existence. Who wants to go back thirty, twenty or even ten years?
Read more: https://www.petrikajander.com/how-innovation-works/
The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future
Technological forces at work and shaping our future
Loonshots: How to Nurture the Crazy Ideas That Win Wars, Cure Diseases, and Transform Industries
Some times the crazy ideas are the only ones working
What Technology Wants
Wired founder Kevin Kelly explores the world of technology
WTF?: What's the Future and Why It's Up to Us
Let's talk about future
Supertrends: 50 Things You Need to Know About the Future
What's ahead of us
Economics for everyone
These get you up-to-speed quickly and provide a better understanding what's happening in our societies
Economics in One Lesson: The Shortest and Surest Way to Understand Basic Economics
This classic is a best-seller for a reason. And it's based on another classic 100 years earlier. I would read this first.
The Bitcoin Standard: The Decentralized Alternative to Central Banking
Don't let the title mislead you. You can totally ignore the Bitcoin and focus on the economics part. It's very concise and clear overview.
(And the Bitcoin part is not bad either).
The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves (P.S.)
News cycles focus on click-baits, negativity and scandals. This brings easily bias to our worldview. Economics is mainly about things that are not obvious and self-evident. Often, the counter-intuitive is the actual answer.
The Bastiat Collection
There are many versions of the these classic texts.
If you're in hurry check at least these:
- What is seen and what is not seen
- The Law
Living Economics: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow (Independent Studies in Political Economy)
This is not a basic reading but a curiosity piece in the mix. It's purpose is to make you dig deeper into different topics and explore further readings.
Impact
Impact investing and entrepreneurship
Manifesto for a Moral Revolution: Practices to Build a Better World
Social entrepreneur and founder of Acumen Jacqueline Novogratz calls for a revolution to reimagine how we are living on this planet in this century.
Read more: https://www.petrikajander.com/manifesto-for-a-moral-revolution/
Lean Impact: How to Innovate for Radically Greater Social Good
Lean methods applied to social entrepreneurship
Cradle to Cradle: Remaking the Way We Make Things
A classic from the early 2000s.
Confessions of a Radical Industrialist: How Interface Proved That You Can Build a Successful Business Without Destroying the Planet
An inspirational account from the 90's.
Raising the Bar: Integrity and Passion in Life and Business: The Story of Clif Bar Inc.
A startup story with a high bar
Ben & Jerry's Double-Dip: How to Run a Values-Led Business and Make Money, Too
The story of Ben & Jerry's
Investing
Readings about investing
The Templeton Touch
The story of Sir John
Stay the Course: The Story of Vanguard and the Index Revolution
The history of index funds and Vanguard and the relentless dedication to wait till the world catches-up with your vision
The Intelligent Investor: The Definitive Book on Value Investing. A Book of Practical Counsel (Revised Edition)
The refutable classic of value investing
Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt
Why it has been game over for day-trading for a long time
Dark Pools and High Frequency Trading For Dummies
Flash Boys explained
The Money Formula: Dodgy Finance, Pseudo Science, and How Mathematicians Took Over the Markets
Why some financial instruments make no sense
Big Mistakes: The Best Investors and Their Worst Investments
A bonus read for fun and flavour.
Angel: How to Invest in Technology Startups--Timeless Advice from an Angel Investor Who Turned $100,000 into $100,000,000
The world from an angel's perspective
Non-fiction
Seven Brief Lessons on Physics
A good easy to read intro book
Reality Is Not What It Seems: The Journey to Quantum Gravity
Rovelli is such a poetic scientist.
The Order of Time
Time is ignorance.
How to Win Friends & Influence People
A classic that I should have read earlier
Atomic Habits
Understanding how to make changes and why they work and don't makes all the difference.
Lifespan: Why We Age―and Why We Don't Have To
You have time to read this, and even more afterwards 🙂
Talking to Strangers: What We Should Know about the People We Don't Know
We are tilted towards giving the benefit of doubt to people and believing in them. Defaulting to the truth makes our society to work.
See more: https://www.petrikajander.com/talking-to-strangers/
The Polymath: Unlocking the Power of Human Versatility
The most comprehensive exploration of the term polymath
Progress: Ten Reasons to Look Forward to the Future
An anti-dope for negative news bias
Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World
The path to great discoveries and success is not always paved with grit and specialisation. Generalist may be slower in life to bloom but more weird and wicked their world become the better they tend to perform compared to specialist.
Read more: https://www.petrikajander.com/range/
The Organized Mind: Thinking Straight in the Age of Information Overload
Why multitasking is not good for you
Out of Our Minds: The Power of Being Creative
About creativity (and education)
The Moment of Lift: How Empowering Women Changes the World
The issues that needs our attention
Society
Books about society from various aspects
Open: The Story of Human Progress
Why have we progressed more in the last few hundred years than in the previous tens of thousands before?
A magnificent book that gives insights into our current world, the state we are with all the polarisations and conflicts but also how fragile our success is, and why it is not guaranteed to last.
See the full review: https://www.petrikajander.com/open-the-story-of-human-progress/
Factfulness: Ten Reasons We're Wrong About the World--and Why Things Are Better Than You Think
Hans Rosling is a legendary educator and this book is a must read. If you have not heard of him just google him. You won't be disappointed.
Permanent Record
A must read for everyone about our society
Intellectuals and Society
Thomas Sowell is a clear thinker and he speaks his mind.
Paper Money Collapse: The Folly of Elastic Money
The history of money is the history of our modern society
Beyond Democracy
Very timely
From Village School to Global Brand: Changing the World through Education
Another take on education
Life After the State: Why We Don't Need Government
When a comedian starts to look for answers before the financial crisis
The Evolution of Everything: How New Ideas Emerge
Small things change the society
The Adventures of Jonathan Gullible: A Free Market Odyssey
If you like stories this is a book for you. It has been translated in over 50 languages, and it's storyline might surprise you.
The Myth of Capitalism: Monopolies and the Death of Competition
This is not surprising or is it?
The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion
Why are we so divided?
The Fourth Revolution: The Global Race to Reinvent the State
Reinvent or perish
The End of Power: From Boardrooms to Battlefields and Churches to States, Why Being In Charge Isn’t What It Used to Be
Top-down is coming down crumbling
The Last Vote: The Threats to Western Democracy
To the roots of democracy
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