- Books are incredible.
You can learn so much from books both about building
a Startup and life in general.
Today I'm gonna talk about books,
the books that I think all founders,
all entrepreneurs should read.
The best books for founders and entrepreneurs.
This is "Raw Startup".
I'm the founder of Vivino,
the world's largest wine app and community,
with almost 60 million users around the world.
The books I'm gonna talk about in this video
help build Vivino to what it is today.
I've read a decent amount of books,
maybe a few hundred throughout my lifetime,
but they've mostly been about business.
They've been about startups, about founders,
biographies and so on.
Very few fiction books
and almost all of them about business.
This is a top five of the books that I enjoyed the most
and learned the most from.
I also do a lot of honorable mentions,
so stay tuned for a lot of inspiration.
I've obviously read all the books in this video
and a lot of others to build this list.
Before I start, I wanna mention a specific book
that meant a lot to me.
It might even be the book that turned me
into an entrepreneur.
It is the book "Losing My Virginity" by Sir Richard Branson.
I read it sometime in the '90s and I loved it.
I didn't learn a specific craft or a specific method
from this book, I learned something bigger.
I think this particular book gave me the courage
to become an entrepreneur.
It turned me into the entrepreneur,
the founder that I am today.
I was already a fan of Branson back then,
and this book opened my eyes to something specific.
It opened my eyes to imperfection.
It opened my eyes to Branson who wrote the book himself,
not being perfect,
showing that he sometimes made some not so good decisions,
and that sort of gave me the courage.
While you don't have to be perfect to be a founder,
you don't have to be perfect to be an entrepreneur.
I think that gave me a lot of courage.
I think seeing that Branson, my big idol wasn't perfect,
that he made bad decisions too, was really,
really important.
So for me, that's a special book.
It meant a lot to be when I read it.
Not sure if it's any good to read today,
but at the time it was important to me.
Also, everything in this video is my own opinion.
I have no affiliation with authors or publisher
or anybody else.
I'll put some links in the description,
but they will not be affiliate links.
Great, let's get started with the Honorable Mentions first,
all the books that I really love
but didn't quite make the list.
"Ride of Lifetime" by Bob Iger.
About Bob Iger's tenure at Disney,
when they acquired Star Wars and Marvel.
As someone who normally works with startups,
this is a little bit different being in a big media company,
and I found it really interesting.
"Bad Blood" by John Carreyrou about Theranos.
Yes, I know there are movies, documentaries,
podcasts, and God knows what about the Theranos Scandal,
but this book is the original book with all the details
from the reporter that actually broke the story.
It really gets all the details
of this relatively ugly story.
"Open" by Andre Agassi.
This is Andre Agassi's autobiography.
He was one of the best American tennis players
in the '80s and '90s.
Oh my God, this book is amazing, you have to read it.
It is a book about winning,
unfortunate even more about losing.
It's a book about how to be a father and even more
about how to not be a father, all around incredible story,
"The Hard Thing About Hard Things" by Ben Horowitz.
Who came up with that title?
This is Ben Horowitz's stories from being a founder
and has a lot of great learnings.
Ben Horowitz later went on to found Andreessen Horowitz,
one of the biggest venture firms in the world.
This book just has a lot of learnings
that are incredibly valuable for a founder,
so highly recommend.
Finally, there is "Zero To One" by Peter Thiel.
Legendary Peter Thiel obviously was a co-founder at PayPal
and later founded Palantir.
This book is good because Peter Thiel is pretty extreme.
He has extreme opinions,
and actually when it comes to building a Startup,
it is a little bit extreme,
so I think you can learn a lot from this book.
Yes, Peter Thiel is a little bit of a crazy guy,
so there are chapters in there
that I would ignore a little.
But he goes a little bit overboard,
but I do think that any founder can learn a lot
from this book.
Before I move on to the list,
I need your book recommendations,
so put them in the comments.
You thought this video was for you,
but actually I need more recommendations,
so put them into comments, please.
Here we go, let's get that list started.
Number five, "The Signal and the Noise" by Nate Silver.
Little bit of a disclaimer here right away,
this book is not for everyone.
I love numbers and that's why I love this book.
However, if you're into numbers, statistics,
and Probabilities, this is a fantastic book
with lots of great stories.
Nate Silver became famous in 2008
when he predicted 49 out of 50 states
for the presidential election.
By 2012, he predicted every single stage right.
Very, very impressive.
So if you're into numbers, this book can really teach you
a lot about forecasting and probabilities,
which is very useful in business
and when building a Startup.
Number four, "Shoe Dog" by Phil Knight.
Phil Knight tells a story about building Nike.
I think actually this story has a lot of similarities
with "Losing My Virginity" by Sir Richard Branson.
It tells the story of building Nike with all the failures,
mistakes and all the things that happened.
A very blunt and honest story.
I guess that's why it appeals to me.
He's very transparent about our work, what didn't work,
and how it all went.
Also, when it went, you know, not so good.
I think some of these mistakes
can give you a lot of learnings.
Phil travels to Japan in the '60s to buy shoes.
He has all kinds of legal battles.
Yes, he gets into all kinds of problems
and it actually feels like even late in Nike's life,
it's almost about to fall apart.
At least he tells a really good story.
Lots of drama and very, very entertaining.
All around, well written, educational
and a fantastic founder's story.
Number three, "David and Goliath" by Malcolm Gladwell,
who's the strong and who's the weak With David and Goliath,
we were always told a specific story.
The story about the underdog David
beating the giant Goliath.
Malcolm Gladwell really manages to turn this upside down.
We often misunderstand who the actual underdog is.
The giant is often the one most likely to lose,
and the underdog actually has some extra strength.
I think there's some great parallels here.
The story about a small Startup,
an underdog that beats the big corporation.
There's a lot we can learn as a Startup from this story.
It's a lot about focus and using the strength that you have
as a smaller Startup as an underdog.
Highly recommended, and Gladwell is a fantastic storyteller.
Number two, "Steve Jobs" by Walter Isaacson.
Walter Isaacson's biography about Steve Jobs was released
in 2011 right after his death.
It's based on more than 40 interviews with Steve Jobs
over two years.
We really get to see the many faces of Steve Jobs,
who was a very complicated man.
This is the best biography I've ever read.
It is so well written and so well researched.
It really is a masterpiece about one of
the biggest product builders ever.
I'd say this is a must read for our founder,
and we are number one.
Number one, "Atomic Habits" by James Clear.
This book really had an impact on me.
Without spoiling anything, I can tell you that this book
is a lot about doing small changes in your life,
rather than thinking you can change everything in one day.
Do small changes that you do every day,
and it has an incredible impact over time.
He really boils it down to doing something for three minutes
every day and it really changes things over time.
It really preaches improving a little bit all the time.
I think that's important in your personal life,
but also in building a business.
The thing about these things that you do every day,
they sort of compound over time and you do get a lot better.
I even bought this book for my kids, boyfriends,
girlfriends, even my wife.
I don't think they've read it yet, but they should have,
and I wish that I read it as a younger man.
I think it's a book everyone can learn something from,
entertaining, well written, highly recommended.
That was my top five.
Now, make sure you put your favorites in the comments.
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Thank you very much for watching "Raw Startup".
Now stop watching, go build something.
(triumphant music)