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26 Books Marc Andreessen, Ben Horowitz, Sam Altman, Reid Hoffman and Paul Graham Recommend
26
items Books that a16z's founders, OpenAI's CEO, LinkedIn's co-founder and Y Combinator's co-founder have told people to read, with their own words wherever they gave them. It starts with practical startup and management books and moves into the history and...
Sections
7
Starting and building a company
Management that actually works
Better decisions
Leaders, outsiders and comebacks
Why people join movements
Culture, history and human nature
Starting and building a company
Practical books for the earliest stage of a company.
Interviews with the founders of Apple, PayPal, Hotmail and dozens more about what the early days were really like. Paul Graham, who co-founded Y Combinator with the author, calls it probably the most valuable book a startup founder could read.
Founders at Work
Peter Thiel's argument that the best companies create something new and win by being a monopoly in a market they invent. Ben Horowitz, Marc Andreessen and Sam Altman have all recommended it.
Zero to One
The 49ers coach Bill Walsh on building a winning organization by getting the standards and details right first. Sam Altman named it as one of his recommended books.
The Score Takes Care of Itself
Dale Carnegie's 1936 guide to getting along with people, still in print because it works. Ben Horowitz calls it so corny and so genius.
How to Win Friends and Influence People
Management that actually works
The management books that a16z's founders and Reid Hoffman hand to new CEOs.
Intel CEO Andy Grove's practical guide to management as a production process, with meetings, one-on-ones and output measures. Horowitz says if you read one book on management, read this one, and Andreessen calls it the best ever written.
High Output Management
Grove on strategic inflection points, the moments when a business has to change completely or die. Horowitz says it taught him what making the hardest decision of your life feels like.
Only the Paranoid Survive
Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings explains the company's unusual culture of high pay, candid feedback and few rules. Horowitz says it will make you question all of your management assumptions.
No Rules Rules
John Doerr's guide to OKRs, the goal-setting system used at Intel and Google. Reid Hoffman says first-time founders and seasoned CEOs alike will find useful tools in it.
Measure What Matters
Better decisions
Books about judgment, uncertainty and how smart people get things wrong.
Nobel winner Daniel Kahneman explains the two systems in our heads and the predictable mistakes they make. Both Sam Altman and Marc Andreessen have recommended it.
Thinking, Fast and Slow
Former poker champion Annie Duke on making decisions when you can't know the outcome, and not judging a choice only by how it turned out. Andreessen put it on his 2018 reading list.
Thinking in Bets
A dialogue between a philosopher and a young man about Adlerian psychology and freeing yourself from other people's expectations. Andreessen put it on his 2018 reading list.
The Courage to Be Disliked
The story of Long-Term Capital Management, a hedge fund of Nobel winners that nearly broke Wall Street in 1998. Horowitz says every leader should know how smart people get things that wrong.
When Genius Failed
Leaders, outsiders and comebacks
Biographies and memoirs Horowitz and Altman use to think about leadership and culture.
A biography of Toussaint Louverture, the former slave who led the Haitian Revolution. Horowitz says any CEO who needs to change a culture should read it.
Black Spartacus
Shaka Senghor's memoir of going from gangs to nearly two decades in prison to bestselling author. Horowitz says there is no better story of learning to lead yourself before you lead anyone else.
Writing My Wrongs
A biography of the leader who unified the tribes of Arabia into a single kingdom. Horowitz calls it absolutely astounding and says Ibn Saud's skills are the ones that translate across every culture.
Ibn Saud
The story of Seymour Cray and the small teams who built the world's fastest computers. Sam Altman singled it out as particularly good.
The Supermen
Why people join movements
Marc Andreessen's picks on mass movements, life under totalitarian rule and how ordinary people resist it.
A longshoreman-philosopher's short 1951 study of why people join mass movements. Andreessen calls it a brilliant book on the nature of mass movements.
The True Believer
Nobel poet Czeslaw Milosz on how intellectuals in postwar Poland talked themselves into serving the regime. Andreessen calls it the definitive work on intellectual life under totalitarianism.
The Captive Mind
Vaclav Havel's essay on how ordinary people can resist a system simply by refusing to live within its lies. Andreessen recommends it alongside The Captive Mind.
The Power of the Powerless
Culture, history and human nature
Andreessen's books on how religion, family and ideas shaped the way we think, plus a book Sam Altman recommends on evolution in action.
An 1864 study of how religion and family shaped the institutions of ancient Greece and Rome. Andreessen calls it the single best book he has found on who we are and how we got here.
The Ancient City
Thomas Sowell explains that most political fights come from two different views of human nature. Andreessen has recommended it.
A Conflict of Visions
Joseph Henrich argues that Western psychology is unusual and traces how it developed over centuries. Andreessen has recommended it.
The WEIRDest People in the World
A Pulitzer-winning account of biologists watching evolution happen in real time on the Galapagos. Sam Altman named it as a recommended book.
The Beak of the Finch
AI and the networked future
Reid Hoffman's picks on networks, AI and fixing government technology.
Joshua Cooper Ramo argues that networks now shape power, money and security, and that leaders need a new instinct to see them. Reid Hoffman said it is the one book to read to understand the networked age.
The Seventh Sense
DeepMind co-founder Mustafa Suleyman on what AI and synthetic biology could do to the world, and how to contain the risks. Hoffman calls it the best analysis yet of what AI means.
The Coming Wave
Jennifer Pahlka, former US deputy CTO, explains why government technology so often fails and how to fix it. Hoffman calls it one of the best policy books ever written.
Recoding America