Brad Feld
I'm a VC at Foundry. I live in Colorado, invest in software and Internet companies around the US, run marathons, and love to read.
20+ Book Recommendations by Brad Feld
The Psychology of Money
Morgan Housel
The Chaos Kind
Barry Eisler
The assassins of Barry Eisler's #1 bestseller The Killer Collective are back--and this time, it's chaos. Assistant US Attorney Alondra Diaz hates traffickers. And she's determined to put one of America's most powerful financiers, Andrew Schrader, in prison forever for his crimes against children. But Schrader has videos implicating some of the most powerful members of the US national security state. To eliminate Diaz, the powers that be bring in a contractor: Marvin Manus, an implacable assassin whose skills have been forged in intelligence, the military, and the hardest prisons. Enter former Marine sniper Dox and black-ops veteran Daniel Larison with an unusual assignment: not to kill Diaz, but to keep her alive. A lot of players are determined to acquire the videos and the blackmail power they represent. But with Seattle sex-crimes detective Livia Lone, "natural causes" killer John Rain, and ex-Mossad honey-trap specialist Delilah, the good guys might just have a chance. They're not going to play by anyone else's rules. They're not going to play by any rules at all. They want a different kind of fight. The chaos kind.The Entrepreneur’s Weekly Nietzsche
Dave Jilk
The Entrepreneur's Weekly Nietzsche
Dave Jilk
The New Builders
Seth Levine
Despite popular belief to the contrary, entrepreneurship in the United States is dying. It has been since before the Great Recession of 2008, and the negative trend in American entrepreneurship has been accelerated by the Covid pandemic. New firms are being started at a slower rate, are employing fewer workers, and are being formed disproportionately in just a few major cities in the U.S. At the same time, large chains are opening more locations. Companies such as Amazon with their "deliver everything and anything" are rapidly displacing Main Street businesses. In The New Builders, we tell the stories of the next generation of entrepreneurs -- and argue for the future of American entrepreneurship. That future lies in surprising places -- and will in particular rely on the success of women, black and brown entrepreneurs. Our country hasn't yet even recognized the identities of the New Builders, let alone developed strategies to support them. Our misunderstanding is driven by a core misperception. Consider a "typical" American entrepreneur. Think about the entrepreneur who appears on TV, the business leader making headlines during the pandemic. Think of the type of businesses she or he is building, the college or business school they attended, the place they grew up. The image you probably conjured is that of a young, white male starting a technology business. He's likely in Silicon Valley. Possibly New York or Boston. He's self-confident, versed in the ins and outs of business funding and has an extensive (Ivy League?) network of peers and mentors eager to help his business thrive, grow and make millions, if not billions. You’d think entrepreneurship is thriving, and helping the United States maintain its economic power. You'd be almost completely wrong. The dominant image of an entrepreneur as a young white man starting a tech business on the coasts isn't correct at all. Today's American entrepreneurs, the people who drive critical parts of our economy, are more likely to be female and non-white. In fact, the number of women-owned businesses has increased 31 times between 1972 and 2018 according to the Kauffman Foundation (in 1972, women-owned businesses accounted for just 4.6% of all firms; in 2018 that figure was 40%). The fastest-growing group of female entrepreneurs are women of color, who are responsible for 64% of new women-owned businesses being created. In a few years, we believe women will make up more than half of the entrepreneurs in America. The age of the average American entrepreneur also belies conventional wisdom: It's 42. The average age of the most successful entrepreneurs -- those in the top .01% in terms of their company's growth in the first five years -- is 45. These are the New Builders. Women, people of color, immigrants and people over 40. We're failing them. And by doing so, we are failing ourselves. In this book, you'll learn: How the definition of business success in America today has grown corporate and around the concepts of growth, size, and consumption. Why and how our collective understanding of "entrepreneurship" has dangerously narrowed. Once a broad term including people starting businesses of all types, entrepreneurship has come to describe only the brash technology founders on the way to becoming big. Who are the fastest growing groups of entrepreneurs? What are they working on? What drives them? The real engine that drove Silicon Valley’s entrepreneurs. The government had a much bigger role than is widely known The extent to which entrepreneurs and small businesses are woven through our history, and the ways we have forgotten women and people of color who owned small businesses in the past. How we're increasingly afraid to fail The role small businesses are playing saving the wilderness, small towns and redlined communities What we can do to turn the decline in entrepreneurship around, especially be supporting the people who are courageously starting small companies today.Trampled by Unicorns
Maelle Gavet
A Wall Street Journal Bestseller An insider’s revealing and in-depth examination of Big Tech’s failure to keep its foundational promises and the steps the industry can take to course-correct in order to make a positive impact on the world. Trampled by Unicorns: Big Tech’s Empathy Problem and How to Fix It explores how technology has progressed humanity’s most noble pursuits, while also grappling with the origins of the industry’s destructive empathy deficit and the practical measures Big Tech can take to self-regulate and make it right again. Author Maëlle Gavet examines the tendency for many of Big Tech’s stars to stray from their user-first ideals and make products that actually profoundly damage their customers and ultimately society. Offering an account of the world of tech startups in the United States and Europe—from Amazon, Google, and Facebook to Twitter, Airbnb, and Uber (to name a few)—Trampled by Unicorns argues that the causes and consequences of Big Tech’s failures originate from four main sources: the Valley’s cultural insularity, the hyper-growth business model, the sector’s stunning lack of diversity, and a dangerous self-sustaining ecosystem. However, the book is not just an account of how an industry came off the rails, but also a passionate call to action on how to get it back on track. Gavet, a leading technology executive and former CEO of Ozon, an executive vice president at Priceline Group, and chief operating officer of Compass, formulates a clear call to action for industry leaders, board members, employees, and consumers/users to drive the change necessary to create better, more sustainable businesses—and the steps Western governments are likely to take should tech leaders fail to do so. Steps that include reformed tax codes, reclassification of platforms as information companies, new labor laws, and algorithmic transparency and oversight. Trampled by Unicorns’ exploration of the promise and dangers of technology is perfect for anyone with an interest in entrepreneurship, tech, and global commerce, and a hope of technology’s all-empowering prospect. An illuminating book full of insights, Trampled by Unicorns describes a realistic path forward, even as it uncovers and explains the errors of the past. As Gavet puts it, “we don’t need less tech, we need more empathetic tech.” And how that crucial distinction can be achieved by the tech companies themselves, driving change as governments actively pave the road ahead.More Good Jobs
Martin Babinec
I deeply believe that entrepreneurship and community is the path forward for our global economy. My long time friend @MartinBabinec has a new book out called More Good Jobs and is available for $0.99 this week: https://t.co/PYMDOZd7j0 - Bonus, it includes a foreword from me. https://t.co/kkl65H5U09
The Great Influenza
John M. Barry
An account of the deadly influenza epidemic of 1918, which took the lives of millions of people around the world, examines its causes, its impact on early twentieth-century society, and the lasting implications of the crisis.The Startup Community Way
Brad Feld
How to create a thriving startup ecosystem in a location near you—a practical guide We are in the midst of a global startup revolution. The proliferation of digital technologies, a rising middle-class, and the quest for sustained economic growth have put entrepreneurship on the map for talent, governments, universities, and corporations everywhere. Along with the widely-recognized opportunity presented by entrepreneurship has come a realization that the success of today’s startups is determined to a large degree by the complex global and uniquely local environments in which they operate. It is the nature of these external factors—and more importantly, the quality of their linkages with each other—that explains why some places are consistently able to produce high-impact entrepreneurship while many other places are not. No one tells this story better than acclaimed author and investor Brad Feld and Ian Hathaway, an entrepreneurship expert and startup advisor. The Startup Community Way: Evolving an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem—the much-anticipated sequel to Feld’s bestselling book Startup Communities: Building an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem in Your City—explores what makes startup communities thrive and how to improve collaboration in rapidly-changing environments. The Startup Community Way is a governing philosophy for startup communities, rooted in the theory of complex systems and the practice of community-building in many contexts. This book establishes a robust framework and shares lessons from around the globe that illustrate how to create a flourishing startup ecosystem anywhere. Each of the crucial aspects of community-building, such as the organizing principles of community, the attributes of leadership, the goals and values of a startup community, the application of systems thinking, and methods for changing behavior and mindset are discussed in detail. Advancing the practice of building startup communities, this book: Offers practical, real-world advice for entrepreneurs, community builders, and other stakeholders who want to harness the power of startups in their city Advances a new framework for effective startup community building grounded in complex adaptive systems and systems thinking Discusses the role of key institutions—such as governments, corporations, and universities—in supporting startup communities Explores the value of key stakeholders and why leaders are crucial for bringing communities together Includes contributions from leading entrepreneurial voices in the field The Startup Community Way is a must-have resource for entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, C-suite executives, business and community leaders, and anyone wishing to understand how startup communities work anywhere in the world.The Startup Community Way
Brad Feld
How to create a thriving startup ecosystem in a location near you—a practical guide We are in the midst of a global startup revolution. The proliferation of digital technologies, a rising middle-class, and the quest for sustained economic growth have put entrepreneurship on the map for talent, governments, universities, and corporations everywhere. Along with the widely-recognized opportunity presented by entrepreneurship has come a realization that the success of today’s startups is determined to a large degree by the complex global and uniquely local environments in which they operate. It is the nature of these external factors—and more importantly, the quality of their linkages with each other—that explains why some places are consistently able to produce high-impact entrepreneurship while many other places are not. No one tells this story better than acclaimed author and investor Brad Feld and Ian Hathaway, an entrepreneurship expert and startup advisor. The Startup Community Way: Evolving an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem—the much-anticipated sequel to Feld’s bestselling book Startup Communities: Building an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem in Your City—explores what makes startup communities thrive and how to improve collaboration in rapidly-changing environments. The Startup Community Way is a governing philosophy for startup communities, rooted in the theory of complex systems and the practice of community-building in many contexts. This book establishes a robust framework and shares lessons from around the globe that illustrate how to create a flourishing startup ecosystem anywhere. Each of the crucial aspects of community-building, such as the organizing principles of community, the attributes of leadership, the goals and values of a startup community, the application of systems thinking, and methods for changing behavior and mindset are discussed in detail. Advancing the practice of building startup communities, this book: Offers practical, real-world advice for entrepreneurs, community builders, and other stakeholders who want to harness the power of startups in their city Advances a new framework for effective startup community building grounded in complex adaptive systems and systems thinking Discusses the role of key institutions—such as governments, corporations, and universities—in supporting startup communities Explores the value of key stakeholders and why leaders are crucial for bringing communities together Includes contributions from leading entrepreneurial voices in the field The Startup Community Way is a must-have resource for entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, C-suite executives, business and community leaders, and anyone wishing to understand how startup communities work anywhere in the world.Startup Boards
Brad Feld
An essential guide to understanding the dynamics of a startup's board of directors Let's face it, as founders and entrepreneurs, you have a lot on your plate—getting to your minimum viable product, developing customer interaction, hiring team members, and managing the accounts/books. Sooner or later, you have a board of directors, three to five (or even seven) Type A personalities who seek your attention and at times will tell you what to do. While you might be hesitant to form a board, establishing an objective outside group is essential for startups, especially to keep you on track, call you out when you flail, and in some cases, save you from yourself. In Startup Boards, Brad Feld—a Boulder, Colorado-based entrepreneur turned-venture capitalist—shares his experience in this area by talking about the importance of having the right board members on your team and how to manage them well. Along the way, he shares valuable insights on various aspects of the board, including how they can support you, help you understand your startup's milestones and get to them faster, and hold you accountable. Details the process of choosing board members, including interviewing many people, checking references, and remembering that there should be no fear in rejecting a wrong fit Explores the importance of running great meetings, mixing social time with business time, and much more Recommends being a board member yourself at some other organization so you see the other side of the equation Engaging and informative, Startup Boards is a practical guide to one of the most important pieces of the startup puzzle.Ecosystem Arabia
Amir Hegazi
What You Do Is Who You Are
Ben Horowitz
Ben Horowitz, a leading venture capitalist, modern management expert, and New York Times bestselling author, combines lessons both from history and from modern organizational practice with practical and often surprising advice to help executives build cultures that can weather both good and bad times. Ben Horowitz has long been fascinated by history, and particularly by how people behave differently than you’d expect. The time and circumstances in which they were raised often shapes them—yet a few leaders have managed to shape their times. In What You Do Is Who You Are, he turns his attention to a question crucial to every organization: how do you create and sustain the culture you want? To Horowitz, culture is how a company makes decisions. It is the set of assumptions employees use to resolve everyday problems: should I stay at the Red Roof Inn, or the Four Seasons? Should we discuss the color of this product for five minutes or thirty hours? If culture is not purposeful, it will be an accident or a mistake. What You Do Is Who You Are explains how to make your culture purposeful by spotlighting four models of leadership and culture-building—the leader of the only successful slave revolt, Haiti’s Toussaint Louverture; the Samurai, who ruled Japan for seven hundred years and shaped modern Japanese culture; Genghis Khan, who built the world’s largest empire; and Shaka Senghor, an American ex-con who created the most formidable prison gang in the yard and ultimately transformed prison culture. Horowitz connects these leadership examples to modern case-studies, including how Louverture’s cultural techniques were applied (or should have been) by Reed Hastings at Netflix, Travis Kalanick at Uber, and Hillary Clinton, and how Genghis Khan’s vision of cultural inclusiveness has parallels in the work of Don Thompson, the first African-American CEO of McDonalds, and of Maggie Wilderotter, the CEO who led Frontier Communications. Horowitz then offers guidance to help any company understand its own strategy and build a successful culture. What You Do Is Who You Are is a journey through culture, from ancient to modern. Along the way, it answers a question fundamental to any organization: who are we? How do people talk about us when we’re not around? How do we treat our customers? Are we there for people in a pinch? Can we be trusted? Who you are is not the values you list on the wall. It’s not what you say in company-wide meeting. It’s not your marketing campaign. It’s not even what you believe. Who you are is what you do. This book aims to help you do the things you need to become the kind of leader you want to be—and others want to follow.Sell More Faster
Amos Schwartzfarb
From Amos Schwartzfarb, serial entrepreneur and veteran Managing Director of Techstars Austin comes the elemental, essential, and effective strategy that will help any startup identify, build, and grow their customers from day 1 Most startups fail because they can’t grow revenue early or quickly enough. Startup CEOs will tell you their early missteps can be attributed to not finding their product market fit early enough, or at all. Founders overspend time and money trying to find product-market fit and make false starts, follow the wrong signals, and struggle to generate enough revenue to scale and raise funding. And all the while they never really knew who their customers were, what product they really needed, and why they needed it. But it doesn’t have to be this way, and founders don’t need to face it alone. Through expert guidance and experienced mentorship, every startup can avoid these pitfalls. The ultimate guide for building and scaling any startup sales organization, Sell More Faster shares the proven systems, methods, and lessons from Managing Director of Techstars Austin and sales expert Amos Schwartzfarb. Hear from founders of multi-million-dollar companies and CEOs who learned firsthand with Techstars, the leading mentorship-driven startup accelerator and venture capital firm that has invested in and mentored thousands of companies, collectively representing billions of dollars in funding and market cap. Schwartzfarb, and the Techstars Worldwide Network of more than 10,000 mentors do one thing better than anyone: help startup entrepreneurs succeed. They know how to sell, how to hire people who know how to sell, and how to use sales to gain venture funding—and now you can, too. Sell More Faster delivers the critical strategies and guidance necessary to avoid and manage the hazards all startups face and beat the odds. This valuable resource delivers: A comprehensive playbook to identify product market direction and product market fit Expert advice on building a diverse sales team and how to identify, recruit, and train the kinds of team members you need Models and best practices for sales funnels, pricing, compensation, and scaling A roadmap to create a repeatable and measurable path to find product-market fit Aggregated knowledge from Techstars leaders and industry experts Sell More Faster is an indispensable guide for entrepreneurs seeking product-market fit, building their sales team, developing a growth strategy, and chasing accelerated, sustained selling success.Breach
Eliot Peper
A hacker is drawn out of hiding and into an epic geopolitical showdown in the frighteningly plausible conclusion to Eliot Peper's critically acclaimed Analog Series. When you've betrayed your revolutionary cadre, an off-grid fight club on a remote tropical island is a good place to hide--or die. For notorious ex-hacker Emily Kim, the outcome of each fight makes little difference. Black-market blood sport is the perfect self-imposed penance. But when she stumbles on a plot to overthrow the corporate empire that provides the ubiquitous global feed, Emily discovers her old friends have been targeted. Warning them will force her out into the open, back on-grid, and directly into danger. Emily can't escape the past. But can she seize the future? Emily's quest for redemption spirals into an all-out shadow war. What constitutes justice in a world run by algorithms? The feed--and Emily--must be reinvented. Or destroyed.Power to the Startup People
Sarah E. Brown
"Provides the tools and tips to navigate the world of tech startups and make better decisions about your career along the way"--Back cover.The Killer Collective
Barry Eisler
When a joint FBI-Seattle Police investigation into an international child pornography ring gets too close to powerful enemies, sex-crimes detective Livia Lone becomes the target of a hit that barely goes awry, and suspects that the FBI itself was behind it.The Left Hand of Darkness
Ursula K. Le Guin
Startup Life
Brad Feld
Real life insights on what it takes to make it in a relationship with an entrepreneur Entrepreneurs are always on the go, looking for the next "startup" challenge. And while they lead very intensely rewarding lives, time is always short and relationships are often long-distant and stressed because of extended periods apart. Coping with these, and other obstacles, are critical if an entrepreneur and their partner intend on staying together—and staying happy. In Startup Life, Brad Feld—a Boulder, Colorado-based entrepreneur turned-venture capitalist—shares his own personal experiences with his wife Amy, offering a series of rich insights into successfully leading a balanced life as a human being who wants to play as hard as he works and who wants to be as fulfilled in life and in work. With this book, Feld distills his twenty years of experience in this field to addresses how the village of startup people can put aside their workaholic ways and lead rewarding lives in all respects. Includes real-life examples of entrepreneurial couples who have had successful relationships and what works for them Provides practical advice for adapting to change and overcoming the inevitable ups and downs associated with the entrepreneurial lifestyle Written by Brad Feld, a thought-leader in this field who has been an early-stage investor and successful entrepreneur for more than twenty years While there's no "secret formula" to relationship success in the world of the entrepreneur, there are ways to making navigation of this territory easier. Startup Life is a well-rounded guide that has the insights and advice you need to succeed in both your personal and business life.Recruit Rockstars
Jeff Hyman
Ninety percent of business problems are actually recruiting problems in disguise. If you're filling your company's vacant positions with B-Players, you're playing with fire. Instead, hire Rockstars to build an organization with limitless potential. Recruit Rockstars shows you how to find, hire, and keep the best of the best. Top-tier executive recruiter Jeff Hyman has hired more than three thousand people over the course of his career. Now, he reveals his bulletproof 10-step method for landing the very best talent, based on data instead of gut feel. From sourcing and interviewing to closing and onboarding, you'll learn how to attract winners like a magnet and avoid the mistakes that result in bad hires. Assembling a team of driven and innovative Rockstars is the most powerful competitive advantage you can have in today's ever-changing business world. Recruit Rockstars will help you nail your numbers, impress your investors, and crush your competitors.A Second Chance
Catherine Hoke
A Uterus Is a Feature, Not a Bug
Sarah Lacy
Entering Startupland
Jeffrey Bussgang
Many professionals aspire to work for a start-up. Executives from large companies view them as models to help them adapt to today's dynamic innovation economy. Yes, start-ups look magical, but they can also be chaotic and inaccessible. Many books are written for those who aspire to be founders, but a company only has one or two of those. What's needed are hundreds of employees to do the day-to-day work required to operate a fledgling company and grow it into something of value. This practical, step-by-step guide provides an insider's analysis of various start-up roles and responsibilities, including product development, marketing, growth strategy, and sales, to help you figure out if you want to join a start-up and what to expect if you do. You'll gain insight into how successful start-ups operate and learn to assess which of them you might want to join--or emulate. Inside this book you'll find: A tour of typical start-up roles to help you determine which one might be the best fit for you Profiles of start-up executives in many different functions who share their stories and describe their responsibilities A practical approach to your job search that will help you position yourself to find the start-up opportunity that's right for you Written by an experienced venture capitalist, entrepreneur, and Harvard Business School professor, Entering StartUpLand will guide you as you seek your ideal entry point into this popular, cutting-edge organizational paradigm.All Over the Place
Geraldine DeRuiter
Most travel memoirs involve a button-nosed protagonist nursing a broken heart who, rather than tearfully watching The Princess Bride while eating an entire 5-gallon vat of ice cream directly out of the container (like a normal person), instead decides to travel the world, inevitably falling for some chiseled stranger with bulging pectoral muscles and a disdain for wearing clothing above the waist. This is not that kind of book. Geraldine met the love of her life long before this story began, on a bus in Seattle surrounded by drunk college kids. She gets lost constantly, wherever she goes. And her nose would never, ever be considered “button-like.” Hilarious, irreverent and heartfelt, All Over the Place chronicles the five-year period that kicked off when Geraldine got laid off from a job she loved and took off to travel the world. Those years taught her a great number of things, though the ability to read a map was not one of them. She has only a vague idea of where Russia is, but she understands her Russian father now better than ever before. She learned that at least half of what she thought was her mother's functional insanity was actually an equally incurable condition called “being Italian.” She learned about unemployment and brain tumors and lost luggage and lost opportunities and just getting lost, in countless terminals and cabs and hotel lobbies across the globe. And she learned what it's like to travel the world with someone you already know and love. How that person can help you make sense of things, and can, by some sort of alchemy, make foreign cities and far-off places feel like home. In All Over the Place, Geraldine imparts the insight she gained while being far from home—wry, surprising, but always sincere, advice about marriage, family, health, and happiness that come from getting lost and finding the unexpected.March
Andrew Aydin
Honors and awards for this book: National Book Award Winner, Young People's Literature, 2016; #1 New York Times and Washington Post Bestseller; First graphic novel to receive a Robert F. Kennedy Book Award; Winner of the Eisner Award; A Coretta Scott King Honor Book; One of YALSA's Outstanding Books for the College Bound; One of Reader's Digest's Graphic Novels Every Grown-Up Should Read.