Top business books recs
Recent non‑fiction picks circulating this weekend skew practical — highlights: Built to Last, The Hard Thing About Hard Things, Lost and Founder, Amp It Up, Dare to Lead, and Worked For Me. ( ) These reads came up in entrepreneur and leadership threads as must‑reads for strategy, culture and operational grit. (x.com)
Built to Last was published after a six‑year Stanford research project that compared 18 “visionary” companies with close competitors and was first released in 1994. (en.wikipedia.org) Jim Collins, co‑author of that research, is the lead of a body of work whose books have sold more than 11 million copies worldwide. (jimcollins.com) Ben Horowitz’s The Hard Thing About Hard Things debuted in 2014 and draws on his experience as co‑founder and CEO of Opsware and as a16z co‑founder to frame leadership around “wartime” vs. “peacetime” decision‑making. (archive.org) Rand Fishkin’s Lost and Founder, originally published in 2018 and reissued in paperback in 2024, frames Moz’s growth as a roughly $45 million‑a‑year business and argues against standard Silicon Valley startup myths while pushing radical transparency. (books.google.com) Frank Slootman’s Amp It Up was published in January 2022 and was marketed as a Wall Street Journal, USA Today and Publishers Weekly bestseller drawing on his role as Snowflake CEO, the company that raised $3.4 billion in what was billed as the largest software IPO in September 2020. (books.google.com) Brené Brown’s Dare to Lead (2018) is presented as a research‑based leadership manual developed from interviews and studies with leaders and was promoted as a New York Times bestseller. (penguinrandomhouse.com) Colin Powell’s It Worked for Me: In Life and Leadership was published May 22, 2012, centers on his “Thirteen Rules” for leadership, and was released by HarperCollins as a New York Times bestselling leadership memoir. (books.google.com)
