Founder health
So Good They Can’t Ignore You
Cal Newport
Skill before passion. Build rare, valuable abilities and the love for the work tends to follow.
Home / Growth / Recommended Readings
Recommended readings · 43 books
Read like a founder.
The books that shape how we build companies, and how we try to live while doing it. One line on each about why it matters.
01
Founder health
Great companies need founders who last. Start here: craft, focus and a purpose big enough for the decade.
Founder health
Deep Work
Cal Newport
The value of focused, undistracted work, and how to protect time for it.
Founder health
The Second Mountain
David Brooks
From a life of achievement to a life of commitment. It is the idea behind “build and grow together”.
Founder health
Areté
Brian Johnson
Heroic’s founder on activating your potential through wisdom, discipline and love.
02
Mind and resilience
How to think under pressure, recover from setbacks and keep growing.
Mind and resilience
Mindset
Carol S. Dweck
The difference between a fixed and a growth mindset, and why it decides how founders handle failure.
Mind and resilience
Grit
Angela Duckworth
Passion plus perseverance beats talent over the long run. That is the founder’s equation.
Mind and resilience
Think Again
Adam Grant
The discipline of changing your mind, essential in customer discovery and every pivot.
Mind and resilience
Learned Optimism
Martin E. P. Seligman
How the way you explain setbacks to yourself shapes whether you keep going.
Mind and resilience
Can’t Hurt Me
David Goggins
An extreme case study in mental toughness and the limits we set for ourselves.
Mind and resilience
The Happiness Advantage
Shawn Achor
Why well-being drives performance, not the other way round.
Mind and resilience
Think and Grow Rich
Napoleon Hill
The classic on definiteness of purpose, persistence and the mindset behind building wealth.
03
Habits and discipline
The small systems that decide what you actually do every day.
Habits and discipline
Atomic Habits
James Clear
Systems over goals: how small, consistent changes add up to remarkable results.
Habits and discipline
The 5AM Club
Robin Sharma
Owning the first hours of the day before the company claims them.
Habits and discipline
The War of Art
Steven Pressfield
Naming the resistance that stops creators, and turning professional about the work.
Habits and discipline
Getting Things Done
David Allen
A trusted system for everything on your plate, so your mind can focus.
Habits and discipline
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
Stephen R. Covey
Principles of personal and interpersonal effectiveness that still hold up.
04
Focus and mastery
Doing deep, excellent work in a world built for distraction.
Focus and mastery
Digital Minimalism
Cal Newport
Taking back attention from the tools that were meant to serve it.
Focus and mastery
Essentialism
Greg McKeown
The disciplined pursuit of less, the core skill of an early-stage founder.
Focus and mastery
Flow
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
The psychology of optimal experience and how to create the conditions for it.
Focus and mastery
Peak
Anders Ericsson & Robert Pool
Deliberate practice: how expertise is actually built.
Focus and mastery
Mastery
George Leonard
Loving the plateau: the long, patient path to being excellent at anything.
05
Stoic and timeless wisdom
Ancient guidance that reads like it was written for founders.
Stoic and timeless wisdom
Meditations
Marcus Aurelius
An emperor’s personal notebook on duty, calm and doing the work in front of you.
Stoic and timeless wisdom
Letters from a Stoic
Seneca
Practical letters on time, fear, wealth and friendship. Two thousand years old and still current.
Stoic and timeless wisdom
The Obstacle Is the Way
Ryan Holiday
Turning setbacks into material. Stoicism for people who have to act.
Stoic and timeless wisdom
Ego Is the Enemy
Ryan Holiday
How ego sabotages founders in aspiration, success and failure alike.
Stoic and timeless wisdom
The Power of Now
Eckhart Tolle
Presence as an antidote to the constant future-tripping of building a company.
Stoic and timeless wisdom
The Four Agreements
Don Miguel Ruiz
Four simple commitments for clearer relationships and less self-inflicted suffering.
Stoic and timeless wisdom
Siddhartha
Hermann Hesse
A short novel about a seeker who learns that wisdom can’t be taught, only lived.
06
Meaning and purpose
Why you are building, and what a good life looks like along the way.
Meaning and purpose
Man’s Search for Meaning
Viktor E. Frankl
Why meaning, not pleasure or power, is what carries people through hardship.
Meaning and purpose
The Alchemist
Paulo Coelho
A short fable about following your personal legend and noticing the signs along the way.
Meaning and purpose
The Waking
Michael Davidson
A Canadian entrepreneur’s manual for designing every area of life: mind, body, family, relationships, work, money and spirit.
07
Energy and health
Sleep, movement and strength: the physical infrastructure of performance.
Energy and health
Why We Sleep
Matthew Walker
The science of sleep, the performance tool founders sacrifice first.
Energy and health
Spark
John J. Ratey
How exercise transforms the brain: mood, focus and learning.
Energy and health
Forever Strong
Gabrielle Lyon
Muscle as the organ of longevity. Strength for the decades a company takes.
08
Leadership and relationships
Leading people, earning trust and owning outcomes.
Leadership and relationships
Daring Greatly
Brené Brown
Vulnerability as the root of courage, trust and real leadership.
Leadership and relationships
Extreme Ownership
Jocko Willink & Leif Babin
Leaders own everything in their world. No excuses, no blame.
Leadership and relationships
How to Win Friends and Influence People
Dale Carnegie
The timeless fundamentals of relationships, persuasion and selling.
Leadership and relationships
Never Split the Difference
Chris Voss & Tahl Raz
A former FBI hostage negotiator on tactical empathy. Invaluable in fundraising, sales and hiring.
09
Building a company
Our own shelf: the practical books on starting and scaling.
Building a company
Zero to One
Peter Thiel
Building something genuinely new, and why monopoly-level focus matters.
Building a company
The Lean Startup
Eric Ries
Build, measure, learn: validated learning as the engine of a startup.
Building a company
The Mom Test
Rob Fitzpatrick
How to talk to customers so they tell you the truth. The best short book on discovery.
Building a company
The Hard Thing About Hard Things
Ben Horowitz
The honest, unglamorous reality of running a company when nothing is easy.
Building a company
Tools of Titans
Tim Ferriss
Routines, tactics and habits from hundreds of top performers, to borrow selectively.
On the shoulders of Heroic
Want the ideas faster?
The personal-growth shelves draw on the canon distilled by Heroic, whose Philosopher’s Notes summarize more than 750 of the best books on psychology, philosophy and performance.
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