Experts > Eric Ries

Eric Ries's Top Book Recommendations

Founder/Long-Term Stock Exchange

Want to know what books Eric Ries recommends on their reading list? We've researched interviews, social media posts, podcasts, and articles to build a comprehensive list of Eric Ries's favorite book recommendations of all time.

1
WTF? can be an expression of amazement or an expression of dismay. In today’s economy, we have far too much dismay along with our amazement, and technology bears some of the blame. In this combination of memoir, business strategy guide, and call to action, Tim O'Reilly, Silicon Valley’s leading intellectual and the founder of O’Reilly Media, explores the upside and the potential downsides of today's WTF? technologies. 

What is the future when an increasing number of jobs can be performed by intelligent machines instead of people, or done only by people in partnership with those...
more

Eric RiesAn important examination on how technology can shape a better future by one of the smartest thinkers on the subject. (Source)

Cristina RiesenI am reading Tim O' Reilly's "What's the Future and Why It Is Up to Us" as the future of humanity and technology is one of topics I am very passionate about. As Tim says: "the future that we can imagine shouldn't be a dystopian vision of robots that are wiping us out, of climate change that is going to destroy our society. It should be a vision of how we will rise to the challenges that we face... (Source)

Bryan JohnsonI loved [this book]. Especially [the] sections on algorithms and focusing on improving human ability for the future of jobs. (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

2
"A stunning memoir from the astronaut who spent a record-breaking year aboard the International Space Station – a candid account of his remarkable voyage, the journeys that preceded it, and his colorful formative years." Inside book cover comments. less
Recommended by Eric Ries, Anoop Anthony, and 2 others.

Eric RiesKelly spent a record-breaking year in space and this book is a fascinating account of that time and what he learned about humanity and himself. (Source)

Anoop AnthonyReading Endurance puts things in perspective; some of us have callings with remarkable purpose — the very future of humankind — at significant risk to one's own life and creature comforts. It may sound corny, but it makes one wonder: can the work we do in our industries and businesses have a higher purpose than just commercial success? (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

3
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...
more

Brad FeldThe world is full of books for founders, but there are very few books for joiners. Entering StartUpLand provides an invaluable, step-by-step guide to various startup roles and responsibilities. A must-read for both aspiring and experienced visitors to StartUpLand! (Source)

Eric RiesJust as the The Lean Startup has become a must-read for founders, Entering StartUpLand should be required reading for any joiner. The book is a sweeping and insightful view into a startup's full range of operations and entry points. I highly recommend it. (Source)

Danielle MorrillJoining startups early in my career changed the trajectory of my career, and my life, in ways I never could have imagined. For those curious and brave enough to take a detour from the more predictable path of corporate life, Entering StartUpLand is a valuable guide to making the leap and understanding how startups work. I wish this book had been around for me, my coworkers, and my employees these... (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

4
The "necessary and incisive" (Roxane Gay) account of the discrimination case that "has blown open a conversation about the status of women" in the workplace (The New York Times)

In 2015, Ellen K. Pao sued a powerhouse Silicon Valley venture capital firm, calling out workplace discrimination and retaliation against women and other underrepresented groups. Her suit rocked the tech world--and exposed its toxic culture and its homogeneity. Her message overcame negative PR attacks that took aim at her professional conduct and her personal life, and she won widespread public...
more
Recommended by Eric Ries, Audrey Russo, and 2 others.

Eric RiesA prominent whistleblower chronicles her experience fighting discrimination against women and people of color in tech. (Source)

Audrey RussoQuestion: What books would you recommend to young people interested in your career path? Answer: Anything by Peter Senge. The Hard Thing About Hard Things – Ben Horowitz Once you are Lucky, Twice you are good – Sara Lacey Revolutionary Wealth – Alvin Toffler Black Swan – Taleb Reset: My Fight for Inclusion and Lasting Change, by Ellen Pao. Creative Class – Richard Florida Creativity Inc. by Ed... (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

5
From the founding editor of The Wall Street Journal's sports section comes a bold new theory of leadership drawn from the elite captains who inspired their teams to achieve extraordinary success.

Named one of the best business books of the year by CNBC, strategy+business, Forbes, and SI.com

The secret to winning is not what you think it is.
It's not the coach. It's not the star.
It's not money. It's not a strategy.
It's something else entirely.

Several years ago, Sam Walker...
more
Recommended by Ryan Holiday, Eric Ries, and 2 others.

Ryan HolidayThis was definitely the best business/leadership book I read this year. It proves that we have really missed what makes great teams and organizations work. It’s not star players, it’s not even how much they can spend–it’s whether they have great captains. Walker’s chapter on “carrying the water” had some great insights re: Ego is the Enemy and I think this incredibly well-written book should be... (Source)

Eric RiesA fascinating book about the one thing that the greatest sports teams in history have in common and the critical aspects of leadership they share. (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

6
An essential guide to understanding the dynamics of a startup's board of directorsLets 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... more
Recommended by Eric Ries, Steve Case, David Cohen, and 4 others.

Eric RiesIn addition to walking you through, in great detail, how a board functions, Brad has adopted many of the Lean Startup approaches to building, operating, and managing your board in a way that resembles continuous deployments. Any practitioner of Lean Startup would do well to use this approach to building their board. (Source)

Steve CaseI've had the opportunity to serve on a range of boards for companies at various stages in their lifecycle—so I know firsthand that building an effective board, and leveraging it wisely, is both a challenge and an opportunity. This new Brad Feld book will help you get it right. (Source)

David CohenI've been fortunate enough to sit on a few startup boards with Brad. His 'less is more' approach to board meetings keeps the process efficient and focused on strategy. If you have any role on a board of directors, stop messing with PowerPoint and read this book right now. I guarantee that you'll get far more satisfaction from your future interactions. (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

7
A behind-the-scenes look at the firm behind WordPress.com and the unique work culture that contributes to its phenomenal success50 million websites, or twenty percent of the entire web, use WordPress software. The force behind WordPress.com is a convention-defying company called Automattic, Inc., whose 120 employees work from anywhere in the world they wish, barely use email, and launch improvements to their products dozens of times a day. With a fraction of the resources of Google, Amazon, or Facebook, they have a similar impact on the future of the Internet. How is this possible? What's... more

Timothy FerrissIf you want to think differently about entrepreneurship, management, or life in general, read this book. (Source)

Guy KawasakiThe underlying concept - an 'expert' putting himself on the line as an employee - is just fantastic. And then the book gets better from there! I wish I had the balls to do this. (Source)

Eric RiesMost talk of the future of work is just speculation, but Berkun has actually worked there. The Year Without Pants is a brilliant, honest, and funny insider's story of life at a great company. (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

8
If you're feeling stressed out, overtaxed, under-appreciated, bullied, or abused because you work with a jerk, learn how to avoid, outwit, and disarm assholes—today.
 
Equally useful and entertaining, The Asshole Survival Guide delivers a cogent and methodical game plan when you find yourself working with a jerk—whether in the office, on the field, in the classroom, or just in life.  
 
Sutton starts with diagnosis—what kind of asshole problem, exactly, are you dealing with? From there, he provides field-tested, evidence-based, and sometimes surprising...
more
Recommended by Eric Ries, Nabeel Qadeer, and 2 others.

Eric RiesAn esteemed Stanford professor offers researched-back advice for managing asshole colleagues and bosses, and how to know recognize when the office asshole might be you. (Source)

Nabeel QadeerDon't judge a book by its cover. Its a great read - some chapters are extremely well thought out with theories supported by practical instances. Thoroughly enjoyed reading this .. at par, if not better than any autobiography or the likes. Highly recommended! 👍 #RehamKhanBook https://t.co/3HTaIaT9o2 (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

9
The New York Times bestselling authors of Switch and Made to Stick explore why certain brief experiences can jolt us and elevate us and change us—and how we can learn to create such extraordinary moments in our life and work.

While human lives are endlessly variable, our most memorable positive moments are dominated by four elements: elevation, insight, pride, and connection. If we embrace these elements, we can conjure more moments that matter. What if a teacher could design a lesson that he knew his students would remember twenty years later?...
more

Angela DuckworthI read this cover to cover and learned something new on each page. Beautifully written, brilliantly researched--I'm recommending it to everyone I know! (Source)

Eric RiesWhat if we could design experiences that have real impact for our families, our customers and employees? Master storytellers Chip and Dan Heath show how. (Source)

Adam GrantThe most interesting, immediately actionable book I’ve read in quite a while. I walked away with new ideas for motivating employees, delighting customers, engaging students, and even planning family vacations. If life is a series of moments, the Heath brothers have transformed how I plan to spend mine. (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

10
The definitive playbook by the pioneers of Growth Hacking, one of the hottest business methodologies in Silicon Valley and beyond.

It seems hard to believe today, but there was a time when Airbnb was the best-kept secret of travel hackers and couch surfers, Pinterest was a niche web site frequented only by bakers and crafters, LinkedIn was an exclusive network for C-suite executives and top-level recruiters, Facebook was MySpace's sorry step-brother, and Uber was a scrappy upstart that didn't stand a chance against the Goliath that was New York City Yellow Cabs.
more
Recommended by Nir Eyal, Eric Ries, Dan Olsen, and 9 others.

Nir EyalIt used to be that designers and engineers were responsible for developing new products, data teams were responsible for number-crunching reports, and marketers were responsible for acquiring and monetizing as many customers as possible. But today’s companies can’t afford to be slowed down by organizational silos. Here, growth-hacking pioneers Ellis and Brown show how to break down those... (Source)

Eric RiesIn an increasingly erratic business landscape where new competition can emerge overnight, customers’ loyalties can shift unexpectedly, and markets are constantly being disrupted, finding growth solutions fast is crucial for survival. Hacking Growth provides a compelling answer to this urgent need for speed, offering companies a methodology for finding and optimizing new strategies to increase... (Source)

Kyrylo TaranenkoThe book is new (2017) and growthhacking is a real trend right now. (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

Don't have time to read Eric Ries's favorite books? Read Shortform summaries.

Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:

  • Being comprehensive: you learn the most important points in the book
  • Cutting out the fluff: you focus your time on what's important to know
  • Interactive exercises: apply the book's ideas to your own life with our educators' guidance.
11
Every day, we make decisions on topics ranging from personal investments to schools for our children to the meals we eat to the causes we champion. Unfortunately, we often choose poorly. The reason, the authors explain, is that, being human, we all are susceptible to various biases that can lead us to blunder. Our mistakes make us poorer and less healthy; we often make bad decisions involving education, personal finance, health care, mortgages and credit cards, the family, and even the planet itself.

Thaler and Sunstein invite us to enter an alternative world, one that takes our...
more

Dan ArielyNudge is a very important book. One of the reasons Nudge is so important is because it’s taking these ideas and applying them to the policy domain. Here are the mistakes we make. Here are the ways marketers are trying to influence us. Here’s the way we might be able to fight back. If policymakers understood these principles, what could they do? The other important thing about the book is that it... (Source)

Eric RiesA pioneer in behavioral economics and just recently awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics, his classic book on how to make better decisions. (Source)

Ryan HolidayThis might feel like a weird book to include, but I think it presents another side of strategy that is too often forgotten. It’s not always about bold actors and strategic thrusts. Sometimes strategy is about subtle influence. Sometimes it is framing and small tweaks that change behavior. We can have big aims, but get there with little moves. This book has excellent examples of that kind of... (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

12
A Wall Street Journal Bestseller!

What are venture capitalists saying about your startup behind closed doors? And what can you do to influence that conversation?

If Silicon Valley is the greatest wealth-generating machine in the world, Sand Hill Road is its humming engine. That's where you'll find the biggest names in venture capital, including famed VC firm Andreessen Horowitz, where lawyer-turned-entrepreneur-turned-VC Scott Kupor serves as managing partner.

Whether you're trying to get a new company off the ground or scale an existing...
more
Recommended by Eric Schmidt, Sam Altman, Eric Ries, and 13 others.

Eric SchmidtAs someone who’s helped a small company become a huge, valuable company, I know firsthand the power of the startup ecosystem and entrepreneurship. This book is the definitive book on navigating VC as part of that. (Source)

Sam AltmanI’ve observed thousands of founders and thought a lot about what it takes to create something important and to achieve outlier success. Kupor’s book takes founders who want to do both through everything from how VCs raise money and evaluate deals, to how to think about term sheets and set up boards. It’s a valuable resource for any founder who wants to work with VCs. (Source)

Eric RiesWorth far more than its cover price... I wish I'd had it available to me when I was first looking for startup funding. (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

13
A real-life political thriller about an American financier in the Wild East of Russia, the murder of his principled young tax attorney, and his dangerous mission to expose the Kremlin's corruption.

Bill Browder's journey started on the South Side of Chicago and moved through Stanford Business School to the dog-eat-dog world of hedge fund investing in the 1990s. It continued in Moscow, where Browder made his fortune heading the largest investment fund in Russia after the Soviet Union's collapse. But when he exposed the corrupt oligarchs who were robbing the companies in which he was...
more

Eric RiesThis reads like a thriller, but is an urgent and important story about the dangers of Putin’s Russia and the events leading to the Magnitsky Act. (Source)

Anand Sanwal@geoffreysbatt @patrick_oshag 2/ Reminded a bit of the story of @Billbrowder as told in the remarkable book Red Notice which chronicles his investments in Russia very early before everyone saw the opportunity (Source)

Jonathan KayAm reading @Billbrowder's amazing book Red Notice. Did not know incredible story of Bill's dad, who got his @Princeton math PhD at age 20. Like many Jews of era, suffered massive discrimination, stigmatized because of his own dad's communism. Then Eleanor Roosevelt saves the day https://t.co/Bp5PFiIxm1 (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

14

Sprint

How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days

Dobre pomysły nie przychodzą same. Co więcej, droga między dobrym pomysłem a sukcesem koncepcji bywa usiana niepewnością i trudnymi chwilami. Mnożą się wątpliwości. Nie wiadomo, jak zacząć i na czym należy się skupić przede wszystkim. Czy lepiej zaangażować pojedynczą osobę, czy zespół? Jak rozpoznać odpowiednie rozwiązanie? Jak zyskać pewność, że właśnie ten pomysł odniesie sukces w prawdziwym życiu? I jak dowiedzieć się o tym wszystkim szybko — bez nieskutecznych burz mózgów i niekończących się dyskusji? Innymi słowy, jak podejmować dobre decyzje biznesowe?

Dzięki tej książce...
more
Recommended by Nir Eyal, Eric Ries, Ken Norton, and 17 others.

Eric RiesA fantastic, proven formula for moving from idea to prototyping to decision making within five days, based on a process he developed while working at Google and later GV. (Source)

Cat Williams-TreloarJake Knapp, John Zeratsky & Braden Kowitz "Sprint" - the go-to guide on how to sprint. You may not follow everything to the tee, but it's simple, clean and full of great examples of how to move fast with structure. (Source)

Javed KhatriThis book details the "sprint" process used at Google Ventures. We follow a similar process at Kustard to validate business ideas and to solve problems without wasting much time, money and energy. If you want to quickly validate an idea, this is a proven model and a must read. (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

15

What You Do Is Who You Are

How to Create Your Business Culture

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...
more

Andrew ChenToday, you can finally read my colleague and mentor @bhorowitz 2nd book, called “What you do is who you are” on creating and sustaining culture. Great examples from: - Bushido, Genghis Khan - the Haitian slave revolt - Uber and new tech cos Buy it here: https://t.co/5dTB5AHVKb (Source)

Eric Ries"If you don’t methodically set your culture, then two-thirds of it will end up being accidental and the rest will be a mistake." Love this quote from @bhorowitz and highly recommend his new book that dives into this topic in more detail, coming out 10/29 https://t.co/p8aq4Rk1hq (Source)

Brian ArmstrongI read an early copy of @bhorowitz's new book about company cultures, and thought it was great! Check it out: https://t.co/9RRcPI2qbs (Source)

See more recommendations for this book...

Don't have time to read Eric Ries's favorite books? Read Shortform summaries.

Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:

  • Being comprehensive: you learn the most important points in the book
  • Cutting out the fluff: you focus your time on what's important to know
  • Interactive exercises: apply the book's ideas to your own life with our educators' guidance.