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Andrew Chen's Top Book Recommendations

General Partner/Andreessen Horowitz

Want to know what books Andrew Chen recommends? We've researched interviews, social media posts, podcasts, and articles to build a comprehensive list of Andrew Chen's favorite book recommendations of all time. At Shortform, we know books. Our book guides are the best in the world. Learn why.

The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail book cover1

The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail

Clayton M. Christensen

4.3
The bestselling classic on disruptive innovation, renowned author Clayton M. Christensen.

His work is cited by the world’s best-known thought leaders, from Steve Jobs to Malcolm Gladwell. In this classic bestseller—now updated with a fresh new package—innovation expert Clayton Christensen shows how even the most outstanding companies can do everything right—yet still lose market leadership. Read th
Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder book cover2

Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder

Nassim Nicholas Taleb

4.3
From the bestselling author of The Black Swan and one of the foremost philosophers of our time, Nassim Nicholas Taleb, a book on how some systems actually benefit from disorder.

In The Black Swan Taleb outlined a problem; in Antifragile he offers a definitive solution: how to gain from disorder and chaos while being protected from fragilities and adverse events. For what he calls the "antifragile"
The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers book cover3

The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers

Ben Horowitz

4.4
A lot of people talk about how great it is to start a business, but only Ben Horowitz is brutally honest about how hard it is to run one.

In The Hard Thing About Hard Things, Ben Horowitz, cofounder of Andreessen Horowitz and one of Silicon Valley's most respected and experienced entrepreneurs, draws on his own story of founding, running, selling, buying, managing, and investing in technology compa
Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products book cover4

Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products

Nir Eyal

4.3
How do successful companies create products people can’t put down?

Why do some products capture widespread attention while others flop? What makes us engage with certain products out of sheer habit? Is there a pattern underlying how technologies hook us?
Nir Eyal answers these questions (and many more) by explaining the Hook Model—a four-step process embedded into the products of many successful com
Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling Disruptive Products to Mainstream Customers book cover5

Crossing the Chasm: Marketing and Selling Disruptive Products to Mainstream Customers

Geoffrey A Moore

4.3
The bible for bringing cutting-edge products to larger markets--now revised and updated with new insights into the realities of high-tech marketing

In Crossing the Chasm, Geoffrey A. Moore shows that in the Technology Adoption Life Cycle--which begins with innovators and moves to early adopters, early majority, late majority, and laggards--there is a vast chasm between the early adopters and the ea
Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup book cover6

Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup

John Carreyrou

4.6
The full inside story of the breathtaking rise and shocking collapse of a multibillion-dollar startup, by the prize-winning journalist who first broke the story and pursued it to the end in the face of pressure and threats from the CEO and her lawyers.

In 2014, Theranos founder and CEO Elizabeth Holmes was widely seen as the female Steve Jobs: a brilliant Stanford dropout whose startup "unicorn" pr
The Four Steps to the Epiphany: Successful Strategies for Products That Win book cover7

The Four Steps to the Epiphany: Successful Strategies for Products That Win

Steve Blank

4.2
The bestselling classic that launched 10,000 startups and new corporate ventures - The Four Steps to the Epiphany is one of the most influential and practical business books of all time. The Four Steps to the Epiphany launched the Lean Startup approach to new ventures. It was the first book to offer that startups are not smaller versions of large companies and that new ventures are different than
The Design of Everyday Things book cover8

The Design of Everyday Things

Don Norman

4.4
Even the smartest among us can feel inept as we fail to figure out which light switch or oven burner to turn on, or whether to push, pull, or slide a door. The fault, argues this ingenious—even liberating—book, lies not in ourselves, but in product design that ignores the needs of users and the principles of cognitive psychology. The problems range from ambiguous and hidden controls to arbitrary r
Dune (Dune Chronicles, #1) book cover9

Dune (Dune Chronicles, #1)

Frank Herbert

4.5
A deluxe hardcover edition of the best-selling science-fiction book of all time—part of Penguin Galaxy, a collectible series of six sci-fi/fantasy classics, featuring a series introduction by Neil Gaiman.

Science fiction’s supreme masterpiece, "Dune" will be forever considered a triumph of the imagination. Set on the desert planet Arrakis, it is the story of the boy Paul Atreides, who will become t
10

Startup Rising: The Entrepreneurial Revolution Remaking the Middle East

Christopher M. Schroeder, Marc Andreessen

4.2
Despite the world's elation at the Arab Spring, shockingly little has changed politically in the Middle East; even frontliners Egypt and Tunisia continue to suffer repression, fixed elections, and bombings, while Syria descends into civil war. But in the midst of it all, a quieter revolution has begun to emerge, one that might ultimately do more to change the face of the region: entrepreneurship.
Growth Hacker Marketing: A Primer on the Future of PR, Marketing, and Advertising book cover11

Growth Hacker Marketing: A Primer on the Future of PR, Marketing, and Advertising

Ryan Holiday

4.0
A Primer on the Future of PR, Marketing and Advertising

A new generation of megabrands like Facebook, Dropbox, Airbnb, and Twitter haven’t spent a dime on traditional marketing. No press releases, no TV commercials, no billboards. Instead, they rely on a new strategy—growth hacking—to reach many more people despite modest marketing budgets. Growth hackers have thrown out the old playbook and replac
The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses book cover12

The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses

Eric Ries

4.3
Most startups fail. But many of those failures are preventable. The Lean Startup is a new approach being adopted across the globe, changing the way companies are built and new products are launched.

Eric Ries defines a startup as an organization dedicated to creating something new under conditions of extreme uncertainty. This is just as true for one person in a garage or a group of seasoned profes
My Life In Advertising; Scientific Advertising book cover13

My Life In Advertising; Scientific Advertising

Claude Hopkins

4.5
Book may have numerous typos, missing text, images, or index. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. 1917. Excerpt: ... Chapter Seventeen SCIENTIFIC ADVERTISING THROUGH a book I wrote my name has become connected with "Scientific Advertising." That is, advertising based on fixed principles and done according to fundamental laws. I learn
Mate: Become the Man Women Want book cover14

Mate: Become the Man Women Want

Tucker Max

4.3
The #1 bestselling pioneer of "fratire" and a leading evolutionary psychologist team up to create the dating book for guys.

Whether they conducted their research in life or in the lab, experts Tucker Max and Dr. Geoffrey Miller have spent the last 20+ years learning what women really want from their men, why they want it, and how men can deliver those qualities.

The short answer: become the best
The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering book cover15

The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering

Frederick P. Brooks Jr.

4.3
Few books on software project management have been as influential and timeless as The Mythical Man-Month. With a blend of software engineering facts and thought-provoking opinions, Fred Brooks offers insight for anyone managing complex projects. These essays draw from his experience as project manager for the IBM System/360 computer family and then for OS/360, its massive software system. Now, 20
The Three-Body Problem (Remembrance of Earth’s Past #1) book cover16

The Three-Body Problem (Remembrance of Earth’s Past #1)

Cixin Liu, Ken Liu

4.1
The Three-Body Problem is the first chance for English-speaking readers to experience the Hugo Award-winning phenomenon from China's most beloved science fiction author, Liu Cixin.

Set against the backdrop of China's Cultural Revolution, a secret military project sends signals into space to establish contact with aliens. An alien civilization on the brink of destruction captures the signal and plan
The Diamond Age: Or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer book cover17

The Diamond Age: Or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer

Neal Stephenson

4.2
The Diamond Age: Or, A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer is a postcyberpunk novel by Neal Stephenson. It is to some extent a science fiction coming-of-age story, focused on a young girl named Nell, and set in a future world in which nanotechnology affects all aspects of life. The novel deals with themes of education, social class, ethnicity, and the nature of artificial intelligence.
The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires book cover18

The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires

Tim Wu

4.2
In this age of an open Internet, it is easy to forget that every American information industry, beginning with the telephone, has eventually been taken captive by some ruthless monopoly or cartel. With all our media now traveling a single network, an unprecedented potential is building for centralized control over what Americans see and hear. Could history repeat itself with the next industrial co
Founders at Work: Stories of Startups' Early Days book cover19

Founders at Work: Stories of Startups' Early Days

Jessica Livingston

4.2
Founders at Work: Stories of Startups' Early Days is a collection of interviews with founders of famous technology companies about what happened in the very earliest days. These people are celebrities now. What was it like when they were just a couple friends with an idea? Founders like Steve Wozniak (Apple), Caterina Fake (Flickr), Mitch Kapor (Lotus), Max Levchin (PayPal), and Sabeer Bhatia (Hot
Without You, There Is No Us: My Time with the Sons of North Korea's Elite book cover20

Without You, There Is No Us: My Time with the Sons of North Korea's Elite

Suki Kim

4.0
A haunting memoir of teaching English to the sons of North Korea's ruling class during the last six months of Kim Jong-il's reign

Every day, three times a day, the students march in two straight lines, singing praises to Kim Jong-il and North Korea: Without you, there is no motherland. Without you, there is no us. It is a chilling scene, but gradually Suki Kim, too, learns the tune and, without not
David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants book cover21

David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants

Malcolm Gladwell

4.2
In his #1 bestselling books The Tipping Point, Blink, and Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell has explored the ways we understand and change our world. Now he looks at the complex and surprising ways the weak can defeat the strong, the small can match up against the giant, and how our goals (often culturally determined) can make a huge difference in our ultimate sense of success. Drawing upon examples from
22

What You Do Is Who You Are: How to Create Your Business Culture

Ben Horowitz

4.3
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 different
The Inmates are Running the Asylum: Why High-tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity book cover23

The Inmates are Running the Asylum: Why High-tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity

Alan Cooper

4.2
The Firm: The Story of McKinsey and Its Secret Influence on American Business book cover24

The Firm: The Story of McKinsey and Its Secret Influence on American Business

Duff McDonald

4.0
A behind-the-scenes, revelatory history of McKinsey & Co., America’s most influential and controversial business consulting firm, told by one of the nation’s leading financial journalists.

It ranks among the unquestioned laws of American big business over the last half century: If you want to be taken seriously, you hire McKinsey & Company.

FOUNDED IN 1926, McKINSEY CAN LAY CLAIM to the following pa
High Output Management book cover25

High Output Management

Andrew S. Grove

4.5
The essential skill of creating and maintaining new businesses—the art of the entrepreneur—can be summed up in a single word: managing. In High Output Management, Andrew S. Grove, former chairman and CEO (and employee number three) of Intel, shares his perspective on how to build and run a company. Born of Grove’s experiences at one of America’s leading technology companies, this legendary managem
Designing Interactions book cover26

Designing Interactions

Bill Moggridge

4.1