6 Must Read Books If You're Serious about Building a Tech Company or Product
Learn from Accomplished Tech Executive and Thought Leaders' Mistakes & Success to Cut Your Learning Curve
When you’re new to building tech products & companies it can be daunting. So much of what you need to know is counterintuitive and seldom discussed by people you’d know in real life.
You can improve this deficiency by networking but ultimately not everyone is living in a tech hub where there are other people like you trying to build a tech product.
I’ve found the secret to augmenting the deficiency is: voraciously reading authors that have successfully built tech products.
Why not learn from the best? A big theme we touch on in this SubStack is: you’re better off learning from other people’s mistakes than your own.
Books help you accelerate your learning curve by condensing a decade of someone else’s key experience down into just a 5 hour read. It’s a no brainer.
I’ve compiled a list here of books I would recommend to my younger self. This list is a must read for anyone that is serious about building tech products & companies.
Full Disclosure: these are affiliate links so I earn a small commission if you choose to buy. If you’re considering new reading material and any of these sound appealing you can support the SubStack by buying through my links. Thank you :) .
BowTiedLaunch’s Recommendations List
#1 - Rework by Jason Fried & DHH
Two Tech Startup GOATs & They’ll Teach You Their Minimalist, Practical Methods
About the authors: It’s not often that people this successful will sit down and write a book. Jason Fried and DHH are incredibly well known & respected for their work on Basecamp and for developing the widely used Ruby on Rails framework.
Takeaways: Fried and DHH give a radically honest and radically minimalist perspective on building products. Their work is a major influence on this SubStack.
With the wisdom from this duo, you’ll learn ways you can be maximally efficient and avoid mistakes like building a product with too many so so features instead of a focused product that knocks it out of the park.
10/10 required reading for anyone that wants to build a product.
Favorite Quote: “Build Half a Product, Not a Half-assed Product”.
Amazon Link: https://amzn.to/419PObW
#2 - Atomic Habits by James Clear
Learning the Ins and Outs of Human Behavior Formation Is an Incredibly Lucrative Talent
Why It’s Recommended: On the surface this is another book about self development. Clear demonstrates how you can use the latest findings in neuroscience to optimize your environment and your habits. For that reason it’s solid for just helping you organize your habits to achieve your goals.
The Product Development Angle: Beyond the surface layer, this book can teach you incredibly valuable information on how humans form habits in general. If you’re a savvy product developing Launch Chad, it will open a lot of doors for you about how you can grease the wheels on your product. I have personally found dozens of ideas for lucrative features that were directly inspired by Clear’s work. I feel obligated to recommend.
Most products especially software fail to gain traction because they can’t get repeated, consistent engagement from users. Using Clear’s framework as a guide, practical ideas will abound about how you can make it obvious, easy, attractive, rewarding and dare I say addictive to use your product.
Top Quote: We don’t rise to the level of our goals, we fall to the level of our habits.
Link: https://amzn.to/3I9sxhD
#3 - High Output Management by Andy Grove
Former Intel CEO Shows You How to Use Engineering Principles to Build a Strong Business
If you’re on BowTiedLaunch there is a good chance that you are a technical person with aspirations of transforming into an effective C suite executive. High Output Management is a must read for that reason. Andy not only accomplished that goal but he is considered one of the all time GOATs in the corporate world for the way he transformed Intel into a juggernaut.
About the Author: Grove was able to successfully change Intel’s business from memory to processors in his tenure. That is a massive change that few could pull off. What’s more, he made Intel the dominant market leader in the process. Andy’s story is incredibly impressive starting as a PhD in electrical engineering and rising up the ranks to become Intel CEO. Oh yea and he also overcame serious adversity: he was a Holocaust survivor. One of the true G’s and a personal role model.
What Makes Andy Special & What He Can Teach You:
There’s no question that Andy had some serious intellectual firepower and will to succeed despite setbacks. Beyond that, he applied the first principles he learned in engineering to business with massive success. In High Output Management he explains how he applied engineering & quality manufacturing principles to creating business efficiency. He teaches you how to structure meetings, how to structure organizations, how to retain talent and much more.
If you’re a technical person like me that cut over into more leadership roles, Andy’s style is quite easy to understand and pick up as you begin to navigate that world. That is why this is a must read.
Top Quote: There’s only two reasons why a subordinate underperforms. Either they can’t do the job or they won’t do the job. It is your job as a manager to find out which and correct the issue.
Link: https://amzn.to/3k9xnDG
#4 - Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink
Former Navy Seal Officer Teaches You How to Build a Team of Doers with Initiative
In the Lumberg Corporate World, the single most pernicious management practice that exists is the norm rather than the exception. What is it? Micromanagement.
In Willink’s book, he describes to you how to build a culture of initiative so you don’t need to micromanage. Without being a pollyanna about it.
Humans do not like being told what to do. And what’s more the subordinate and more importantly YOU their leader perform worse in a micromanagement intensive culture. You’re wasting bandwidth on hand holding.
Willink does a masterful job of explaining how to reject the mainstream micromanagement conventional “wisdom” and replacing it with Extreme Ownership. When you and your team take on Extreme Ownership, it makes you all more adaptable, enhances your performance and even makes your people happier. This book had a profound influence on me as a leader. Must read.
Link: https://amzn.to/3S9yWxQ
#5 - Deep Work by Cal Newport
Georgetown Comp Sci Professor Shows You How Connectivity is Massively Overrated, Focus is Underrated and How You’re Currently Fucking Up Your Productivity
I think we all know deep down that addiction to technology is holding us back. Newport in a very skillful fashion takes you through how technology addiction affects workers and takes away from achieving mastery. He then offers a multitude of strategies to make being focused the norm with brief bouts of distraction versus the other way around.
Quick Take from BTL: there are some jobs where you’re constantly being thrown curve balls like CEO. Shallow work can be unavoidable in those cases. Other jobs like developer or engineer require sustained Deep Work.
The most important takeaway from Deep Work is: let your tech people have time to put their heads down and focus. That’s the only way real work gets done at a high level. Constant distractions from Slack, Email and inane meetings take away from that so you want to create a culture that minimizes it. Deep Work should be required reading for any tech people you hire or work with.
Link: https://amzn.to/415Vns0
#6 - Actionable Gamification by Yu-Kai Chou
Game Development Expert Teaches You How You Can Play 4D Chess with Incentives & Accelerate Growth on a Massive Scale
If Atomic Habits gives you an entry level course into how human habits and motivation works, Chou gives us an advanced course with his comprehensive Octalysis framework.
Chou describes a world where everything we interact with goes beyond function and actually creates a sense of delight and play. Rich with superb examples, this book will leave you with a better understanding of human motivation and with a treasure trove of ideas.
Chou argues there are 8 core drives that motivate humans that can be used synergistically to acquire and maintain users throughout their entire journey.
I’ve had so many ideas and created so many features with this book’s guidance that it would be a sin to not include it in the list.
Link: https://amzn.to/3lKwamI
Wrapping Up
As
says, reading is such an essential part of your personal growth that you should never skip even a day. Learning from people who have been there before and learning from their mistakes is essential to success in almost anything.That is doubly true for building technology. So much of the knowledge is counterintuitive, tribal and seldom discussed. You need to take it upon yourself to turn over every stone to get good at building products.
Hopefully this post helps you on that journey and you find at least one book that you’re going to pick up.
If you liked these recommendations please considering hitting the share button below.
Until next time.
James Clear and Yu-Kai Chou's work were hugely influential on me. I've made so many killer features based on what I learned in those books.
These other recommendations look solid. I will check and report back. Thank you BowTiedLaunch