2/26/25 Update: I created a page with all 52 books I read last year. See it here.

2/27/25 Update: I’ve created a searchable library of every book I’ve read and update it weekly. See it here.

This summer, I set a goal of creating 100 podcasts about books I was reading. It forced me to start tracking my reading in a spreadsheet. It’s nerdy, but it was necessary because every week, I read a book, wrote a blog post series, and created a podcast series about each book. The spreadsheet helped me keep everything organized. I paused the latter two after the summer because they were too inefficient and time-consuming, but I kept updating the spreadsheet and reading a book a week.

I looked at the spreadsheet as I was reflecting on the books I read in 2024. I figured I’d share some stats and learnings.

High-level stat for 2024:

• Books read: 52

2024 breakdown by month:

• January: 0 (I did read, but I can’t remember what books)
• February: 2
• March: 6
• April: 6
• May: 7
• June: 5
• July: 4
• August: 5
• September: 4
• October: 3
• November: 5
• December: 5

Here are a few things I learned along the way:

• Reading two books a week was too aggressive. I tried it in the March–May period, but I wasn’t absorbing as much of what I was reading or making as many connections. I was focused on finishing the books, which isn’t why I read. The pace was too fast, so I reduced it to a book a week, which feels more sustainable.
• Sharing what I learned from my reading was the big unlock. It took my learning and thinking to another level. Writing a blog post series and recording a podcast series forced me to identify insights and organize and communicate my thinking. The key tool in that process was creating a digest of each book, which was an extraction of the information I found important in each chapter, along with my insights.
• E-readers, such as Kindles, are great devices, but I prefer reading physical books. I highlight and add notes about insightful sections and ideas in the books. Those highlights and notes are trapped in each book, so finding and using them later is difficult. See here for more. As I’ve read more, this has become a painful problem. Trying to find something sometimes means reviewing several books’ notes and highlights. Experiencing this pain led me to several feature ideas for the “book library.”
• Reading a book is simple—but learning from what I read is more involved. It’s inefficient and involves lots of steps. The process of sharing what I learn from my reading is complex. It’s hard and has many steps and lots of moving pieces. This realization led me to add several more feature ideas to the “book library.”
• The value in reading lots of entrepreneurial biographies is that you’re exposed to the best ideas and experiences of entrepreneurs, and you can pull from them when you’re faced with a problem. The challenge is that this requires a great memory or knowing exactly where to look to quickly find something you’ve read. I don’t have a photographic memory, and I don’t always remember where I read something. I want to make it easy to find what I’ve read, which will be a big part of the “book library” MVP.
• My best ideas in 2024 came from piecing ideas together from various books. Making those connections was a great way to build upon what other entrepreneurs figured out. Solving a problem by building upon the knowledge of others rather than starting from scratch led to my having better ideas. I’m not an idea guy, so this was perfect for me, and I want to do more of it going forward. I don’t think this has to be completely manual and inefficient. Figuring out how to solve this and incorporate it into the “book library” is challenging, but I think it can be done, and I’m excited to figure this out because it’ll be a huge unlock for myself and others.

Those are my takeaways and reading stats for 2024!

Every once in a while, I have a crazy day that makes it hard to focus and think clearly. When this happens, the rest of my day is unproductive. It feels like I wasted a day.

This week, something hit my radar in the morning that threw me off mentally. I tried, but I couldn’t get back in the zone to finish working. I needed to think clearly because I had important decisions to make later that day, so I tried something different. I went to the gym. I do this regularly, but not in the middle of a work morning. But I figured I had nothing to lose since I couldn’t focus. I did a heavy-weight workout for about an hour, ate a snack, and then returned to my computer.

When I began working, my head was clear. I was extremely productive. The rest of the day was smooth, and I felt great about the decisions I made that afternoon.

I can’t explain why the workout helped so much (I plan to research the science behind this), but it felt like a 180 that put me back where I needed to be mentally.

I haven’t tried this before, and I’m glad I gave it a shot this week. It’s a new hack in my toolbox. If something throws me off to the point where I can’t focus, I’ll close my computer, go to the gym, and hit the weights.

This week, I had the opportunity to catch up with an entrepreneur who has an idea-stage company. He and his cofounders have built an MVP and are now looking to raise money from investors and acquire customers. When a seasoned entrepreneur and I chatted with him, both of us zeroed in on a material issue: he couldn’t quickly and concisely articulate the problem his product solves.

We brought this to his attention, and he agreed that he and his other cofounders need to get specific about the problem. When I talked to him a few days later, they’d spent significant time debating the point. He presented the new problem statement to me. It was better, but still not clear. They’re back working on it again.

A business exists to solve a problem for customers. If the solution is good, it creates value for customers by resolving their problem and the customers pay the business for the value it created. It’s that simple.

If a business isn’t clear on what problem it’s solving, customers won’t be clear on how the business can help them. They’re less likely to buy.

My point is that clarifying the problem is a crucial step. The problem is the entire reason the business exists. It’s the foundation of the business. Without clarity about the problem, the business is built on a weak foundation and everything about building the company becomes significantly harder (it was never going to be easy).

If you can’t articulate the problem you’re solving in a way anyone can understand—in one sentence—ask yourself, What problem am I really solving?

In 2024, I challenged myself to accelerate my learning by reading a book (usually a biography) a week. To date, I’ve done it for 71 consecutive weeks. I wanted to share what I was reading and also keep track for myself, which was difficult (see here), so I created a Library section on this site. I added to it all the books I’ve read since my book-a-week habit began in March 2024, and I’ve committed to adding my latest read to the Library every Sunday (see the latest here).

That left the books I’d read before 2024 unshared and untracked. I set a goal to add my old reading to the Library over time. It began with a Memorial Day Challenge to add five books (see here) and continued with my challenging myself to add two books every weekend until my backlog is gone. This past weekend was my fifth weekend, and I added two more books:

• The Joys of Compounding by Gautam Baid
• Working Backwards by Bill Carr and Colin Bryar

That’s the latest update on my weekend goal. I hope that sharing these books will add value to others.

I’m a first-generation entrepreneur committed to learning as much about entrepreneurship as I can. The best way I’ve found to do that is to study entrepreneurs. So, every week, I share a book that I’ve read about an entrepreneur; most are biographies. I post my latest read every Sunday in the Library on this site.

A few years ago, I read The Power Law, which details the history of the venture capital industry, mostly focusing on San Francisco’s ecosystem and VC firms. As I continued learning venture capital history, I discovered Georges Doriot. He was a Harvard Business School (HBS) professor, and he founded one of the first venture capital firms in 1946. His firm, American Research and Development Corporation (ARDC), was publicly traded on the stock market. I didn’t know there was such a thing as a publicly traded VC firm; this intrigued me.  

I found a biography about Doriot’s life, Creative Capital, and gave it a read. Doriot was born in France and emigrated to the U.S. after his father’s factory was decimated in World War I. He was the first Frenchman to attend HBS and started as an investment banker in NYC but quickly became an assistant dean at HBS. This role morphed into his teaching a course and being promoted to an "Assistant Professor of Industrial Management."

An interesting part of this story is Doriot’s path through the Army during World War II, which was pivotal to his founding a VC firm. He managed procurement, which during a global war was no easy task. He and his team had to create products that met the unique needs of deployed troops (think boots that leave minimal footprints in the mud so enemy soldiers can’t track U.S. troops), have private companies manufacture products in sufficient quantities by certain dates (think General Motors building 100,0000 Jeeps in four months), and coordinate delivery of ungodly quantities of various goods and food to war zones. The team building, product development, and problem-solving skills he developed were invaluable and gave him experience managing chaos (which is valuable to entrepreneurs).

Also notable was that even in the early days of VC, the Power Law ruled returns. ARDC’s best investment, which made up the majority of its returns, was a $70,000 check into Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) that turned into more than $200 million for ARDC, in large part due to ARDC owning over 50% of DEC when it went public.

This biography was well-researched and had a thorough bibliography and notes section. Anyone interested in learning about the birth of the venture capital industry or why VC firms don’t do well as public companies should consider reading Creative Capital.

Current Project: Reading books about entrepreneurs and sharing what I learned from them

Mission: Create a library of wisdom from notable entrepreneurs that current entrepreneurs can leverage to increase their chances of success

Cumulative metrics (since 4/1/24):

• Total books read: 71
• Total blog posts published: 462

This week’s metrics:

• Books read: 1
• Blog posts published: 7

What I completed this week (link to last week’s commitments):

• Read Creative Capital, a biography about Georges Doriot, who in 1946 founded American Research and Development Corporation—one of the first venture capital firms, and the only publicly traded one
• Added four more books that I read in 2023, these from Jack D. Schwager, Mortimer J. Adler, Edward Chancellor, and Benjamin Graham, to the library on this site—see more here

What I’ll do next week:

• Read a biography, autobiography, or framework book
• Add two more books that I read in 2023 to the library on this site—see more here
• Create a digest of one biography, autobiography, or framework book

Asks:

• Seeking technical lead or cofounder – I’m looking for a senior full-stack developer skilled in AI retrieval. If you know one who’d have an interest in working on the software project related to books, please introduce us!

Week two hundred seventy-six was another week of learning. Looking forward to next week!

Current Project: Reading books about entrepreneurs and sharing what I learned from them

Mission: Create a library of wisdom from notable entrepreneurs that current entrepreneurs can leverage to increase their chances of success

What I struggled with:

• No material struggles last week

What I learned:

• AI is changing so fast that larger companies are resorting to buying pick-and-shovel AI companies so they won’t be left behind. For example, Meta bought voice AI start‑up PlayAI (see here). A pick-and-shovel AI solution that others can build on could unlock tremendous value for others.

That’s what I learned and struggled with last week.

This week, a founder wanted feedback on her sales pitch deck, so I sat in on her pitch. The company has hundreds of thousands in revenue from enterprise clients and product–market fit. The pitch deck was visually impressive, and the value proposition made sense. But I noticed a glaring problem with her pitch: her messaging wasn’t clear. Specifically, when I asked questions, it became apparent that the problem she’s solving is slightly different than what’s in her sales pitch. So the pitch isn’t as effective as it could be.

You might be thinking that your messaging and your sales pitch are the same, but they’re not. Your messaging is a clear articulation of what problem you solve, how you solve it, and why your audience should care. It quickly explains why your company exists and how it adds value. Having a clear message is important because it becomes the basis of lots of critical fundamentals of the company: the recruiting pitch, the investor pitch, the sales pitch, etc. Without clarity, everything built on top of the messaging is less effective, which is what this founder is experiencing.

I think there’s something to be said for founders working on their messaging independently, before beginning to use it in other collateral. Many founders start working on their messaging when they begin building a pitch for investors or customers. But I think messaging is so critical that founders should get clarity on it far in advance of building a pitch. They should clarify their messaging to gain clarity in their minds. If a founder has clarity on the messaging, they’re more confident, which permeates everything else they do. It makes many other facets of company building easier (not easy). For example, it’s easier to close deals with customers, recruit the right talent, and raise growth capital from investors.

In 2022, I shared that Figma was being acquired by Adobe for $20 billion (see here). A year later, the acquisition was called off because regulators wouldn’t approve the deal (see here), but it wasn’t all bad for Figma—it walked away with a $1 billion breakup fee for its troubles. Well, Figma is back in the news. According to Bloomberg, Figma is targeting an IPO this summer (see here).

Bloomberg says that Figma generated $821 million in revenue for the 12 months ending March 31 (a 49% growth rate) and is cash-flow positive. I haven’t confirmed these figures, but if they’re true, those would be amazing metrics. The devil is always in the details, and many times people don’t really understand a company’s financials, so I want to investigate for myself. I found a copy of Figma’s SEC S-1 registration statement (see here). I’m looking forward to digging into it to understand this company better, given that I know many entrepreneurs who love its product.

The more I read biographies, the more I learn about different historical periods. The early 1900s are fascinating, especially the 1929 stock market crash and its economic and psychological impact on society. Another interesting time that I keep reading about is the late 1960s through the early 1980s.

That was when inflation skyrocketed to double digits, resulting in the federal funds rate reaching roughly 20%.

This period had a profound impact on entrepreneurs, investors, and society. I want to understand what led to its extremes and how entrepreneurs and investors navigated them. I’ve heard stories from my parents about 18% rates on mortgages in the early 1980s, but I want to go deeper.  

To learn more, I’ll read a few books about this period and reread books that contain context about it and how people navigated it. I’m also going to reread the letters Warren Buffett wrote to investors in his hedge fund (pre–Berkshire Hathaway), given that he announced he was closing his hedge fund in 1969, the start of this volatile period.

I’ll likely have to read some political and monetary history books—obviously not my usual entrepreneur biographies—because I think it’s important to gain context about the period.

I’m curious about the late 1960s through the early 1980s  and excited to learn about that time in history. My gut tells me it has valuable lessons to teach that could be useful to entrepreneurs and investors in the not-so-distant future.