Her biography on Elon Musk is also pretty good as far as depicting someone who did hard things. I was quite impressed by his tenacity.
FROM THE HN SHELF
Elon Musk
Ashlee Vance
Biography · A BOOKTypographic jacket · original cover not fetched
FROM THE SHARED SHELF · 2006–2026 SAMPLE
Elon Musk
4 readers recommend it across 4 discussions
Topics are model-inferred labels.
Keep it on your reading list
THE WORD OF MOUTH
What made it worth passing on?
Original Hacker News comments, in the readers’ own words.
Advice to Founders and CEOs - Dear Founder (Maynard Webb) - The Hard Things About Hard Things (Ben Horowitz) - Straight Talk for Startups (Randy Komisar and Jantoon Reigersman) - The Founders’ Dilemmas (Noam Wasserman) - The Entrepreneur’s Daily Nietzsche (Brad Feld and Dave Jilk) - Build (Tony Fadell) - Zero to IPO (Frederic Kerrest) - The Great CEO Within (Matt Mochary) Finance - Wharton's Introduction to Financial Accounting course: [https://www.coursera.org/learn/wharton-accounting](https://w... (https://www.coursera.org/learn/wharton-accounting]%28https://www.coursera.org/learn/wharton-accounting%29) - How Finance Works: The HBR Guide to Thinking Smart About the Numbers (Mihir Desai) - Financial Intelligence for Entrepreneurs: What You Really Need to Know About the Numbers (Karen Berman and Joe Knight) Open-Book Company (Employee Ownership, Financial Literacy, Goal-setting) - The Great Game of Business (Jack Stack and Bo Burlingham) Legal - Acceleration (Ryan Roberts) - The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Law and Strategy (Constance Bagley and Craig Dauchy) Company Strategy and Direction (post-product/market fit) - Crossing the Chasm (Geoff Moore) - Zone to Win (Geoff Moore)…
Also recommended in this reply
- The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
- The Four Steps to the Epiphany
- The Lean Startup
- Crossing the Chasm
- The Hard Thing About Hard Things
- The Innovator’s Dilemma
- Good to Great
- Shoe Dog
- High Output Management
- Steve Jobs
- Never Split the Difference
- Zero to One
- The Five Dysfunctions of a Team
- Principles
- Delivering Happiness
- Managing Humans
- Influence
- Creativity, Inc.
- Dealers of Lightning
- Punished by Rewards
- Start with Why
- Mindset
- Radical Candor
- The Great CEO Within
- Traction
- Turn the Ship Around!
- Getting to Yes
- The Effective Executive
- Behind the Cloud
- Blitzscaling
- Drive
- Grit
- Marketing High Technology
- Ogilvy on Advertising
- Setting the Table
- The Everything Store
- The Ride of a Lifetime
- Venture Deals
- Made in America
- Only the Paranoid Survive
- The Making of a Manager
- The Almanack of Naval Ravikant
- Hacking Growth
- The Founder's Dilemmas
- The Idea Factory
- Financial Intelligence for Entrepreneurs
- Idea Man
- Inspired
- Pour Your Heart Into It
- Secrets of Sand Hill Road
- Thinking in Bets
- Work Rules!
- Zone to Win
- Build
- Built from Scratch
- Confessions of the Pricing Man
- Creative Confidence
- Data-Driven Marketing
- Dear Founder
- Entering StartupLand
- Great People Decisions
- How Finance Works
- It Doesn't Have to Be Crazy at Work
- Leading Matters
- Managing Oneself
- Monetizing Innovation
- No Rules Rules
- Playing to Win
- Positioning
- Powerful
- Riding Shotgun
- Scientific Advertising
- Startup Boards
- Straight Talk for Startups
- The Business of Venture Capital
- The CIO Paradox
- The Culture Map
- The Entrepreneur's Daily Nietzsche
- The Entrepreneur's Guide to Law and Strategy
- The Great Game of Business
- The Holloway Guide to Technical Recruiting and Hiring
- The Powell Principles
- The Power Law
- The Talent War
- Valley of Genius
- What You Do Is Who You Are
- Winning
- Zero to IPO
I'm pretty sure I'll get downvoted, but Ashlee Vance's book on Elon Musk. Hear me out. I'm not recommending it for Elon's story but more to understand how to build companies, understand complex problems, look for great talent and how to build better systems by looking at things from a slightly different perspective. I read it when I was 18 as well and I learnt that Tesla wasn't actually (not entirely) Elon's acheivement. It was actually JB Straubel's passion project. As an engineer, I deeply admire JB and the things he has acheived (by being at the helm of Tesla), and what he will acheive through Redwood Materials, his new recycled batteries project. If his resillence and stint at Tesla/Stanford etc are any indication, we can soon expect some revolutionary things from him (once again). It also showed me how SpaceX was born when Elon and his team crunched some numbers on a trip back from Russia, only to realize that it would be cheaper to build their own rockets rather than rent Russia's.…
Recently read and thoroughly enjoyed "Elon Musk"; good insight into both starting unicorns and how much of a genius Elon is.