Reading List

Books

The Mom Test — Rob Fitzpatrick

The most useful book for anyone who builds things and talks to users. It's about how to ask questions that get real signal instead of polite lies. Short, specific, actionable. Read it before your next customer call.

Zero to One — Peter Thiel

Still worth reading. The contrarian framework ("what important truth do very few people agree with you on?") is useful for thinking about what to build and why. Don't take every word as gospel, but the mental models are sharp.

The Lean Startup — Eric Ries

Less about startups, more about the build-measure-learn loop. Useful frame even if you're building alone. Don't over-apply it — sometimes you should just ship.

Links and essays

Paul Graham essays — all of them, especially "Do Things That Don't Scale" and "How to Get Startup Ideas." Free, timeless, worth reading in one sitting.

Andrej Karpathy on agents and memory — his writing on how to think about AI agent architecture is the clearest I've found. Follow him if you build anything AI-related.

Patrick McKenzie (patio11) — writes about software, business, and Japan. "Salary Negotiation" and "Don't Call Yourself a Programmer" are the obvious ones but everything is good.

Currently reading

Working in Public — Nadia Eghbal. About open source and building in public. Relevant to how I'm thinking about sharing what I build.