Hey!

Chris here. Welcome to Blueprint—the newsletter to help you build a winning engineering team.

After selling my previous company in 2019, I spent the next two years doing one thing.

Reading. A lot.

I plowed through around 100 books during that time. Recently, a founder friend asked me about my favorites, and I went to my bookshelf to pick a few. I came back with 48.

Looking at that pile, I realized I should narrow my focus. So today, I'm sharing the books that have had the biggest impact on how I think about building companies from the ground up.

(You'll want to save this one)

📒 DEEP DIVE

The Top 10 Books That Changed My Business

After I sold my company, I stopped building and started reading. Here's what happened.

If you looked at my bookshelf, you'd be surprised. Engineering titles make up less than 10% of what's there.

The rest is filled with books on psychology, investing, history, and biographies.

I've found that exploring ideas outside my immediate field gives me perspectives my competitors miss. While everyone in tech is reading the same trendy business books, I'm learning from completely different domains. And in turn, it makes me a better founder.

Think about it: How many times have you seen "influencer-preneurs" predicting the next recession? Thousands, right? 

I'd bet they're all reading the same damn books.

You need to be smarter than that. Read in areas where you can apply learnings to your space.

Let me give you some examples:

Psychology and human behavior

Being a founder is fundamentally about creating solutions for humans. Yet too many founders focus exclusively on the technical aspects while ignoring how people actually think and behave.

Understanding psychology gives you insight into customer decisions, team dynamics, and your own biases. It helps you build products people actually want to use, create messaging that resonates, and build teams that perform.

Reading Cialdini's “Influence” showed me why reciprocity is such a powerful force in business relationships. That coffee a sales rep buys you? It creates a subtle obligation that makes signing a six-figure contract feel more natural.

Once you understand this, you’ll be unbeatable.

Founder stories and biographies

Theory is great, but there's nothing like seeing how principles play out in real-world scenarios with real stakes.

Founder biographies are battle-tested playbooks from people who've survived what you're going through. They show you that the chaos you're experiencing is normal, not a sign of failure.

Take Steve Jobs or Walt Disney—ousted, bankrupt, but ultimately winners. These books show you setbacks are normal, innovation is messy, and persistence pays off.

It’s not a book, but the Founders podcast with David Senra has become a regular source of perspective for me. Hearing about entrepreneurs who rebuilt after multiple bankruptcies makes today's startup challenges seem manageable by comparison.

Historical perspective helps you spot cycles and trends that others miss. It reminds you that technological revolutions follow predictable patterns, economies move in cycles, and human nature remains remarkably consistent across time.

When you're deep in the trenches of building, these stories become a source of perspective and resilience. They remind you that most successful founders faced moments where everything seemed lost—and found a way forward anyway.

Investor mindset and financial strategy

There are a lot of founders who like to avoid the financial side of business. They love building products but hesitate to engage with the mechanics of value creation and capture.

I've found immense value in reading how professional investors evaluate companies. They look for durable competitive advantages—what Buffett calls "moats"—that protect businesses from competitors.

When you start seeing your business through an investor's eyes, you make different decisions about where to allocate resources and how to build defensibility into your model. You start recognizing which features actually drive value and which are just consuming resources.

The investor mindset helps you distinguish between vanity metrics and true indicators of business health. It teaches you to think about sustainability and long-term positioning, not just short-term growth.

10 Books Every Early-Stage Founder Should Read

1. Company of One by Paul Jarvis

Most founders start with unicorn dreams, but Jarvis offers something more realistic and often more fulfilling: building a sustainable business that supports your ideal lifestyle. He challenges the "grow at all costs" mentality with a refreshing alternative that puts founder wellbeing at the center.

2. The Mom Test by Rob Fitzpatrick

The hardest thing about customer research is getting honest feedback. This book provides a framework for asking questions that bypass politeness and uncover brutal truths about your product or service. 

Your mom will tell you your idea is brilliant just to make you feel good. Fitzpatrick shows you how to structure conversations that reveal what people actually think.

3. Profit First by Mike Michalowicz

Too many founders confuse revenue growth with financial health. Michalowicz flips the traditional accounting formula to prioritize profitability from day one, with practical systems for cash management that even the financially challenged can implement.

4. The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It by Michael E. Gerber

This book helped me understand the critical difference between working in your business and working on it. Gerber shows why technical expertise isn't enough—you need systems that can function without your constant involvement. It's particularly valuable for founders who started as practitioners in their field.

5. Founder Brand by Dave Gerhardt

In early-stage companies, your personal brand has more pulling power than your company brand. Gerhardt provides a roadmap for leveraging your authentic voice to attract customers, talent, and opportunities. It's about becoming a signal in the noise—especially when your company is too new to have its own gravity.

6. Who Not How by Dan Sullivan

This book completely changed how I approach problems. Instead of asking "how can I do this?" Sullivan teaches you to ask "who can do this?" It's a mental shift that unlocks tons of growth once you embrace the power of delegation and collaboration.

7. Buy Back Your Time by Dan Martell

For bootstrappers, time is often more constrained than capital. Martell offers practical strategies for gradually reclaiming your schedule through strategic delegation. His approach is especially valuable because it works even with limited resources—you start small, reinvest the time you save, and build momentum.

8. Never Enough by Andrew Wilkinson

What began as a design agency (the team behind Slack's original interface) evolved into Tiny, a holding company that acquires and grows digital businesses. Wilkinson's path parallels my own interests in building through acquisition. His candid discussion of hiring mistakes and leadership challenges provides valuable lessons without the typical success-story gloss.

9. Building LLMs for Production: Enhancing LLM Abilities and Reliability with Prompting, Fine-Tuning, and RAG byLouis-François Bouchard and Louie Peters 

For those of us building in the AI space, this book cuts through the hype with practical implementation guidance. It bridges the gap between theoretical understanding and actual deployment, focusing on the engineering challenges of bringing these models into production environments.

10. Undoing Urgency by Ryan Matt Reynolds

I'm particularly proud of this one since Ryan is my brother. He tackles a problem nearly every founder faces: the constant battle with chaos in business and life. 

But instead of just managing urgency, he shows you how to break free from it entirely by building systems that let you own your business instead of letting it own you. It's about creating a sustainable approach to work that doesn't require constant firefighting.

🎙 EPISODE OF THE WEEK

This week on "Build Your Business” Matt and I dive into why we'll never go back to a traditional office setup.

We cover everything from hiring top global talent without geographic limitations to building systems that focus on output rather than hours clocked.

Whether you're considering going remote for the first time or optimizing an existing setup, this episode gives you a blueprint for building a flexible, high-performance company—without sacrificing structure or results.

If you're ready to stop commuting, ditch micromanagement, and build a remote-first company designed for the future, check out the full episode wherever you listen to podcasts:

Spotify | Apple Podcasts | YouTube

BEFORE YOU GO…

I've had founders ask me why I spend so much time reading instead of just "doing the work."

My answer is simple: Reading isn't separate from the work; it's a force multiplier for it.

Last year alone, I finished 44 books across various categories. Each one gave me frameworks and mental models I wouldn't have discovered otherwise.

So here's my challenge to you: Pick up something this week that has nothing to do with your industry. Anything that expands your thinking beyond your usual bubble. The perspective shift might be exactly what you need to see your challenges differently.

What are you reading right now? Reply and let me know, I'm always looking to expand my list.

Talk soon,

Chris.