Books recommended by CEOs, founders and owners — ranked by upvotes.

“As a CEO, The Hard Thing About Hard Things was one of the few business books that felt like it was written by someone who had been in the room when everything was going wrong. It doesn’t romanticize leadership or give you a neat formula for building a company. It talks about the lonely decisions, the mistakes, the layoffs, the impossible tradeoffs, and the moments when there simply isn’t a “right” answer. I loved it because it made me feel understood—and reminded me that sometimes the job of a CEO isn’t to have all the answers. It’s to keep making hard decisions when there are no easy ones.”