Books for Better Decisions
Improve judgment from personal bias and uncertainty through strategy, operations, and capital allocation.
For founders making choices with incomplete information.
How to use this guide
Begin with bias and uncertainty, then look at disruption, team output and how leaders use capital.
The selection, reading order and reasons below are the library’s editorial guidance. Each founder connection has its own source.
- Thinking, Fast and Slow
Recognize the mental shortcuts that make confident decisions unreliable.
Bill Gates — Reading mention
In Great summer reading, published July 5, 2012, Gates lists this among two books he had been reading and hoped to finish soon. He does not claim to have finished it in this article.
Source for Bill Gates - Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don't Have All the Facts
Separate the quality of a decision from its outcome when uncertainty cannot be removed.
Marc Andreessen — Publisher endorsement
Recommend for people operating in the real world.
The publisher prints Andreessen’s endorsement describing the book as a guide to probabilistic domains such as poker and venture capital. The same recommendation appears in his captured July 5, 2018 reading thread.
Source for Marc Andreessen - The Innovator's Dilemma: The Revolutionary Book That Will Change the Way You Do Business
See how sound decisions for today can still expose a company to disruptive change.
Mark Cuban — Recommendation
No business should ever take what they have for granted
Cuban names this title when asked which book he always recommends.
Source for Mark Cuban - High Output Management
Turn judgment into operating systems that raise the output of teams and managers.
Ben Horowitz — Foreword and positive review
Over the years, I have come to consider High Output Management a true masterpiece
Horowitz says he first read the book in 1995. This endorsement appears in his 2015 foreword.
Source for Ben Horowitz - The Outsiders: Eight Unconventional CEOs and Their Radically Rational Blueprint for Success
End with the chief executive decision: where each dollar of capital should go.
Brian Armstrong — Book endorsement
In his December 12, 2016 post, Armstrong marks The Outsiders in bold as one of the books he liked best that year and describes its focus on CEO capital allocation. His edition is unspecified.
Source for Brian Armstrong