13 biographies every entrepreneur must read in 2017

Top leaders are voracious readers. From Apple’s Steve Jobs to Nike founder Phil Knight, Sequoia Capital’s Michael Moritz to junk bond king Michael Milken, they had a passion for building private libraries. “My wife calls me the Imelda Marcos of books,” says Michael Moritz.

They read everything from literary fiction and history to business strategy. Many turn to biographies for learning and inspiration. A 1975 biography of Soichiro Honda, for example, inspired India’s SaaS pioneer Sridhar Vembu. “Honda taught me you can go from fixing bicycles to becoming a leading maker of automobiles. It’s sheer, dogged persistence,” the Zoho founder told me in a recent interview. “That’s something I internalized 22 years ago. I’ve been playing it ever since.”

What clicked for Moritz and Vembu may work for many an entrepreneur. Here’s a collection of 13 biographies to inspire the entrepreneur in you, hand-picked by us and presented in reverse chronological order of publication date.

Hit Refresh, by Satya Nadella

Let’s begin with the autobiography I’m most looking forward to next year. Satya Nadella played cricket in the school I went to in India – Hyderabad Public School. He went to the US for higher studies, joined Microsoft in 1992, and rose to be its CEO, joining an illustrious list of Indians helming top global companies.

It’s a fascinating journey, but the best may be yet to come. He’s leading the transformation of a tech giant that had gone into a decline in the internet era. His thoughts on Microsoft’s repositioning with new cloud and artificial intelligence technologies will show the road ahead. I’ve bookmarked this for pre-booking before its release in November 2017.

The Airbnb Story: How three guys disrupted an industry, made billions of dollars … and plenty of enemies, by Leigh Gallagher

Airbnb has not only transformed travel accommodation worldwide, it has had a ripple effect on many other industries as others adopted the “Airbnb for X” business model. It all began with two broke art school grads roping in a coder friend to build the platform connecting home-owners with travellers.

The author Leigh Gallagher has been writing about Airbnb for Fortune. Here in the book, she offers a character study of its CEO and co-founder, Brian Chesky, on his rocky path to building a decacorn. You don’t disrupt the world’s hotel industry without making a few enemies along the way! Waiting for February to read this.

The Undoing Project: A Friendship that Changed the World, by Michael Lewis

To Pixar and Beyond: My Unlikely Journey with Steve Jobs to Make Entertainment History, by Lawrence Levy

Alibaba: The House That Jack Ma Built, by Duncan Clark

Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike, by Phil Knight

The Third Wave, by Steve Case

Elon Musk: How the Billionaire CEO of SpaceX and Tesla is Shaping our Future, by Ashlee Vance

How Google Works, Eric Schmidt

The Hard Thing about Hard Things: Building a Business When There are No Easy Answers, by Ben Horowitz

The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon, by Brad Stone

Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead, by Sheryl Sandberg

Steve Jobs: The Exclusive Biography, by Walter Isaacson