Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read - Groucho Marx.

Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog it's too dark to read - Groucho Marx.

Ian Brookes FRSA

Enjoying the crafting of innovative tech startups as co-founder, investor & partner

October 1, 2025

Sunday was a day of sorting my bookshelves out (again!). As I went through them, I started to compile my list of must reads for startup founders from my collection. I’ve had a few months pondering my books and my own logic of organised chaos of its unruliness, but with my Christmas reading wish list being distilled for potential new arrivals, it was time to make some space. This gave me the opportunity to rekindle (pun intended) my love of some of my favourites and relive the tactile experience of holding a book in one hand and scribbling notes in the margin with the other. These insightful notes offer genuine insight – if only I could read my own handwriting..

There are things that stick with you from school, and for me, one of those was being read to by a teacher who was passionate about books. Mr Van Sutchland, a giant Dutchman with a ginger beard, was that teacher. A master craftsman in the art of storytelling, my most indelible memory from primary school is him reading The Hobbit to the class. In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort. Bilbo Baggins and Tolkien were just the start.

Thanks to my mum and dad, I could read by the age of four, making books important. Even when I wandered through the bookless wilderness of my late-teens, where playing rugby, live music and collecting records were the dominant hobbies, even after the love of them had been decimated by stark A-level texts (retrospective: it turns out with hindsight they were actually really good), at university the library was my second home, and not just because it was warmer than my student flat.

I loved the tranquillity and ambiance of the university library, an island of hope in a vast sea of ignorance. My three years made me appreciate that books are the perfect companion, sometimes  a cure for loneliness, they can always be our very closest friends. Some books are toolkits you take up to fix things, from your house to your heart, or to make things, from cakes to ships. Some are parties to which you are invited, full of friends who are there even when you are not. In some books you meet one remarkable person. Some books are medicine, some are puzzles, some are journeys, but at the end of each you are not the same person you were at the beginning.

What an astonishing thing a book is, said Carl Sagan, an American astronomer and scientist It’s a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are imprinted lots of funny dark squiggles. But one glance at it and you’re inside the mind of another person, maybe somebody dead for several years. Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions, binding together people who never knew each other. Books break the shackles of time. EP Whipple once wrote books are lighthouses erected in the great sea of time, which I think is a great summary of how I feel.

When Amazon developed their early recommendation engine they turned me into a book collector, I bought so many. I piled the books around me, building what my wife called ‘a library for life’ because there were that many unread. Then for a few years I was a Kindle kid, taking an entire library on a journey was convenient beyond comprehension, but I missed the tactile experience of holding a book, texture of paper, and scribbling notes in the margin was not the same with digital notetaking. I returned a few years ago to real books, jettisoned Amazon, and I now live in the independent and second-hand bookshop network. Fortunately, in north Wales, most towns have one, a beacon of comfort, excitement curated by a passionate founder and owner.

Independent bookshops have had their fair share of ongoing challenges, from competing for the attention of book readers from streaming digital entertainment to the competition from the chain bookstores that offer cheaper prices, to the assault from online retailers, e-book devices and audio books. But the fightback is on. Indie bookshops, together with artisan bakeries, local coffee shops and micro-breweries are success stories in the best tradition of David v Goliath and are thriving. They are as much a cabinet of curiosities as a place of business.

The indie bookshops are run by indefatigable entrepreneurs providing a sense of community and intimacy that cannot be replicated online. Shoppers in who come in for John Grisham’s latest novel might go out with Seashaken Houses: A lighthouse history from Eddystone to Fastnet by Tom Nancollas (a great book, by the way). The indie bookshops have curated an offering that overcomes the faceless behemoth of Amazon; they win the hearts, minds and wallets of book lovers. 

When Elon Musk was asked how he learned to build rockets, he gave a simple and striking answer: I read books, and his success casts no doubt on the validity of his response. Whilst I don’t claim that by reading you’re going to build rockets, it does help us grow by vicarious learning, it allows us to stand on the shoulders of giants. There some mind-boggling books that have inspired me over the years, so here are my top ten recommended books for founders, the majority published in the last two years, all relevant whatever stage you’re at in your startup journey.

1. Trajectory: Startup: Ideation to Product/Market Fit by Dave Parker. This book helps to remove the mystery from the startup process. It offers a path from ideation to launch and revenue, in a practical guide. With five startups (two failed) and eight exits, Parker’s experience is grounded and actionable.

2. Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products by Leander Kahney. Twelve years since it was first published, it’s an easy read about the man regarded as the most respected industrial designer. Ive had the ability to see the big picture as well as the granular details, a perfectionist on a mission to create a better product and provide a better experience.

3. Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know by Adam Grant. Grant argues that many of us favour the comfort of conviction over the discomfort of doubt. We entertain opinions that make us feel good, rather than ideas that make us think hard. He suggests it’s time to challenge this and offers insightful strategies for improving critical thinking skills to foster a growth mindset.

 4. Thinking the Future by Clem Sunter & Mitch Ilbury. This book is about thriving in a dynamic world and business landscape. It leverages Aristotle to Pierre Wack, the first planner for Royal Dutch Shell. It shows how our mental models of the future (or lack thereof) impact our decision making today. I liked this book as it talks about how we make decisions and the impact of them.

5. The Man Who Planted Trees by Jean Giono. This is my personal favourite book of all time. It’s an allegorical tale of a shepherd's long and successful single-handed effort to reforest a desolate valley in the foothills of the Alps in Provence in the first half of the C20th. A beautiful, inspiring story, it captures the essence of having a personal vision and then making it happen – a stirring, emotional read to resonate with all founders’ aspirational journeys.

6. The Crux: How Leaders Become Strategists by Richard Rumelt. Rumelt is an influential thinker on strategy as Professor Emeritus at UCLA.  What passes for strategy in too many businesses is a toxic mix of wishful thinking and a jumble of incoherency. Rumelt’s concept is that leaders become effective strategists when they focus on challenges rather than goals, pinpointing the crux of their pivotal challenge. He defines the essence of the strategist’s skill with vivid storytelling.

7. Build a Business You Love by Dave Ramsey. Ramsey breaks down the system that took his business from a card table in his living room to a $250m venture. Based on experience not theory, Ramsey details the EntreLeadership System, the road map of five distinct stages of growth every business has to conquer to reach its potential:

• Stage 1: Treadmill Operator

• Stage 2: Pathfinder

• Stage 3: Trailblazer

• Stage 4: Peak Performer

• Stage 5: Legacy Builder

8. Creativity, Inc by Ed Catmull. Catmull was co-founder (with Steve Jobs and John Lasseter) of Pixar Animation Studios, and crafted this book about creativity in business, a manual for anyone striving for originality. Toy Story changed animation forever, the essential ingredient was the unique team environment and culture Catmull and colleagues built, based on philosophies that protect the creative process and defy convention. My copy is well thumbed – I must have read it cover to cover five times.

9. Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy. This was the book I was reading on a beach in Corfu as a student when I met my now wife on a holiday in 1984. She was also a big Thomas Hardy fan, and we shared a love of Hardy, feta and ouzo which made it a perfect holiday and subsequent marriage. We called our first dog Tess. Hardy’s writing on rural idylls with sympathetic portrayals of the hardships of working-class people resonates with me. You need an escape into a novel to simply make you feel good and relax, reading this and Giono’s will stir your creativity.

10. From The Factory Floor by tsf.tech. I had to add this to my list. Made in Manchester, I co-authored this timeless classic (!) We wanted this book to be a catalyst for startup founder’s entrepreneurial ambitions, in essence a DIY manual, peppered with anecdotes from the authors’ personal experiences. From The Factory Floor introduces the core essentials to get your startup off the ground. The proper place to study elephants is the jungle, not the zoo, so take this book as catalyst to get out there and make a start on your own thing.

The value of reading isn’t just to learn, rather to spark your own thinking. Reading should be a valuable source of inspiration and practical tips for startup founders, gaining insights and motivation from the experiences of others, ultimately developing new skills and habits. 

Set aside time to read regularly. Find a quiet place and dedicate time. Take notes. Talk to others about what you're reading.  Sometimes you need to turn your phone off, step away from the laptop, get a cup of tea, and get lost in a good book. Mr Van Sutchland - long-retired and now a beekeeper in Cheshire - ignited the spark, and created the osmotic relationship between reading and life for me. I’m forever grateful.