Founders as readers
Founders of well-known companies are often asked about their reading, and their replies are repeated widely. Some say they read constantly; others say they have little time. Both claims appear, and both are hard to check. This article looks at how founders describe using reading, in general terms, and is clear about the limits of the evidence. It names no people, companies or books.
The focus here is the founder’s use of reading to find problems and borrow ideas. The reading of managers and executives in established organizations, with its emphasis on industry news and strategy, is a related but separate subject.
Reading to spot problems
A new business usually begins with a problem that enough people have and that is not well solved. Founders often describe noticing such problems through everyday experience, but reading extends what one person can notice. Trade publications, local news, customer reviews, regulatory notices and long articles about how an industry works can reveal frustrations, delays and costs that outsiders rarely see.
Some founders also describe reading old material: histories of an industry, accounts of earlier failures and descriptions of how a market once worked. The idea is that a problem that looks new may have been tried before, and learning why earlier attempts failed saves time.
A sensible reader of this kind keeps a running note of observations rather than trusting memory. Small patterns, such as the same complaint appearing in several unrelated places, are the sort of thing a notebook captures.
Borrowing ideas from other fields
A theme that comes up often is borrowing. A technique used in one industry may be new in another. Founders talk about reading widely, in science, design, logistics, psychology and history, in the hope of finding methods that can be adapted. The reasoning is plain: ideas that are common in one field can be unusual in another, and moving them across is a source of novelty.
This sort of reading is closer to browsing than to study. It is also the kind of reading that is easy to justify afterward and hard to plan. A founder who reads a book on an unrelated subject for pleasure and later sees a link to work will remember the link; the many books that produced nothing are quickly forgotten. That is one of the reasons anecdotes make wide reading look more productive than it can be shown to be.
Learning from other founders’ accounts
Founders also read about other founders: profiles, memoirs and case studies. These can be inspiring, and they can show how others handled hiring, funding and setbacks. They also come with strong biases.
- Survivors tell the story. Accounts come mostly from the businesses that succeeded. For every famous success there are many similar ventures that failed quietly, with little written about them.
- Hindsight tidies the narrative. A messy sequence of guesses and luck becomes a coherent strategy once the outcome is known.
- Context is easy to miss. Timing, available funding, the state of technology and personal connections all shaped the result, and they are hard to copy.
A careful reader treats such stories as prompts for questions rather than as instructions. Asking what would have had to be true for this to work, and whether those conditions apply to you, is more useful than imitation.
What the public record can and cannot tell us
Public statements about reading by famous founders are filtered through interviews, social media and marketing. Lists of “books every entrepreneur should read” circulate widely, but a list reflects the taste of its author and the commercial interest of those sharing it, not proof of what drove a company’s success. It is also common for people to report reading habits they intend to have rather than the ones they keep.
There is no reliable evidence we can point to that a particular reading habit makes a business succeed. Research on entrepreneurship stresses many factors, including market conditions, timing, funding, skill, networks and chance, and reading is at most one of many contributors. Anyone offering a guaranteed route from reading to a successful company is overstating what is known.
Habits worth considering
If you are thinking about starting something of your own, the following ideas follow naturally from what founders describe, without needing to copy anybody.
- Read the world you want to serve. Follow the news, forums and trade material of the area where you see a problem, and keep notes on what people complain about.
- Read history of the field. Find out what has been tried before and why it did or did not work.
- Read across fields. Set aside some time for subjects unrelated to your work, and write down any technique that might transfer.
- Read failure as well as success. Seek out accounts of ventures that struggled, which are often more instructive and less flattering.
- Turn reading into small tests. An idea from a page is only a hypothesis. A cheap, quick trial tells you more than another hour of reading.
Keeping perspective
Reading can help a founder see more and avoid some mistakes, but it cannot replace talking to customers, building something and learning from results. It also takes time that every early-stage business is short of. The reasonable position is that reading is a useful, inexpensive input that works best when linked to action. Founders’ stories about it are worth listening to, with an awareness that they are stories, and that outcomes in business remain uncertain whatever one reads.