Drew Houston Book Recommendations

Emotional Intelligence

Why It Can Matter More Than IQ

by Daniel Goleman

"It’s nonfiction, but it spelled out something that I just didn’t know you could kind of break down in a logical way. And, suddenly, I had this understanding about the world that I didn’t have before." - Drew Houston (Source)

Poor Charlie's Almanack

The Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger

by Charlie Munger

"A great book." - Drew Houston (Source)

Guerilla Marketing

Easy and Inexpensive Strategies for Making Big Profits from Your Small Business

by Jay Conrad Levinson

"[About] how do you get attention and users for your product if you have no money? The tactic of putting a video on Hacker News or creating a viral video, that was a seed that was planted by reading [this book]." - Drew Houston (Source)

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance

An Inquiry Into Values

by Robert M. Pirsig

"[There are] engineers who [dismiss] all these things that can’t be fit into an algorithm, or that don’t have some kind of mathematical rigor underpinning them, [this book] is about that question." - Drew Houston (Source)

Crossing the Chasm

Marketing and Selling High-Tech Products to Mainstream Customers

by Geoffrey A. Moore

"It’s [about] how do technology products make their way from early adopters to the mainstream." - Drew Houston (Source)

The Hard Thing About Hard Things

Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers

by Ben Horowitz

"One of the great things that [the author] wrote in [this book] is the hardest part of being a CEO is managing your psychology." - Drew Houston (Source)

High Output Management

by Andrew S. Grove

"The best book on management ever written." - Drew Houston (Source)

Getting to Yes

Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In

by Roger Fisher

"About principled negotiation, and I still think about and apply a lot of those concepts today." - Drew Houston (Source)

The Effective Executive

The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done

by Peter F. Drucker

"I think one of the most valuable concepts from [this book] is measuring your time." - Drew Houston (Source)

The Innovator's Dilemma

When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail

by Clayton M. Christensen

"About how businesses get disrupted, and a lot of those themes are why startups can succeed and thrive even when there are big competitors who you would think would just wipe ’em out." - Drew Houston (Source)

Principles

Life and Work

by Ray Dalio

"Sketched really concise and good thoughts for [how to approach life]." - Drew Houston (Source)