Nov 7, 2025

a16z New Media To get a better sense of where our own founders and team find their contrarian ideas, we asked them to send along an underrecognized book or two that shaped their thinking and that they think everyone else in tech should read. Here’s what they shared. Garrett Langley, founder and CEO of Flock Safety Qasar Younis, founder and CEO of Applied Intuition This is perhaps my all-time favorite business book, even though it’s an autobiography. Maybe because it’s hard to separate Sam Walton from Walmart, it seems it’s as much of a story of a business as it is a man. What is particularly impressive about the Sam Walton story is how seemingly straightforward it is: build a good business, treat people well, and attain success. Like Warren Buffet, Walton shows how a few guiding principles followed for long periods of time can have a tremendous impact. Jesse Zhang, cofounder and CEO of Decagon Ashwin Sreenivas, cofounder of Decagon Great book showing the difficulty/non-linear pace of invention and how slow adoption often is. There’s a section of the book that shows how long it took the Wright brothers to convince the army to buy from them. You’d think that building a flying machine would have been an automatic buy from the army, but no! Ali Ghodsi, cofounder and CEO of Databricks Editor’s note: we couldn’t pick just *one* of Ali’s recs, so we’re including them all below. Tarek Mansour, cofounder and CEO of Kalshi Shiv Rao, cofounder and CEO of Abridge Taste matters more than ever in this AI moment. Tanizaki’s essay explores how light, darkness, and shadow shape perception, architecture, materials, even food. It’s a meditation on the power of subtlety, craft, and depth; and it’s a reminder that design and technology are, at their core, cultural acts. David George, general partner and head of Growth fund While Walter Isaacson’s Elon Musk bio gets due credit, Berger’s books capture the chaos, engineering brinkmanship, and survival mindset of SpaceX fighting for its existence. Berger’s books are more about the making of the company and more engineering-heavy than personality-heavy. Sarah Wang, Growth general partner I found this book in my basement in 8th grade, couldn’t put it down, and still re-read it every few years. An immigrant who changed his name, rose to the top of the most American company, fathered the Mustang, got knocked down and picked himself back up to do it again. Timeless and a reminder what to do when you hit tough times. I found this book in my basement in 8th grade, couldn’t put it down, and still re-read it every few years. An immigrant who changed his name, rose to the top of the most American company, fathered the Mustang, got knocked down and picked himself back up to do it again. Timeless and a reminder what to do when you hit tough times. Alex Rampell, Apps general partner Alex Danco, editor-at-large at a16z Sometimes reading fiction is the best way to understand the facts. The Magic Mountain, written by Thomas Mann a century ago, is one of the best books I’ve ever read for helping you “organize your thoughts”: how does everything in the western canon fit together? What really makes western civilization tick, and what makes it come undone? And—maybe life’s great organizing question across all of time and culture—what are you going to do when you face death? The opening page of Crowds and Power gives me goosebumps every time I read it. If you want to understand what makes groups of individuals transform into a single crowd, how individual people can control and direct crowds, and how power can be understood as a property of crowds and their leaders, this is the book for you. David Booth, head of ecosystem at a16z A highly readable guide to how kids (and adults) learn best: by making stuff, playing, and sharing with the world. Author Mitchel Resnick developed the “scratch” programming language while at MIT, and through research shows that creativity grows when children build things that matter to them, experiment freely, and see themselves as capable of shaping the world. He ultimately argues that the rest of school—and life behind it—should be more like kindergarten. Happy reading! a16z New Media Views expressed in “posts” (including podcasts, videos, and social media) are those of the individual a16z personnel quoted therein and are not the views of a16z Capital Management, L.L.C. (“a16z”) or its respective affiliates. a16z Capital Management is an investment adviser registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Registration as an investment adviser does not imply any special skill or training. 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