Books Recommended by Joel Gascoigne

In many ways, Eric Ries and The Lean Startup deserve a lot of the credit for where I am today and for Buffer existing. I first discovered Eric and his Lean Startup concepts via his blog about 5 years ago. He really helped me to understand the idea of validating an idea before spending lots of effort, and the notion of measuring progress in terms of learning rather than lines of code.

The Lean Startup is an incredible handbook for anyone who wants to get their startup off to the very best start possible. It helped me to take Buffer from idea to paying customers in 7 weeks.

I first read How to Win Friends and Influence People perhaps a year before I started Buffer, around 5 years ago. It instantly had an impact for me, both on how I wanted to improve my character and how I wanted to run a company.

A lot of what Carnegie proposes doesn't seem all that profound, and can even seem like common sense. Simple things like "Don't criticize, condemn or complain.", "Smile", "Become genuinely interested in other people." and "Ask questions instead of giving direct orders." What I've found is that it is incredibly difficult to put into practice. On top of that, this is not about a few tricks to get ahead, as Carnegie puts it, this is "a new way of life".

For myself personally, I have become so convinced that the How to Win Friends way of life is the one I want to live, that I now try to read this book every few months, both on Kindle and via audiobook, in order that I can completely engrain the principles and they can become who I am. I'm up to around 12 reads of it so far, and I don't imagine ever stopping re-reading.

This is one of the most practical books I've ever read. It is packed with so much information and actual resources to get you on your journey with creating passive income and if you desire, traveling. It really opened my mind to a lot of productivity improvements I could make.

I would also say that The 4-hour Work Week helped me to dream about the idea of traveling while working. I read it 4 years ago, and in that time I have traveled the world and lived in 4 different continents. It's been one of the best experiences of my life so far, especially when I've spent months rather than weeks or days in a place.

Good to Great is one of the first transformative books I read as Buffer started to grow beyond a product, and into a company. This happened when we were around 7 people and I started to feel like we needed to think about "culture", a concept that I previously had no real way to understand apart from conceptually.

As the team grew beyond 7, I noticed that team dynamics came much more into play, and we couldn't assume that everyone knows everything anymore.

In addition, I realized that the people we work with affect us immensely. Good to Great helped me to understand how important culture is for building a great, lasting company that has an impact on the world. It started to become clear that we already had a culture, and it was evolving.

Reading The Alchemist the first time was a very liberating experience for me. It helped me to dream big and keep following my gut, and not settle - which is what the story, about a shepherd boy named Santiago, is all about. It's a simple and short book and has stook in my mind ever since I read it.

The Alchemist conveys a powerful idea: that the world will help you if you just choose to follow your dream, that often times our upbringing and environment lead us to believe dreams are impossible to realize, and that it won't be a smooth journey and that is fine.

Zappos has always been a huge inspiration for us at Buffer. I clearly remember watching a video interview Tony Hsieh had where he was asked what one thing he would do sooner if he could start Zappos again. He replied "put values in place on day 1". We had already started Buffer, but we established our values shortly after that when we were 7 people.  On top of their focus on culture and values, Zappos has also provided us with inspiration for making half of our vision "to set the bar for great customer support". We have always had a large happiness team compared to the ratios other companies have, and we find great joy in aiming to surprise and wow customers with how quickly and caringly we respond to Tweets and emails

Tao Te Ching is one of the most famous texts that exists for philosophical Taoism (along with Zhuangzi which I have also included below). This book follows a different format to other philosophical texts and is very easy to read. It is split up into 81 very brief chapters (some just a few words). It's one of the philosophy books which for me had a lot of impact in very few words. Tao Te Ching is one of the most famous texts that exists for philosophical Taoism (along with Zhuangzi which I have also included below). This book follows a different format to other philosophical texts and is very easy to read. It is split up into 81 very brief chapters (some just a few words). It's one of the philosophy books which for me had a lot of impact in very few words.

Traction has been a somewhat recent read for me. The key take-away I had from the book was to try to spend as much time on traction as on product development. The other realization the book triggered for me was that in the early days of Buffer, we focused our content marketing efforts around traction, and we found that guest blogging helped us a lot with spreading the word and triggering new signups for Buffer.

We now try to strike this balance a little better. As a team we don't necessarily believe that all marketing activity should be tied to creating traction, but we do think it is worth exploring new traction channels and measuring our impact on traction from marketing. I can recommend this book to any new startup trying to get traction, or existing startups trying to reach new levels of traction. The book helped to give us a nudge to try some new traction channels again.

I read Founders at Work in the earliest few months of Buffer, before I had managed to drop my freelance work which I was doing on the side to pay the bills before our revenues grew. It was inspirational and practical at the same time, and laid out very clearly the paths that many of the biggest tech successes took to reach their prominence.

The Four Agreements introduce the idea of "don't take anything personally" to me in a whole new light. This is a book based on ancient Toltec wisdom and refers to this concept in terms of removing ego. I was recommended this book by one of our awesome investors Robert Fanini who told us that he previously based his company culture and values around the 4 primary ideas in this boo.

I read Quiet recently and it gave me an instant feeling of comfort in myself, how I'm wired and my personality. It made me feel confident about aspects of how I approach things which I previously saw as a weakness. It helped me discover some of my true strengths. I'm an introvert. This book helped me realize that the core difference between introverts and extroverts is the way that they recharge. It helped me to make sure that I get my solitude so that I feel sharp and alert, and so that I have the time to reflect.

A leadership fable about a failing Silicion Valley tech company who brings in a new CEO. Kathryn attempts to unite a highly dysfunctional team and through his narrative Lencioni explains the five key ways that teams struggle, and how to overcome the hurdles. I read this book at a key point in time where we were just discovering that we needed to put our values into words and shape the culture of Buffer. The book helped to clarify that through culture, provided we lived it, we could solve problems of trust and enable much better teamwork within the company.

There is so much great content packed into this book across all aspects of a start: ideas, execution, culture, hiring, firing, fundraising, product, metrics, incorporation, work-life balance. It is a book I can highly recommend if you're interested in or are getting started with a startup. Brad Feld and David Cohen are super smart and have a lot of experience, and it shows. I especially loved the chapter titled "If you want money, ask for advice". It's something I've tried to apply ever since reading the book. I've found that genuinely seeking advice is often more productive and leads to more opportunities than asking for money or a partnership or a sale.

The Power of Full Engagement was one of the first books that helped me to start to understand myself, and to work to embrace how I feel and be intuitive. The key concept in the book is that you should be either fully engaged in a task, or fully disegaged and finding renewal. For example, finding the natural dips within your day and thinking about rituals and changes you could make. Maybe you go for a 20 minute walk at 3pm when you naturally find yourself less productive.

The author of this book has sometimes been called the "happiest man in the world". He is a French Biochemist turned Buddhist monk and has been in a unique position to merge science with mindfulness and meditation.

The underlying theme of the book is that happiness is indeed within our control, and is much more a skill than something that simply happens to us.

One of the biggest revelations for me in this book was the way that it linked happiness with altruism, asserting that there is an undeniable correlation and that helping others can provide a much more lasting satisfaction and happiness than pleasure activities such as watching a movie or enjoying a banana split. This was something I had intuitively when I got into helping early stage founders, and reading it in this book made me recommit to helping others as a way of life, which in turn makes me very happy.

Joy At Work provides great insight into the journey of Dennis Bakke and AES, the company he co-founded. Bakke and his partner Roger Sant started the company and strived to live to a core value of Fun. It is a fascinating read in terms of their definition of fun (making important decisions and being given trust, not ping pong tables and snacks), and also in how difficult they found it to run the company unconventionally in order to be true to their values.

AES reached over 40,000 employees all across the world and they created a significantly different corporate structure than many organizations of today. At Buffer, AES and Bakke have been a big inspiration for us in staying true to our own values.

A large part of the process of staying true to the value of fun for Bakke was for him to be a sevant leader and to help individuals in the company make as many important decisions as possible. They devised the Decision Maker method of making decisions as a team, where the person closest to the problem (rather than a manger) makes key decisions. He also wrote a fable called The Decesion Maker around this concept, which I have also included in this list.

Maverick is Semler's earlier book, which goes into the full details of how he took over Semco from his father, fired over half of the executive team, diversified the business and revolutionized the way an organization could be run.

I especially enjoy how Semler challenges some deeply ingrained assumptions and beliefs about how business needs to be run. Things like whether growth is even a good thing, and how rules and policies can quickly snowball and grind companies to a halt. It has helped us to reach one of our most powerful phrases we use at Buffer, as an often used alternative to policies: "use your best judgement".

I first heard the term 'deferred life plan' in this fantastic book by Randy Komisar. It has been especially relevant for me, since it is a story about a silicon valley entrepreneur and teaches the idea that there are many things more important than money. The book poses the question "what would you be willing to do for the rest of your life?" and persuasively argues that if you will do that, the money will follow.

Ricardo Semler took over his father's business, Semco, in 1980 under the condition that he could change it completely. On his first day as CEO, he fired 60% of all top managers. Since then he has introduced a wide range of unconventional practices, such as having no official working hours, employees choosing their own salaries, and having no vision (instead wanting employees to find the way using their instinct).

For me, The Seven-Day Weekend opened my eyes and helped me to question every business practice that exists today. Semler aimed to operate as a 'sevant leader' and made a conscious effort to make zero decisions himself.

Around two and a half years ago I found myself on a very organic path from business, success and self-improvement books to those that spanned both personal success and spirituality. Books like The Monk and the Riddle mentioned above address this topic. After reading some of these books, I naturally found myself interested in meditation and Zen Buddhism. One of the most fascinating Zen Buddhists and authors for me has been Thich Nhat Hahn who has written many books.

Within Buffer, we have a concept where anyone is able to make any decision, provided they get advice from people who will be affected by the decision. It is the way we've found to envision a company without managers or bosses. We're still at the beginning of this journey, it's an exciting one to be on and I think we're creating an incredible company to be part of.

This decision making concept originates from a company called AES. I already mentioned Joy At Work, AES co-founder Dennis Bakke's first book and this is a fable he wrote to describe a company changing how they work and adopting the Advice Process.

My co-founder Leo and I discovered this book, essentially the Bible of Buddhism, when we were on vacation together in Hawaii. We found it in the hotel rooms and we ended up taking it around the resort with us and discussing the wisdom and stories over lunch. It was fascinating. There are some religious teachings in the Teaching of Buddha. At the same time, there are just as many philosophical teachings and stories that would be enjoyable for anyone to read.

Travel is something we've found to crave and seek out within the team, and the fact we're set up as a distributed team gives us all a lot of freedom to explore the world. Vagabonding is one of the best books out there to think about travel in a whole new way. Rather than going to places for just a few days and cramming in seeing all the sights, it suggests that if we can we should spend weeks or months rather than days in a place. That way we can get to know the culture and people or even become part of it.