Legendary Investor Bill Gurley on Investing Rules, Insights from Jeff Bezos, Must-Read Books, & More

Competitive Strategy: Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors

Michael Porter

“Michael Porter's book Competitive Strategy: Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors, which you have described I believe as the most efficient short-form MBA”— Tim Ferriss

The Rational Optimist

Matt Ridley

“I think Ridley's two books, The Rational Optimist and How Innovation Works, they're just fantastic and spectacular.”— Bill Gurley

How Innovation Works

Matt Ridley

“I think Ridley's two books, The Rational Optimist and How Innovation Works, they're just fantastic and spectacular.”— Bill Gurley

The Innovator's Dilemma

Clayton Christensen (inferred)

“I would put as next level right on top of Competitive Strategy or Innovator's Dilemma, which does an amazing job of describing why startups can compete with big companies. Amazing.”— Bill Gurley

Crossing the Chasm

Geoffrey Moore (inferred)

“And Crossing the Chasm, which does a really good job of explaining how a startup should kind of sequence their customer base as they grow. And they're both fundamental.”— Bill Gurley

Startup: A Silicon Valley Adventure

Jerry Kaplan

“There's a book I love called Startup by Kaplan.”— Bill Gurley

Build

Tony Fadell

“And on Tony, I'd read his new book, Build. ... And it's got a lot of frameworks, and you can agree with them or not agree with them.”— Bill Gurley

Shoe Dog

Phil Knight

“I would mention Shoe Dog. ... it's good to see the tenacity you need. This is the Phil Knight Nike book, but the tenacity you need to make it is high.”— Bill Gurley

Open

Andre Agassi

“the same person who did Open, the autobiography of Agassi, which is another spectacular book.”— Tim Ferriss

Snow Crash

Neal Stephenson (inferred)

“years ago, I read Snow Crash when it came out. ... Thought it was the best thing that I had ever consumed. And I was in hook, line, and sinker.”— Bill Gurley

Complexity

Mitchell Waldrop

“The first one that I've gifted the most is called Complexity by Mitchell Waldrop, which is about the rise of the Santa Fe Institute.”— Bill Gurley

Mr. China

Tim Clissold (inferred)

“This book, Mr. China is fantastic. He went to China in the mid '90s and started a fund to privatize a bunch of industries.”— Bill Gurley

Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World

David Epstein

“the book that I've been fascinated with the past five years, four or five years is Epstein's Range. David Epstein wrote a book called Range”— Bill Gurley

The Sports Gene: Inside the Science of Extraordinary Athletic Performance

David Epstein

“another book, which is The Sports Gene. ... Inside the Science of Extraordinary Athletic Performance, which is a great book.”— Tim Ferriss

General Magic (documentary)

“you should probably also simultaneously watch the General Magic documentary. ... Because they were a competitor with GO”— Bill Gurley

The Cathedral and the Bazaar

Eric S. Raymond (inferred)

“There's a great piece of writing, an incredible piece of writing called The Cathedral and the Bazaar that was the first kind of magnum opus on why this open source thing might work.”— Bill Gurley

Shop (app)

Shopify

“I thought what they did with the shop app was super cool. ... websites I'd never been to before, knew who I was and allowed one click checkout.”— Bill Gurley

Techmeme

“There's a website called Techmeme where Gabe has this curated news rank, including Twitter comments people have made about that article.”— Bill Gurley

Eric Newcomer (venture capital Substack)

Eric Newcomer

“Eric Newcomer does a venture capital Substack. And so just being in the industry, that's something to follow.”— Bill Gurley

Spotify

“that's one of the benefits of Spotify as a podcast listener, I think it cues and organizes easier than some of the others.”— Bill Gurley

One Up On Wall Street

Peter Lynch

“You can go through all the Buffett letters as an example. You can read Peter Lynch's One Up On Wall Street.”— Bill Gurley

A Random Walk Down Wall Street

Burton Malkiel

“A Random Walk Down Wall Street by Burton Malkiel. And then you build your bedrock and then you're out there and you're looking for an opportunity.”— Bill Gurley

Think Twice: Harnessing the Power of Counterintuition

Michael J. Mauboussin

“Did he write a book called Think Twice: Harnessing the Power of Counterintuition, or is that a different Michael?”— Tim Ferriss

Valuation

McKinsey

“McKinsey had a book called Valuation, they still do, that uses this type of analysis.”— Bill Gurley

Spare

Prince Harry (inferred)

“And apparently the new Harry book that I — ... J.D. Moehringer, yeah, yeah. He's fantastic.”— Bill Gurley

Ready Player One

Ernest Cline (inferred)

“it reminds you that both Snow Crash and Ready Player One were dystopian novels, right?”— Bill Gurley

Red Notice

Bill Browder

“It sounds kind of like the Red Notice by Bill Browder equivalent, but in China.”— Tim Ferriss

Thinking, Fast and Slow

Daniel Kahneman (inferred)

“All the books that have been written on bias and all the Kahneman [inaudible] and Thinking, Fast and Slow, and all the Nobel prizes for that stuff.”— Bill Gurley

Jodorowsky's Dune (documentary)

“It's like the Jodorowsky's Dune where Giger, who went on to create the iconic design for Alien and Aliens.”— Tim Ferriss

WordPress

Automattic (inferred)

“Matt, who's been on the show multiple times, was a lead developer of WordPress, very familiar with open source”— Tim Ferriss

Palm Pilot

Palm (inferred)

“this was around the time where the Palm Pilot launched. And so in the lobby of the conference was they were selling them.”— Bill Gurley

Linux

“Linux being the most well known. It's over 20 years old now. It's clearly the most used operating system in the world.”— Bill Gurley

MySQL

“MySQL is an example. Google and Yahoo were two of the biggest customers, never paid us a penny.”— Bill Gurley

MongoDB

“we started to see that in MySQL and there've been others like MongoDB and we're in one called Elastic”— Bill Gurley

Elastic

“there've been others like MongoDB and we're in one called Elastic and there've been a lot of successful companies around single software frameworks.”— Bill Gurley

Android

Google (inferred)

“So the most well known is probably Android. So Apple had come out with this smartphone, you could only get it on AT&T.”— Bill Gurley

Kubernetes

Google (inferred)

“they had a piece of technology called Kubernetes, and this was right around when Docker and containerization took off”— Bill Gurley

Docker

“this was right around when Docker and containerization took off, and Kubernetes was an orchestration layer for containers.”— Bill Gurley

AWS

Amazon (inferred)

“Google was very afraid of Amazon running away with the cloud services business in AWS.”— Bill Gurley

RISC-V

“There's something called RISC-V, which is an open source processor, believe it or not, that has a lot of momentum now.”— Bill Gurley

Zoom

“Zoom obviously has massive network effects. So we started looking for those things because they tend to cause outlier outcomes.”— Bill Gurley

Microsoft Word

Microsoft (inferred)

“And Brian talked about things just like the Microsoft UIs. You know how Word works, you get comfortable with how it works”— Bill Gurley

Snowflake

“you look at something like Snowflake. People just say, "This database does things no other database will do,"”— Bill Gurley

Second Life

Linden Lab (inferred)

“so when Philip Rosedale started Second Life, I was knocking on his door. I served on that board for 12 years.”— Bill Gurley