Reading still matters. The books that shaped 5 tech founders

Linda Lacina, Meet The Leader Welcome to Meet the Leader, the podcast where top leaders share how they're tackling the world's toughest challenges. In today's episode, we talk to the tech founders who are tackling those challenges, the entrepreneurs pioneering game-changing sector-leading solutions. They share the books that help them move forward.

Subscribe to Meet The Leader on Apple, Spotify, and wherever you get your favorite podcasts. And don't forget, rate and review us. I'm Linda Lacina from the World Economic Forum. And this is Meet the Leader.

Kian Katanforoosh, Workera If we all adopt a learning mindset, we can all reshape humanity.

Emilie Bodoin, Pure Lithium Read this book because it will give you a lot of very good practical lessons.

Linda Lacina, Meet The Leader Reading is declining. That's a fact that is sad, but true. In the US, for instance, recreational reading has dropped more than 40% in the last 20 years. Robots, meanwhile, well, they're reading up a storm. We are delegating more and more of our reading to AI, meaning that we see more easy summaries and we're not grappling with dense text and syntax firsthand. That's at a loss for honing a lot of things, including critical thinking, patience, empathy, and even creativity in thinking in new ways.

It shouldn't surprise you that some of the most innovative thinkers remain big readers. This week's episode collects the books that have shaped tech founders, and most critically, given them comfort. Leadership is not for the feignt of heart. Pioneering in new sectors can be particularly daunting. We share the books to help them navigate their unique worlds, help inspire them. And help give them something to relate to, and even give them practical guidance when they need it.

Many of these episodes were recorded at our annual meeting of the new champions in Dalian China, with others across the year, including at Davos at our Annual Meeting.

We'll start with Kian Katanforoosh. Kian Katanforoosh is the CEO and founder of Workera. It is a skills intelligence platform that provides an impartial way to measure and help develop key skills. Listen to our longer conversation on why skills are so difficult for leaders to objectively assess. But Kian's work asks big questions, like will it one day be unethical for humans rather than a machine to judge another human's capabilities? He's interested in big ideas, and that's why it's no surprise he'd mention a classic work on disruptors that has new relevance in our new AI age. Here's Kian, talking to my colleague, Kaya Bulbul in China this June.

Kian Katanforoosh, Workera I'm a huge sci-fi nerd, so a lot of the books I read are science fiction books. A book that is very relevant right now is Isaac Asimov's Foundation series. And Isaac Asimov made up this science called Psychohistory that can look at a civilization and predict the future of that civilization. The only thing that can sort of derail the path of this civilization is individuals that are outliers. These individuals might do certain things, they might have certain skills that really can reshape the civilization. And if I think about reality, there are situations where individuals or groups of individuals have reshaped the world. Whether you think about Tesla bringing the world to more electric future, Einstein who reimagined physics, or even the OpenAI team that gave Chat GPT within three months to over 100 million people. These are events that are led by individuals that are highly skilled, that have reshaped humanity. And I do think that it doesn't have to be a small group of individuals reshaping humanity. If we all adopt a learning mindset, we can all reshape humanity, and we don't have follow the path that will be predicted by AI.

Linda Lacina, Meet The Leader Sam Yang is the CEO and co-founder of Xander Kardian. That's a company whose radar technologies for hospitals and long-term care facilities provide a contact-free, continuous monitoring of things like heart rate and respiratory rate. That helps spot big issues before they become serious. It can even prevent hospitalizations. Being a founder is no small challenge. One book has been a comfort to him when things get tough, helping him stay connected with his “why.” Here's Sam. Talking to my colleague, Nicola Rowe, at our Annual Meeting of the New Champions in China.

Sam Yang, Xander Kardian This is probably a book that most Christians know very well. It's a book by Rick Warren called The Purpose Driven Life. The reason I mentioned this book is because in a startup world, especially very challenging hardware, med tech, perseverance is extremely important. There's a lot of times where money is drying and you can't make payroll, you've got to raise more funding, or you've got to go after revenues. And there's a million things going on. Having a purpose -- I'm constantly reminding myself like why am I doing this? What is the reason other than money, other than fame, whatever it is that people most likely think about -- It's knowing that, hey, I am doing this because I'm gonna make a difference in the world when it comes to healthcare, for aging in place and whatnot. That is what drives me and drives many people to keep going. And it's super important. Their flight.

Linda Lacina, Meet The Leader Sarah Fleischer is the co-founder of tozero. That is a company that is revolutionizing lithium-ion battery recycling. Critical minerals too often wind up in landfills, polluting water supplies and wasting important materials that we need to power the energy transition, and her firm's proprietary process recovers all critical materials, bringing waste literally to zero. Building a new company is hard enough, but building a new industry is tougher still. She also talked to Nicola in China this summer, and Sarah shared a book that gives her the support she needs to navigate the unique difficulties founders face. Here's Sarah.

Sarah Fleischer, tozero A book I recommend, anyone who is pursuing being a founder or who is already a founder is Hard Things About Hard Things from Mark Andreessen. What resonated to me is just reading those learnings or painful learnings from another founder and knowing that you're not alone in this world. Everybody else is struggling to scale up their companies and it's a very lonely journey and just... Reading those lines that Mark put into this book really helped me out and actually encouraged me to speak about it openly and getting feedback from other founders. So definitely get that book.

Linda Lacina, Meet The Leader Emily Bowdoin has a background in tech and finance, but the prospect of solving energy problems for the 600 million people around the world who don't have reliable access to power drove an obsession with her. It's a gap she wanted to bridge and it's one that inspired her to not only become an innovator and an inventor with 16 patents, but it drove her to found Pure Lithium Corporation. That's a firm where she is also CEO and Chairman, and it is one that is focused on lithium metal next-generation battery technologies. As she explained to my colleague Anna Bruce Lockhart in China this summer, solving energy challenges isn't just a tech issue, it's also a mindset problem and it's one that impacts everything from funding to betting on big ideas. I’ll let her explain.

Emilie Bodoin, Pure Lithium To me. Last year in the United States, women received 1.2% of all venture capital. The year before it was 2%. And here's a fun fact for you. Of all the companies that have ever been public, that a founder took from beginning to public, only 30 of them were women. So there's a lot of skepticism around that and roadblocks to raising money, but the reality is none of this matters because when I give them a battery that works and they take it apart and they analyze it and they say, wow, okay, this is not magic, this is exactly what she's saying it is. And when people really think about it and when there isn't pride involved, which there aren in a lot of cultures. Then it becomes very, very, very tenable.

Linda Lacina, Meet The Leader To women innovators facing this challenge, she suggests one specific book, Bro-topia. Here's why.

Emilie Bodoin, Pure Lithium I would say read the book Brotopia by Emily Chang, who's a Bloomberg reporter. I wish I had read it much earlier in my journey because I was completely naive and completely unaware of the challenges. And then I would do not give up. Put yourself in front of people that you know are going to understand you. And maybe it isn't the venture capital group in Silicon Valley. Maybe it's that famous mining entrepreneur who understands how raw materials are made and has long patient capital that’s somebody that you connect with. Get a group of investors that understand you and want to support you and your business. But don't be discouraged because it will give you a lot of very good practical lessons. And you need to go into the world and be aware. And the reason for that is it's going to maximize your time. If I had spent two years trying to get Silicon Valley money, I wouldn't have a battery today that's lasted 8,500 cycles. Get investors that trust you and that aren't going to micromanage you, and you can find these people. But it's not easy, it's not easy to do.

Linda Lacina, Meet The Leader Which brings us to our last recommendation from Jeremy Allaire. Jeremy Allaire is the co-founder and CEO of Circle. That's a global financial technology firm that actually built one of the world's top stablecoins. He's working to build an open and accessible global financial system, one that revolutionizes the digital global economy. He's also a serial founder and he understands more than most how to adapt and push through when the way isn't clear. In that effort, he has found a kindred spirit in a classic book by Joseph Conrad. It's a book that other founders could find comfort in as well.

Jeremy Allaire, Circle I'm actually reading a book by James Conrad right now called Typhoon and it's about a captain who had to take a ship that he was captaining for, I think it was a Thai family and shepherd it through a typhoon. It's a story of leadership. I ended up reading this, someone recommended it. But as a CEO. You're dealing with high seas, unpredictable weather, you're dealing with exogenous shocks and people and their needs and their emotions and all the operational things that have to happen. So I think it's a good metaphor and I'd recommend it.

Linda Lacina, Meet The Leader And those are the books that tech founders are reading. Thanks so much to all of the leaders who've talked to us for this episode. And thanks so much for listening. If there's an innovative person in your life looking for their next great read, send them this episode.

Find a transcript of this episode as well as transcript from my colleague's podcast, Radio Davos at wef.ch slash podcasts.

This episode of Meet the Leader was produced and presented by me with Taz Kelleher as editor, Edward Bally and Juan Turan as studio engineers in Davos and China. And Gareth Nolan driving studio production. That's it for now. I'm Linda Lacina from the World Economic Forum. Have a great day.