The best books that venture capitalists read in 2022

Ah, the end of the year. The perfect time to settle into the couch in a food coma and read.

In honor of our love of reading and the fact that giving books as gifts is a cliche for a reason — people love it! — TechCrunch has compiled several lists of great reads for you.

We started with a series of recommendations from TechCrunch staff. But we know that you want more perspectives, so your friends at TechCrunch+ collected myriad recommendations from both venture capitalists and founders alike. Here we have investor favorites, and we’ll follow up with notes from founders tomorrow.

You can check out the 2021, 2020 and 2019 recommendations if you need even more. Enjoy, and may your holiday respite be filled with words.

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Venture book favorites, 2022 edition

The Power Law: Venture Capital and the Making of the New Future by Sebastian Mallaby

Recommended by Brian McCullough, GP at Ride Home Fund; Aziz Gilani, managing director at Mercury Fund, who added it as a textbook for his VC class at Rice; and Arvind Purushotham, head of Citi Ventures, who made this comment:

“The Power Law: Venture Capital and the Making of the New Future” does an excellent job highlighting the importance of discovery and learning in the venture capital and startup world. Mallaby perfectly illustrates the laws of power that control which points of discovery succeed in venture capital and which ones don’t. His analysis of the highest highs and lowest lows adds color to the venture world and how it dictates how we see our future.

The Splendid and The Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family and Defiance During the Blitz by Erik Larson

Recommended by Logan Allin, managing partner and founder of Fin Capital.

With all of the personal and economic turmoil of the last couple of years, reading about Churchill’s navigation of U.K. politics, his family’s trials and tribulations, and the vibrant stories of Londoners at the moment, all while conducting a must-win war, resonated deeply. Despite his rough edges, he emerges a hero, and you want him to win on all “fronts” — he is highly relatable, particularly in light of the evil he faced as a parallel to today’s geopolitical landscape. While not remotely the same level of gravity, in the VC world, you feel like you are always addressing multiple fronts, critical constituents and fire-fighting, so whenever I find myself losing any confidence, I take solace in Churchill’s bunker experience and move forward with something resembling cautious optimism.

Chatter: The Voice in Our Head by Ethan Kross

Recommended by Amy Cheetham, Costanoa Ventures.

A master class in taming your inner critic and using it for good, a great reframe of anxiety and positive powers it can have.

Day of the Oprichnik by Vladimir Sorokin

Recommended by Danny Crichton, formerly of TechCrunch and currently of Lux Capital.

Everyone loves a villain, and few villains have loomed as menacingly in the public imagination as Vladimir Putin, whose violent war of choice against Ukraine has dominated foreign affairs this year. But what are Putin’s deleterious effects on his own society? Russian dissident author Vladimir Sorokin considered the question way back in 2006 in his caustic and scorching novel “Day of the Oprichnik,” which synoptically diagnoses and shreds the security services of a future dystopian Russian dictatorship. It’s riotous, at times extraordinarily profane, and scarily prophetic — made all the more real when considering the events of the past year. If Orwell and Huxley strike your fancy (or you read “The Gulag Archipelago” for bedtime reading), Sorokin adds in just the right amount of cynical bitterness to the mélange to push the dystopian genre to new and poetic heights.

When We Cease to Understand the World by Benjamín Labatut

Recommended by Brett Winton, ARK Invest.

A reminder that the profound benefits of technological advance almost always come coupled with refracted ill. (And that there is always a deeper and more profound and more dangerous and more revelatory advance to come.)

Binge by Douglas Coupland

Recommended by Allison Goldberg, managing partner at Comcast Ventures.

I’m a big fiction reader. This year I loved “Binge” by Douglas Coupland, which is a collection of short stories, narrated by different characters, which touch on the way we live now. He is one of my favorite authors. “Microserfs” and “JPod” are favorites that speak to the good and bad of an increasingly tech world.

This Time is Different by Carmen Reinhart and Kenneth Rogoff

Recommended by Kevin Liu, Techstars.

I read this years ago. Then reread it at the beginning of COVID. And reading parts again. TL;DR, this time is not different 🥲🥲.

Secrets of the Temple by William Greider

Recommended by Blair Silverberg, Hum Capital.

In a year of inflation and rising interest rates, “Secrets of the Temple” has helped me understand why rates and inflation will both come down in 2023. Reading this book feels like an unfair advantage right now.

Gangsters of Capitalism by Jonathan Myerson Katz

Recommended by Brett Winton, ARK Invest.

[The book] does a nice job unpacking the still echoing reverberations of the United States’ early 20th century corporate-led imperialism.

You’re Not Listening: What You’re Missing and Why It Matters by Kate Murphy

Recommended by Amy Cheetham, Costanoa Ventures.

Reframed listening for me and made me think deeply about how we all yearn to understand and be understood and how deep listening can be a path towards overcoming loneliness.

Piranesi by Susanna Clarke

Recommended by Brett Winton of ARK Invest.

[The book] was enjoyable. Evocative and haunting (and more readable than “When We Cease” … if I’m being honest.)

Between Two Kingdoms: A Memoir of a Life Interrupted by Suleika Jaouad

Recommended by Amy Cheetham, Costanoa Ventures.

Incredibly moving memoir about learning to persevere through pain, grief and sadness and to finding joy and reprieve in literature: “That’s what literature offers—a language powerful enough to say how it is, it isn’t a hiding place, it’s a finding place.”

And finally, more recommendations that came without as much supporting context, but that we wanted to include as a host of our favorite books made these VCs’ lists:

Shomik Ghosh, Boldstart Ventures:

Hunter Walk, Homebrew Capital:

Aziz Gilani, Mercury Fund:

Kevin Stevens, Energize:

Juan Muldoon, Energize: