Founders and executives
What founders and executives recommend, in their own words, each with a link to where they said it.
- 181 thingsJason EvanishFounder and CEO of Get Lighthouse, a management-coaching software company; former product lead at KISSmetrics who writes about leadership and product management.First, break all the rules: What the world's best managers do differently, Hacking Leadership, The Cycle of Leadership: How Great Leaders Teach Their Companies to Win, Who: Solve Your #1 Problem, Great and 168 more
- 112 thingsPatrick CollisonCo-founder of Stripe. Publishes the contents of his bookshelf, marking the standouts.Chris Arnade's blog, The Dream Machine, Heat Death: Venture Capital in the 1980s, Genentech: The Beginnings of Biotech, The Whole Earth Catalog and 107 more
- 96 thingsDerek SiversAuthor, programmer, musician. Founder of CD Baby. Publishes rated notes on every book he reads.LG DualUp Monitor, Keychron Q3, Ratpoison, Fight Club, Waste Books and 91 more
- 88 thingsBill GatesCo-founder of Microsoft and the Gates Foundation; publishes book reviews and essays at Gates Notes.Personal History, The Coming Wave, Brave New Words, The Women, Not the End of the World and 83 more
- 45 thingsPieter LevelsDutch indie maker and solo founder of Nomads.com, Remote OK and Photo AI; writes about building bootstrapped products at levels.io.Cloudflare, Matic vacuum, Termius, Airthings Plus, Amap and 37 more
- 32 thingsAdam WathanFull-stack developer and creator of Tailwind CSS; writes at adamwathan.me and makes courses and screencasts for web developers.MacBook Pro, Herman Miller Aeron chair, Sublime Text 3, iTerm2, Figma and 27 more
- 23 thingsIván Olivares RojasChilean web engineer building web experiences since 2006; co-founder of Media Creators and writes at iolivares.com.Apple Mac Mini M2 Pro 2023, Dell P2414H, Bose Companion 2 Series III Speakers, Apple iPad Mini, ErgoFoam Fit Mesh and 18 more
- 21 thingsDavid Heinemeier HanssonCreator of Ruby on Rails, Hotwire, Kamal and Omarchy; co-owner and CTO of 37signals.StarCraft, Quake, Unreal, Flow84 V1, Nous and 16 more
- 21 thingsPeter SteinbergerAustrian software developer, founder of PSPDFKit and creator of the OpenClaw agent; writes about AI coding agents at steipete.me.Astra, Claude Opus, Ghostty, Dell UltraSharp U4025QW, GPT-5.2 and 16 more
- 19 thingsAuren HoffmanCEO of SafeGraph, host of the World of DaaS podcast, and author of the Summation newsletter.The Accidental Superpower, Against the Gods: The Remarkable Story of Risk, The Dictator's Handbook: Why Bad Behavior Is Almost Always Good Politics, Difficult Conversations, The Effective Executive and 14 more
- 19 thingsMitchell HashimotoCo-founder of Superlogical, started in 2026 to build server-side terminal infrastructure; creator of Ghostty. Co-founded HashiCorp and created Vagrant and Terraform before that.tmux, Zig, Crossover 27Q monitor, VMware Fusion, iTerm2 and 13 more
- 17 thingsElon MuskChief executive of Tesla and SpaceX and owner of X; founder of xAI and The Boring Company.Dune, The Odyssey, Foundation, Grok, Starlink and 12 more
- 16 thingsChris CoyierFront-end developer and writer; co-founder of CodePen, founder of CSS-Tricks, and co-host of the ShopTalk Show podcast.MacBook Pro, LG UltraFine 4k, Logitech MX Master, Audioengine A2, Notion and 11 more
- 16 thingsGuillermo RauchArgentine software engineer, CEO and co-founder of Vercel and creator of Socket.io; blogs at rauchg.com.Opus, ShellPerfBench, Next.js, shadcn, Nuxt and 11 more
- 16 thingsSeth GodinMarketing author and daily blogger; founder of the altMBA and the Akimbo workshops.Koeze, Rishi Dandelion Ginger, Lightburn, Nisus Writer Pro, Ocenaudio and 11 more
- 15 thingsMandy BrownWriter, editor and coach; co-founder and editor of A Book Apart and a former contributing editor at A List Apart.TextExpander, nvALT 2, Dropbox, Firebug, Things and 9 more
- 14 thingsChris WanstrathProgrammer; co-founded GitHub and was its CEO, and created the Mustache templating language and Resque.Logitech MX518, Dropbox, Simplenote, Pastebot, Campfire and 9 more
- 14 thingsTobias LütkeCo-founder and CEO of Shopify; Rails core alumnus, writes occasionally at tobi.lutke.com.The Lessons of History, The Machiavellians, The Managerial Revolution, Meditations, Foundation and 9 more
- 13 thingsAnil DashWriter and technology executive; blogs at anildash.com, was CEO of Glitch, and helped build Movable Type and ThinkUp.MacBook Air, Google Authenticator, Dropbox, MacBook Air (11-inch), ThinkUp and 8 more
- 13 thingsHarper ReedTechnologist; former CTO of Threadless and chief technology officer of the 2012 Obama re-election campaign.MacBook Air, Chrome Buran bag, Quirky PowerCurl, Kindle, GitHub and 8 more
- 12 thingsDaniel JalkutMac and iOS developer; founder of Red Sweater Software (MarsEdit, FastScripts) and co-host of the Core Intuition podcast.Aeron, Fujitsu ScanSnap S1500M, GeekDesk, Røde Podcaster, Shure SM58 and 7 more
- 12 thingsJeff AtwoodSoftware developer and writer; co-founder of Stack Overflow and Discourse, author of the Coding Horror blog.Don't Make Me Think, About Face: The Essentials of Interaction Design, Code Complete 2, The Mythical Man-Month, Rapid Development and 7 more
- 12 thingsMike KriegerCo-founder of Instagram; background in human-computer interaction.iMac, Microsoft Natural Keyboard 4000, Sennheiser HD280, Accessorizer, The Hit List and 7 more
- 12 thingsSteven FrankCo-founder of Panic, the Portland software company behind Transmit, Coda, Nova and the Playdate handheld.LaunchBar, Yojimbo, Dropbox, Coda, Transmit and 7 more
- 11 thingsAmber CaseCyborg anthropologist and UX designer; author of Calm Technology and co-founder of the geolocation startup Geoloqi.JumpCut, Skitch, Flickr, Omnigraffle, MacBook Air and 6 more
- 11 thingsDan CederholmWeb designer; founder of SimpleBits, co-founder of Dribbble, and author of Bulletproof Web Design and Handcrafted CSS.12" Powerbook, MLB At Bat, Magic Mouse, MacBook Pro, Waterfield Cargo and 5 more
- 11 thingsDavid SirlinGame designer; lead designer of Street Fighter HD Remix, founder of Sirlin Games (Yomi, Puzzle Strike) and author of Playing to Win.Logitech Bluetooth Easy Switch Keyboard K811, Sony 55W900A, Time Machine, Madcatz TE joystick, Photoshop CC and 5 more
- 11 thingsSadayuki FuruhashiAuthor of MessagePack, Fluentd and Embulk, and co-founder and chief architect of Treasure Data.Wacom Intuos, MacBook Air, Valgrind, Ruby, Quicksilver and 6 more
- 11 thingsTracy ChouSoftware engineer, founder of Block Party, and co-founder of Project Include; previously an engineer at Pinterest and Quora.MacBook Air, Medium, Expo, iTerm2, emacs and 5 more
- 10 thingsBryan CantrillCo-founder and CTO of Oxide Computer Company; creator of DTrace at Sun Microsystems and a long-time systems-software blogger.Selma, Rust, 13th, The Soul of a New Machine, The Rust Programming Language and 4 more
- 10 thingsDrew DeVaultFree software developer; maintainer of sway, wlroots, aerc and scdoc, and founder of the SourceHut (sr.ht) forge.ThinkPad X200, 9front, Alpine Linux, Arch Linux, Vim and 5 more
- 10 thingsHilary MasonData scientist and machine-learning researcher; chief scientist at bitly, founder of Fast Forward Labs and later a machine-learning executive at Cloudera and Hidden Door.MacBook Air, iTerm2, Python, Moleskine, Muji .38mm pens and 5 more
- 10 thingsSam AltmanCo-founder and CEO of OpenAI; previously president of Y Combinator.Ocarina of Time, Ocarina of Time remake, Superintelligence, You and Your Research, Emfit QS+Active and 5 more
- 10 thingsVitalik ButerinCo-founder of Ethereum; writes on cryptography, economics and public goods at vitalik.eth.limo.pi, NixOS, Arch Linux, llama-server, Qwen3.5:35B and 3 more
- 9 thingsAdam WigginsSoftware developer and entrepreneur; co-founder of Heroku and author of The Twelve-Factor App.Audacity, Anki, GoodReads, Pixelmator, Inkscape and 4 more
- 9 thingsAdrian HolovatyWeb developer and musician; co-creator of the Django web framework, founder of EveryBlock and of Soundslice.Logitech MX Revolution, Bose QuietComfort 15, Sony PCM-D50, Netgear Rangemax WNDR3700, youtube-dl and 4 more
- 9 thingsCal HendersonWeb developer; former head of engineering at Flickr, author of Building Scalable Web Sites, and co-founder and CTO of Slack.Ikea Jerker, Paint Shop Pro 5, Sony MDR7506, Antec cooling pad, Miranda and 4 more
- 9 thingsColin PercivalFreeBSD developer and former FreeBSD Security Officer; founder of the Tarsnap online backup service.FreeBSD, Tarsnap, Konqueror, djbdns, qmail and 3 more
- 9 thingsDavid CrawshawSoftware engineer; co-founder and former CTO of Tailscale, previously on the Go team at Google.QSFP+ 40gbit hardware, Elgato Wave 3, Proxmox, Tailscale, Vim and 4 more
- 9 thingsGabriel WeinbergFounder and CEO of the search engine DuckDuckGo.PuTTY, Zagg keyboard folio, Panasonic Lumix DMC-GH2, Sonos, Hanns G monitors and 3 more
- 9 thingsJason FriedCo-founder and CEO of 37signals (Basecamp, HEY); co-author of Rework, Remote and It Does Not Have to Be Crazy at Work.Concept2 RowErg, Shure SE530, MacBook Pro, iPad, Fuji ScanSnap and 4 more
- 8 thingsCasey HandmerFounder of Terraform Industries and formerly a physicist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory; writes about energy, space and manufacturing.Poor Charlie's Almanack, The Martian, The Right Kind of Crazy, The Case for Mars, How to Live on Mars and 3 more
- 8 thingsDaniel CookGame designer; chief creative officer at Spry Fox (Triple Town, Realm of the Mad God) and author of the Lost Garden design blog.Thinkpad T530, Skype, Google Docs, Adobe Illustrator, Google Spreadsheets and 3 more
- 8 thingsDax RaadSoftware engineer in Miami, co-creator of SST and OpenCode; writes at thdxr.com.Kysely, muse spark, OpenCode Desktop, DynamoDB, Fauna and 3 more
- 8 thingsEugen RochkoGerman developer; founder and lead developer of Mastodon, the decentralized open-source social network.Sublime Text 3, Razer Huntsman Elite, Ubuntu, Inkscape, GIMP and 3 more
- 8 thingsJustin JacksonCanadian bootstrapper, co-founder of the podcast hosting company Transistor.fm, and writer on building small software businesses at justinjackson.ca.Transistor, Reedsy, WP Engine, WordPress, ConvertKit and 3 more
- 8 thingsSamo BurjaSociologist and founder of Bismarck Analysis; writes on live players, institutional decay and why societies lose knowledge.How to Read a Book, The Republic, History of the Peloponnesian War, Politics, On War and 3 more
- 8 thingsThomas WolfCo-founder and chief science officer of Hugging Face; writes about open models and where he thinks the field is wrong.Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach, Machine Learning: A Probabilistic Perspective, Information Theory, Inference and Learning Algorithms, Reinforcement Learning: An Introduction, Deep Learning and 3 more
- 7 thingsAmjad MasadFounder and chief executive of Replit; previously an engineer at Facebook and Codecademy. Writes essays at amasad.me.A History of Western Philosophy, A Guide to the Good Life, Philosophize This!, Society of Mind, Rationality: From AI to Zombies and 2 more
- 7 thingsBryan JohnsonEntrepreneur and founder of Blueprint; publishes a detailed longevity protocol documenting the food, supplements, devices and measurements he uses on himself.Eight Sleep, SomnoDent Bruxism Device, f.lux, Waterpik, simplelab and 2 more
- 7 thingsMarc AndreessenCo-creator of the Mosaic browser, co-founder of Netscape, and co-founder of the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.High Output Management, Zero to One, Walt Disney: The Triumph of the American Imagination, Halt and Catch Fire, The Wizard of Menlo Park and 2 more
- 7 thingsSteve CoastFounder of OpenStreetMap, the collaborative world map; later a product architect at Microsoft and Telenav.Mathematica, Evernote, Backblaze, Instapaper, VirtualBox and 2 more
- 7 thingsThomas PtacekSecurity researcher; co-founded Matasano Security and Latacora, writes at sockpuppet.org.TUI frameworks, Magit, Math Academy, Lazygit, Claude and 1 more
- 7 thingsTiago ForteAuthor of Building a Second Brain and founder of Forte Labs; writes about productivity and personal knowledge management at fortelabs.com.Claude Connectors, How to Switch From Evernote to Obsidian, Superhuman, Evernote, Obsidian
- 7 thingsTom Preston-WernerProgrammer and entrepreneur; co-founded GitHub and created Jekyll, Gravatar and the Semantic Versioning spec.MacBook Pro, Google Chrome, TextMate, Mailplane, Propane and 2 more
- 6 thingsJason CrawfordFounder and president of the Roots of Progress Institute; writes the history and philosophy of progressThe Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, The Alchemy of Air, The Most Powerful Idea in the World: A Story of Steam, Industry, and Invention, The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Civilization in the Aftermath of a Cataclysm, A Culture of Growth: The Origins of the Modern Economy and 1 more
- 6 thingsMatt MullenwegCo-founder of WordPress and founder of Automattic; blogs at ma.tt.Beeper, Nikon D6, Ollama, LM Studio, Deep Dive into LLMs and 1 more
- 6 thingsMichael LiebreichFounder of what became Bloomberg New Energy Finance; hosts the Cleaning Up podcast.Sustain What, The Honest Broker, Material World, Jonathan Maxwell's Substack, Who kept the lights on? (Arthur's Substack) and 1 more
- 6 thingsRob MaldaFounder and longtime editor of Slashdot, known online as CmdrTaco.Canon 5D Mark II, MacBook Pro, Drobo, Chrome, Fluid and 1 more
- 6 thingsRob WallingBootstrapper, founder of TinySeed and MicroConf, and host of the Startups for the Rest of Us podcast; writes at robwalling.com.Good to Great, Built to Last, Getting to Plan B, The New Business Road Test, Business Model Generation and 1 more
- 6 thingsStephen WolframFounder and CEO of Wolfram Research, creator of Mathematica and Wolfram|Alpha, and author of A New Kind of Science.Mathematica, Wolfram|Alpha, Firefox, MacBook Pro, Lenovo ThinkPad X301 and 1 more
- 6 thingsTroy HuntSecurity researcher; founded Have I Been PwnedHerman Miller Aeron chair, Ergotron HX and LX monitor arms, Verifi P5100 fingerprint reader, Surface Precision Mouse and Surface Ergonomic Keyboard, Sony a6400 with 16mm Sigma f/1.4 lens and 1 more
- 6 thingsVarun Raj ManoharanIndian software engineer and co-founder of Skcript; builds web apps and writes at varunraj.in.Kindle Paperwhite, Gen 10, LG 29" Ultrawide Monitor - 29WL500-B, Apple Macbook Air M1, iPhone 16 Pro, Apple Airpods Pro and 1 more
- 5 thingsAndrew KelleyCreator of the Zig programming language; president and lead developer of the Zig Software Foundation.Amarok 1.4, Redict, musl libc, Introduction to EBU R128, Bonobo Extreme
- 5 thingsJoel SpolskySoftware developer; co-founder of Stack Overflow and Fog Creek Software, and author of the Joel on Software blog.No Silver Bullet, Don't Make Me Think, The Founder's Dilemmas, Rocket Surgery Made Easy, NewsBlur
- 5 thingsTim SpectorProfessor of genetic epidemiology at King's College London, co-founder of the nutrition company ZOE, and author of The Diet Myth and Spoon-Fed.Letter on Corpulence, Addressed to the Public, Pure, White, and Deadly: How Sugar Is Killing Us and What We Can Do to Stop It, The Fast Diet, The F-Plan Diet: Lose Weight Fast and Live Longer, The China Study: The Most Comprehensive Study of Nutrition Ever Conducted
- 5 thingsYotam OttolenghiChef and food writer; patron of the Ottolenghi group of London restaurants and author of Plenty, Jerusalem and Simple.Stars Desserts, The Pie and Pastry Bible, The River Cottage Meat Book, Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone, On Food and Cooking
- 4 thingsJosh BrownCo-founder and CEO of Ritholtz Wealth Management; writes the Downtown Josh Brown newsletter and co-hosts The Compound and Friends.The Intelligent Investor, The Idea Farm, Investopedia, You Weren’t Supposed To See That
- 4 thingsMatt WebbBritish designer and technologist; co-founder of the design studio BERG, which made Little Printer, and writer of the blog Interconnected.iPhone 5C, Sony NEX-5N, Little Printer
- 4 thingsRichard StallmanFounder of the Free Software Movement and the GNU Project, and the original author of GNU Emacs and the GNU General Public License.Lemote Yeelong, gNewSense, PMON, emacs
- 4 thingsScott HelmeSecurity researcher; creator of Report URI and Security Headers.Starlink Mini, UniFi NVR (UNVR), UniFi Protect cameras (G4 range), UniFi Travel Router
- 4 thingsScott RaoCoffee consultant and author of books on espresso, roasting and brewing; writes at scottrao.com.Ceado Hoop, Decent DE1, Niche Zero, Decent Espresso dimples and freckles shower screens
- 3 thingsArvid KahlSoftware entrepreneur who sold FeedbackPanda and now builds Podscan; writes The Bootstrapped Founder.Claude, ChatGPT, PHPStorm
- 3 thingsDan ShipperCo-founder and CEO of Every; writes the Chain of Thought column on working with AI tools and hosts the AI & I podcast.Superhuman, GPT-3, ChatGPT Custom Instructions
- 3 thingsGeorge HotzProgrammer; founded comma.ai and tinygrad, and was the first to unlock the iPhone.Omarchy, amd_s2idle, HP ZBook Strix Halo
- 3 thingsJack ClarkCo-founder and head of policy at Anthropic; writes the Import AI newsletter.The Rise and Fall of Agent Civilizations, The Hugging Face attack surprised me, AIs are not people
- 2 thingsKarri SaarinenCo-founder and CEO of Linear; previously principal designer at Airbnb and founding designer at Coinbase.Jiro Dreams of Sushi, The Auteur Theory of Design (Macworld speech)
- 2 thingsMark PincusFounder and former CEO of Zynga; wrote Life at the Speed of Play.Blood Money, The Everything Store
- 2 thingsRory SutherlandVice chairman of Ogilvy UK; writes the Wiki Man column in The Spectator.A New Way to Think, The Car
- 2 thingsWarren BuffettThe Intelligent Investor, Jack: Straight from the Gut
- 1 thingCharity MajorsCo-founder and CTO of Honeycomb; previously an infrastructure engineer at Parse, Facebook and Linden Lab; co-author of Observability Engineering.Blood Rites: On The Origins and History of the Passions of War
- 1 thingNat FriedmanIndependent investor; CEO of GitHub 2018-2021; funds the Vesuvius Challenge.Boba Guys
- 1 thingRamez NaamAuthor and clean-energy analyst who writes on solar cost curves.Dream-RSI