We discuss three essential books that help us break through uncertainty and focus on the most important work. If you want to get better at designing products and building companies, we think you should read:

• Getting Real by 37signals, for how to get real about what matters
• Good Strategy Bad Strategy by Richard Rumelt, for how to give your business an unfair advantage
• Deep Work by Cal Newport, for staying focused and actually doing the work

On episode 11 of Jake & JZ, we also talked about:

• Why your business needs an enemy
• Insights from the “survival days” of successful companies (like the Startup Wayback Machine)
• Crafting strategy based on your unique advantages
• Why strategy is a hypothesis
• How to summarize an entire book in 25 words
• More lessons from journalism
• Bad graphic design

Have a question for us? Send it to [email protected] and we’ll answer it on the show.

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💸 Learn more about our seed fund at Character Capital

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🤠 Find JZ on LinkedIn, Bluesky, and X