Reading list · 12 books
Tobi Lütke's reading list
Co-founder and CEO of Shopify. One of tech's most genuinely bookish CEOs — a programmer-turned-CEO who frames company-building in first principles and openly credits specific books for shaping Shopify's culture and strategy.
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01
Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
"Shopify is practically built on that book"; he says "I love Antifragile, and I make everyone read it. It finally put a name to an important concept that we practiced."
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02
Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion
Robert B. Cialdini
Ranks it in his top five ever; called it "the most mind-bending book you can imagine" on the Tim Ferriss Show for revealing how predictably humans can be influenced.
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03
Andrew S. Grove
A formative early-Shopify text he calls "the bible for entrepreneurs"; praised it for deconstructing business "into first principles."
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04
Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration
Ed Catmull and Amy Wallace
On his Shopify startup-books list for building a durable culture of creativity and originality.
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05
Kim Scott
Selected on his Shopify list for teaching leaders to balance caring personally with challenging directly.
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06
The Hard Thing About Hard Things
Ben Horowitz
On his list for its honest playbook on making brutal leadership calls with no easy answers.
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07
Tyler Cowen & Daniel Gross
Picked for its first-principles approach to identifying and interviewing exceptional people.
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08
Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World
David Epstein
On his list; argues generalist, multi-hat thinking suits founders — a fit with his own polymath profile.
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09
Mindset: The New Psychology of Success
Carol S. Dweck
Selected for showing how a growth mindset separates those who plateau from those who keep improving.
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10
Jocko Willink and Leif Babin
On his list for its leadership-accountability principles; he has also read Willink's Warrior Kid books to his kids.
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11
Strunk & White
A characteristically practical pick — he recommends it to sharpen the writing that drives conversion.
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12
Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us
Daniel H. Pink
On his list for its model of intrinsic motivation (autonomy, mastery, purpose).
More on Tobi Lütke's picks
Lütke reads widely and recommends often — Shopify even published his curated list of 14 startup books. His strongest endorsements come from a long-form Tim Ferriss interview and The Observer Effect, where he ties Antifragile and Influence directly to how Shopify operates. He reads to extract durable mental models and "makes everyone read" the books that named concepts he already practiced.
