Balaji Srinivasan
Author, Entrepreneur, Executive, Investor
Balaji Srinivasan is an entrepreneur, investor and writer who co-founded Counsyl in 2007, was a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz from 2013 to 2018 and served as Coinbase's chief technology officer from 2018 to 2019. He wrote The Network State (2022).
Balaji Srinivasan's 50 Book Recommendations
- The Kill Chain
- The Gray Lady Winked
- The Cold Start Problem
- Has China Won?
- The Great Wave
- China Coup
- UFO Hunters
- Working in Public
- Seeing Like a State
- History Has Begun
- Virtual Economies
- My Brother Ron
- Only the Paranoid Survive
- AI Superpowers
- Pale Rider
- Merchants of Truth
- From Third World to First
- The Great Influenza
- Start-up Nation
- The Man Who Invented Fidel
- The Little Bitcoin Book
- Physics from Finance: A Gentle Introduction to Gauge Theories, Fundamental Interactions and Fiber Bundles
- The Great CEO Within: The Tactical Guide to Company Building
- The Journalist and the Murderer
- Netflixed
- End the Fed
- The Forgotten Man
- Princeton Companion to Applied Mathematics
- The Future Is Asian
- Exit, Voice, and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations, and States: “There's this book which I reference a lot, I like it, called Exit, Voice, and Loyalty by Albert Hirschman.”
- Reputation and Power: Organizational Image and Pharmaceutical Regulation at the FDA: “If you read Reputation and Power… it's amazing, amazing book. It's written by a guy, Daniel Carpenter, smart guy.”
- The Jewish State: “A very important reference that I think is much more important to me than Snow Crash… is Der Judenstaat by Herzl, which translates as The Jewish State, and that led to the foundation of Israel.”
- The Road to Reality: A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe: “I know Roger Penrose has his Road to Reality series for basic physics, getting up to everything we know.”
- The Picture of Dorian Gray: “There's this book called The Picture of Dorian Gray, right?”
- The Dictator's Handbook: Why Bad Behavior is Almost Always Good Politics: “There's a funny kind of thing on this which I think is called The Dictator's Handbook.”
- Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America: “That's a great book. Many have mapped Fischer's Puritans and Quakers to Blues, and Cavaliers and Scotch-Irish to Reds.”
- The Star Machine: “Good book on how the studios worked to manufacture stars.”
- The Sovereign Individual: “It's a good book, but this is more like the next step — the Sovereign Collective.”
- Where Is My Flying Car?: A Memoir of Future Past: “Where's My Flying Car is an excellent book, btw.”
- The Truth Machine: The Blockchain and the Future of Everything: “Read this book by two WSJ reporters, who also did this for a living! @mikejcasey @paulvigna”
- The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Civilization in the Aftermath of a Cataclysm: “An important subject. Less theoretical every day. This is a good book on the topic.”
- Super Imperialism: The Origin and Fundamentals of U.S. World Dominance: “The book is worth reading. It's interesting because it has the ring of truth on many issues.”
- The Genetic Lottery: Why DNA Matters for Social Equality: “Excellent new book by @kph3k. Recommended reading for all biomedical founders.”
- The Book of Elon: A Guide to Purpose and Success: “How does Elon do it? This is the first book that studies that. It summarizes how he operates.”
- Read Write Own: “What's the single best intro to crypto in 2024? Read Write Own by Chris Dixon.”
- San Fransicko: Why Progressives Ruin Cities: “Read @ShellenbergerMD's book about this catastrophe of a city.”
- The Goal: “Goldratt's book is excellent on this non-obvious concept.”
- Flu: The Story of the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 and the Search for the Virus That Caused It: “Four books on the Spanish Flu… Flu: The Story of the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918.”
- Pandemic 1918: Eyewitness Accounts from the Greatest Medical Holocaust in Modern History: “Four books on the Spanish Flu… Pandemic 1918.”
- 2034: “everything I've dug into on this with, like, you know, this book called The Kill Chain... a book called 2034... those are guys who have either seen”