Welcome to the second part of our 2021 VC recommended book gift guide!

Yesterday, we dealt with a large number of non-commercial books recommended by venture capitalists. Today, we are flipping it and talking about books with business themes. There are some titles that cross the gap, so if any of the following makes you feel that their business is not high, then we will hear from you.

In any case, please remember that The Exchange is again free of charge today, because we are loyal book fans and want to keep it as accessible as possible. Oh, Anna and Alex will delete their personal recommendations in the Exchange newsletter this weekend. Many of you have already received them on Saturday, but you can come here if you want.

Thank you very much to the dozens of venture capitalists who contributed ideas to these posts, and double the points for those who don't have an assistant to handle emails! Oh, we only have two books recommended by the author, which are lower than we expected. well done!

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Recommended by Brian Ascher of Venrock, who said he "gave this to many CEOs and CROs in my portfolio", and Chase Roberts, head of Vertex Ventures, recommended through Tessa Chen: "Most founders who raise funds want to grow and Scale up their sales team. They have to hire their first sales executives, but many people don’t know where to start, especially in enterprise SaaS. Chase has recommended this book to some of our founders to get Practical tips for creating sales initiatives from scratch."

Recommended by Jake Chapman and Zach Coelius, this book contains introductions from Kara Swisher and Nick Bilton, so it seems to bridge the technical media gap that we occasionally have to treat like the DMZ. The point is that the zero-day cyber weapon market is not what it used to be. In the past, the United States controlled the arsenal. A huge price was paid, but who cares. Then it lost control of the zero-day world. People said that what happened next was shocking.

Daisy Garcia of JetBlue Ventures recommended this book together with Reeves Wiedeman's "Billion Dollar Loser: The Epic Rise and Spectacular Fall of Adam Neumann and WeWork". She described the two books as "interesting and interesting to what you know Good reminder to invest in things". Both Alex and Anna have read "Bad Blood". On our desks, this book is a rare must-read book in the pantheon of business books. You have to read it to understand how far things can deviate from the entrepreneurial track, and frankly, you can learn a lot about the business world.

The Ugly Truth: Deep into the battle of Facebook’s dominance, authored by Sheera Frenkel and Cecilia Kang, recommended by Amy Cheetham

Next year, we will add a section to books that we have purchased and are on the shelves but have not yet started. "The Ugly Truth" is such a book. Alex bought a copy when it was published and kept assuring himself that he would stop reading novels and start reading. So far, too bad, but it still feels like a must-read book.

why? Because Facebook hardly abandons its long-term goals. The company is changing its growth model to some extent, but it has hardly experienced DNA-level changes in how to consider its political settings (an owner, led by a blind person) or operational goals (your eyes belong to us). We should take this book off the shelf and read it. You too.

Radical and frank: How to get what you want by saying what you mean, by Tamara Steffens, recommended by Kim Scott

This book has been on her reading list ever since Anna listened to the "Radical Frank" podcast, which distilled the book’s ideas into a form of dialogue. But no matter what media you choose, please make sure not to stay on the title, otherwise you may misunderstand the message you want to convey. Being honest is not cruel; it is a form of kindness, because honesty is better than kindness.

This may apply to many areas of life, but it is definitely business content, especially related to the entrepreneurial and technological world. Author Kim Scott is a former executive at Apple and Google, and he knows a little bit about leadership-VCs are reading this and we are not surprised. "This book provides great guidance for providing effective feedback—both positive and negative," Stephens pointed out. "It helps me recommit to pass quickly when I don't believe in opportunities — and communicate this message clearly, so there is no room for confusion."

Empire of Pain: The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty, by Patrick Laden Kiefer, recommended by Amy Chitham

Creating maximum value for shareholders is sometimes not a good idea. That's because the cost of doing so under certain circumstances will cause such a heavy social burden, which is obviously negative for humans. A few examples that come to mind include the oil industry's hidden knowledge of global warming for decades, the tobacco industry's struggle with the obvious fact that smoking causes cancer, and the recent lobbying efforts of alcohol companies to combat the legalization of marijuana. The effects of these actions are uncontrolled carbon emissions, a large number of cancer deaths and a tragic rate of alcoholism.

Then there is the Sacramento team. It's not that we want to reduce the impact of the aforementioned shareholder value creation actions, but the Sackler family may defeat them. If you didn’t know, the Sackler dynasty contributed to the epidemic of opioid addiction, turning some of their ill-gotten gains into charitable donations-this is the standard way for billionaires to hide it with some media-friendly wrapping paper Their source of wealth. We want to read this book to better understand how things went wrong for so long.

The Aristocrat of Talent: How the Elite Created the Modern World Author: Adrian Wooldridge, Recommended by James Clark   

"Aristocrat of Talent" is a recommendation from James Clark of Molten and a profile of Steven Pinker, one of Anna's favorite thinkers. Here is what he wrote about Adrian Wooldridge's latest book: "This unique and fascinating history explains why it is now wrong to attribute responsibility to elite politics-and to blame Assigning to those most capable of performing duties is indeed better than long-established customs. Corruption, patronage, nepotism, and hereditary castes. Woodridge subverts many common assumptions and provides an answer to this worrying and pressing issue An indispensable background story."

We all support subverting the hypothesis here, especially when this topic is mentioned so frequently in our little bubble-we would love to read more.

Infinite Machine, by Camila Russo, recommended by Jenny Lefcourt

So there is an idea in the market that the blockchain world is similar to a new Internet. There are some problems with this idea, mainly because the blockchain technology runs on the Internet, making it at most a second layer of the network. Nevertheless, the notion that what hackers are building today will tear the past and rewrite the future is strong.

Entering the "Infinite Machine", it delves into the Ethereum blockchain, which some people compare to an infinite computer or machine. We have our problems. For example, how did web3 kids manage to make a computer that can be accessed for so much money? Snark aside, it is worth taking the time to understand exactly why some people are so fanatical about the cryptocurrency market. They may be right!

The Wires of War: Technology and the Global Struggle for Power by Jacob Helberg, recommended by Jack Chapman  

Image source: Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster

Image source: Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster

You may have heard of this book on TechCrunch: our colleague Connie Loizos interviewed its author a few months ago. Their conversations covered the key topics of the book—Silicon Valley, China, Russia—which made us eager to learn more, but not particularly assured. From Connie: "Hellberg explained how China's'technological totalitarian' regime might first affect the Chinese people (he said, its'first victim'), but why it increasingly controls the Internet Software and hardware efforts are a real, current, and rapidly escalating danger to the United States and democracies around the world.” Wrote a lot of articles about China in 2021, and realized that it is likely to play in 2022 Role, this is a good candidate on our reading list.

"At Citi Ventures, we like to say that'culture is the backbone of innovation.' As Citi’s leadership principles clarify, an innovation culture starts with creating a space for everyone’s insights and ideas to share and listen. In turn, this starts from listening. Getting started. The best-selling book "You Are Not Listening" describes how difficult it is to truly listen, despite—or possibly because—we continue to gain access to digital communication channels and opportunities for participation. This book provides an important way to reverse this trend. The roadmap will help lay a solid foundation for empathy, innovation and transformation."