How I Built This
How I Built This offers priceless insights and inspiration from the world’s top entrepreneurs on how to start, launch, and build a successful venture. Featuring interviews with more than 200 highly successful entrepreneurs, this book shares tips for every entrepreneur’s journey: from the early days of formulating your idea to raising money and recruiting employees, to fending off competitors, to finally paying yourself a real salary. This is a must-read for anyone who has ever dreamed of starting their own business or wondered how trailblazing entrepreneurs made their own dreams a reality.
Praise for How I Built This
“Behind every great entrepreneur is a great story, and no one is better at identifying and telling that story than Guy Raz. After spending countless hours inside the heads of the world’s best founders, he’s written the mother of all entrepreneurship memoirs. It’s a must-read for anyone who wants to start a business, grow a business, or be inspired by those who do.”
— Adam Grant, Host of the TED podcast WorkLife
“If you have dreams and ambition, and worries and woes—and you wonder how to take all of that and build something great, this book is for you. Guy Raz is supremely himself in this guide for aspiring entrepreneurs: brilliantly perceptive, incessantly curious, infectiously energetic and above all, a master storyteller.”
— Angela Duckworth, Founder and CEO of Character Lab
“Truly remarkable stories…about truly remarkable people. Imagine compiling thousands of hours of Guy's greatest hits from How I Built This into one how-to manual for starting a business. Well, this is IT. Guy Raz captures their stories on the page to incredible effect.”
— Jennifer Hyman, Founder and CEO of Rent the Runway
“This book is all about inspiration – told with blood, sweat, and tears. You’ll come away refreshed. And ready to hit the ground running.”
— Mark Cuban, Proprietor of the Dallas Mavericks
“Now more than ever we need visionaries leading the entrepreneurial charge. Through stories of passion, audacity and courage, Guy weaves together a shared business-building experience that’s both inspiring and real.”
— Lara Merriken, Founder of LÄRABAR
"Guy Raz has an extraordinary talent for not only unearthing the most powerful ideas in any story, but also translating those ideas into wisdom accessible for everyone."
“The harsh truth is that the great majority of people who chase their start-up dreams fail. But there’s so much to be learned from their stories of struggle, survival, and the few who manage to succeed! If you’re determined to reach for your dream, read this book.”
— Barbara Corcoran, Founder of The Corcoran Group
“These stories of founders and their companies are told with the same energy and openness it takes to be an entrepreneur. They're about raising money, taking chances, failing, succeeding, and forging a culture of caring for people while doing it. From more recent upstarts to brands that have been around for decades, each one shows how to build a company that will last for generations to come through informed decisions fueled by true passion.”
— Eric Ries, CEO of the Long-Term Stock Exchange
“I've long been a fan of Guy's podcast (even before he interviewed me) because he gets into the human stories behind the CEOs who build these business empires. Now, more than ever, we need dreamers and builders - this book is full of them and their stories of inspiration.”
— Alexis Ohanian, Co-Founder of Reddit and Initialized
“Anyone who reads How I Built This will have an incredible advantage. Guy provides the compass, the map and the headlamp you need to navigate the wilderness of entrepreneurship.”
— Joe Gebbia, Co-Founder of Airbnb
“This book, like the podcast that spawned it, makes entrepreneurship broadly accessible by showing how the quest to innovate is one of humanity’s most defining qualities. At a time when our need for breakthrough ideas is stronger than ever, How I Built This is an indispensable guide for anyone eager to challenge the status quo in pursuit of some new and better version of the world. Highly recommended.”
— Reid Hoffman, Co-Founder of LinkedIn