Adam Brock
クレイジー
I never save anything for the swim back.
Startup
After a decade of working in digital agencies, in December 2019, I left my full time day job as a lead front end developer and launched my startup as a self-funded/solo founder.
Talks
I've given a few talks on DesignOps and my thoughts about the future of design and development, including:
- Building a startup (in a pandemic)
- Insanely Inevitable
- Life After Sketch – Featuring The Notorious F.I.G.
- Building eDMs 70x faster with reverse science-fiction and Kanye Wes(s)t
- Figma API Demo – Design to HTML in 3 Seconds
- Building eDMs 70x faster with reverse science-fiction and Kanye Wes(s)t (Craft CMS Conference)
Bookshelf
I try to read 1-2 books per week; mostly non-fiction (philosophy, business, leadership, psychology, biographies), some fiction (novels, comics, manga) and occasionally a few things online.
These are some that I found worth reading or have read multiple times:
Non-fiction
- 1 Liter of Tears
Aya Kitō - 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos
Jordan B. Peterson - 100 Plus: How the Coming Age of Longevity Will Change Everything, From Careers and Relationships to Family and Faith
Sonia Arrison - The $100 Startup: Fire Your Boss, Do What You Love and Work Better To Live More
Chris Guillebeau - The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing
Al Ries and Jack Trout - The 4 Hour Work Week
Tim Ferriss - The 48 Laws of Power
Robert Greene - The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
Stephen R. Covey - A Confession
Leo Tolstoy - Accelerate: The Science of Lean Software and DevOps
Gene Kim, Jez Humble, and Nicole Forsgren - AI Superpowers: China, Silicon Valley and the New World Order
Kai-Fu Lee - Alibaba: The House That Jack Ma Built
Duncan Clark - All Marketers are Liars: The Power of Telling Authentic Stories in a Low-Trust World
Seth Godin - The American Challenge
Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber - American Kingpin: Catching the Billion-Dollar Baron of the Dark Web
Nick Bilton - Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
Neil Postman - An Open Letter to Open-Minded Progressives
Mencius Moldbug - Anarchy, State, and Utopia
Robert Nozick - Antifragile: Things That Gain from Disorder
Nassim Nicholas Taleb - Anything You Want: 40 Lessons for a New Kind of Entrepreneur
Derek Sivers - The Art of War
Sun Tzu - Atomic Habits: An Easy and Proven Way to Build Good Habits and Break Bad Ones
James Clear - The Autobiography of Malcolm X
Alex Haley and Malcolm X - Average Is Over
Tyler Cowen - Becoming Steve Jobs
Brent Schlender and Rick Tetzeli - The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms
Nassim Nicholas Taleb - Behind the Cloud: The Untold Story of How Salesforce.com Went from Idea to Billion-Dollar Company-and Revolutionized an Industry
Marc Benioff - Benjamin Franklin: An American Life
Walter Isaacson - Big Business: A Love Letter to an American Anti-Hero
Tyler Cowen - The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable
Nassim Nicholas Taleb - Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking
Malcolm Gladwell - Blitzscaling: The Lightning-Fast Path to Building Massively Valuable Companies
Reid Hoffman - Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make the Competition Irrelevant
W.Chan Kim and Renee A. Mauborgne - Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life
Steve Martin - Brainwashed: How Universities Indoctrinate America's Youth
Ben Shapiro - Built to Sell: Creating a Business That Can Thrive Without You
John Warrillow - Bullies: How the Left's Culture of Fear and Intimidation Silences Americans
Ben Shapiro - But What If We're Wrong?
Chuck Klosterman - Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative?
Mark Fisher - The Case for Trump
Victor Davis Hanson - Civilized to Death: The Price of Progress
Christopher Ryan - The Coddling of the American Mind: How Good Intentions and Bad Ideas Are Setting Up a Generation for Failure
Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt - Competing Against Luck: The Story Of Innovation And Customer Choice
Clayton M. Christensen - Company of One: Why Staying Small is the Next Big Thing for Business
Paul Jarvis - The Compound Effect
Darren Hardy - A Conflict of Visions: Ideological Origins of Political Struggles
Thomas Sowell - Conscious: A Brief Guide to the Fundamental Mystery of the Mind
Annaka Harris - The Consolations of Philosophy
Alain de Botton - Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue
Ryan Holiday - The Courage To Be Disliked
Fumitake Koga and Ichiro Kishimi - Creativity, Inc.
Ed Catmull - The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups
Daniel Coyle - Daily Rituals: How Artists Work
Mason Currey - Dare to Lead: Brave Work. Tough Conversations. Whole Hearts.
Brené Brown - The Decadent Society: How We Became the Victims of Our Own Success
Ross Douthat - Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World
Cal Newport - Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose
Tony Hsieh - The Design of Everyday Things
Don Norman - Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World
Cal Newport - The Dilbert Principle: A Cubicle's-Eye View of Bosses, Meetings, Management Fads & Other Workplace Afflictions
Scott Adams - Discrimination and Disparities
Thomas Sowell - Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble
Daniel Lyons - The Diversity Delusion: How Race and Gender Pandering Corrupt the University and Undermine Our Culture
Heather Mac Donald - The Diversity Myth: Multiculturalism and Political Intolerance on Campus
David O. Sacks and Peter Thiel - Don't Make Me Think
Steve Krug - Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us
Daniel H. Pink - The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It
Michael E. Gerber - The Effective Executive
Peter Drucker - Ego Is The Enemy
Ryan Holiday - Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future
Ashlee Vance - Emotional Intelligence 2.0
Travis Bradberry - Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less
Greg McKeown - The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon
Brad Stone - Explosive Growth: A Few Things I Learned While Growing To 100 Million Users (And Losing $78 Million)
Cliff Lerner - Extreme Ownership: How U.S. Navy SEALs Lead and Win
Jocko Willink and Leif Babin - Finite and Infinite Games
James P. Carse - Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi - Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets
Nassim Nicholas Taleb - Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything
Stephen J. Dubner and Steven Levitt - Free Will
Sam Harris - Getting Real: The Smarter, Faster, Easier Way to Build a Successful Web Application
Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson - Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity
David Allen - Getting to Yes: How To Negotiate Agreement Without Giving In
Roger Fisher and William Ury - Goodbye, Things: The New Japanese Minimalism
Fumio Sasaki - The Great Stagnation: How America Ate All the Low-Hanging Fruit of Modern History, Got Sick, and Will (Eventually) Feel Better
Tyler Cowen - A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy
William Braxton Irvine - The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers
Ben Horowitz - Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal
Nick Bilton - High Output Management
Andy Grove - Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products
Nir Eyal - How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big
Scott Adams - How Google Works
Eric Schmidt and Jonathan Rosenberg - How to Be a Stoic
Massimo Pigliucci - How to Break Up with Your Phone: The 30-Day Plan to Take Back Your Life
Catherine Price - How to Live: A Life of Montaigne in One Question and Twenty Attempts at An Answer
Sarah Bakewell - How to Think Like a Roman Emperor: The Stoic Philosophy of Marcus Aurelius
Donald Robertson - The Icarus Deception: How High Will You Fly?
Seth Godin - The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future
Kevin Kelly - Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion
Robert B. Cialdini - Insanely Simple: The Obsession That Drives Apple's Success
Ken Segall - Intuitive Design: Eight Steps to an Intuitive UI
Everett McKay - It Doesn't Have To Be Crazy at Work
David Heinemeier Hansson and Jason Fried - Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly
Anthony Bourdain - Lab Rats: How Silicon Valley Made Work Miserable for the Rest of Us
Dan Lyons - The Lean Startup
Eric Ries - Letters from a Stoic
Seneca - Letter To A Christian Nation
Sam Harris - Levels of the Game
John McPhee - The Libertarian Mind: A Manifesto for Freedom
David Boaz - Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence
Max Tegmark - Life After Google: The Fall of Big Data and the Rise of the Blockchain Economy
George Gilder - The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing
Marie Kondō - Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?
Seth Godin - The Little Book of Hygge: The Danish Way to Live Well
Meik Wiking - The Long Hard Road Out of Hell
Marilyn Manson - Loserthink: How Untrained Brains Are Ruining America
Scott Adams - Lost and Founder: A Painfully Honest Field Guide to the Startup World
Rand Fishkin - Lying
Sam Harris - The Machinery of Freedom: Guide to a Radical Capitalism
David Friedman - The Magic of Thinking Big
David J. Schwartz - The Making of a Manager: What to Do When Everyone Looks to You
Julie Zhuo - The Making of Prince of Persia: Journals 1985 - 1993
Jordan Mechner - Man's Search for Meaning
Viktor Frankl - Maverick: The Success Story Behind the World's Most Unusual Workplace
Ricardo Semler - Meditations
Marcus Aurelius - Mindset: The New Psychology of Success
Carol S. Dweck - The Mom Test: How to Talk to Customers & Learn If Your Business Is a Good Idea When Everyone Is Lying to You
Rob Fitzpatrick - My Morning Routine: How Successful People Start Every Day Inspired
Benjamin Spall and Michael Xander - The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering
Fred Brooks - The New Right: A Journey to the Fringe of American Politics
Michael Malice - No Filter: The Inside Story of Instagram
Sarah Frier - The Obstacle Is the Way
Ryan Holiday - Obviously Awesome: How to Nail Product Positioning so Customers Get It, Buy It, Love It
April Dunford - Ogilvy on Advertising
David Ogilvy - Ogilvy on Advertising in the Digital Age
Miles Young - On The Shortness of Life
Seneca - On The Suffering of the World
Arthur Schopenhauer - The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results
Gary Keller - Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World
Adam Grant - Outrage, Inc.: How the Liberal Mob Ruined Science, Journalism, and Hollywood
Derek Hunter - The Outsiders: Eight Unconventional CEOs and Their Radically Rational Blueprint for Success
William N. Thorndike - Overcoming the Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Field Guide for Leaders, Managers, and Facilitators
Patrick M. Lencioni - The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less
Barry Schwartz - Parkinson's Law, and Other Studies in Administration
C. Northcote Parkinson - The PayPal Wars: Battles with eBay, the Media, the Mafia, and the Rest of Planet Earth
Eric M. Jackson - Perennial Seller: The Art of Making and Marketing Work that Lasts
Ryan Holiday - Permission Marketing: Turning Strangers Into Friends And Friends Into Customers
Seth Godin - The Peter Principle: Why Things Always Go Wrong
Laurence J. Peter - Post Corona: From Crisis to Opportunity
Scott Galloway - The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do, and How to Change
Charles Duhigg - Powerful: Building a Culture of Freedom and Responsibility
Patty McCord - Predictably Irrational
Dan Ariely - Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now
Douglas Rushkoff - The Prince
Niccolo Machiavelli - Principles: Life and Work
Ray Dalio - The Psychopath Test: A Journey Through the Madness Industry
Jon Ronson - The Purple Cow: Transform Your Business by Being Remarkable
Seth Godin - Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking
Susan Cain - The Referral Engine: Teaching Your Business to Market Itself
John Jantsch - Rework
David Heinemeier Hansson and Jason Fried - The Ride of a Lifetime: Lessons in Creative Leadership from 15 Years as CEO of the Walt Disney Company
Robert Iger - The Right Side of History: How Reason and Moral Purpose Made the West Great
Ben Shapiro - The Right Stuff
Tom Wolfe - The Road to Serfdom
Friedrich Hayek - Seasteading: How Floating Nations Will Restore the Environment, Enrich the Poor, Cure the Sick, and Liberate Humanity from Politicians
Joe Quirk with Patri Friedman - Self-Reliance
Ralph Waldo Emerson - Shape Up: Stop Running in Circles and Ship Work that Matters
Ryan Singer - Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike
Phil Knight - Side Hustle: Build a Side Business and Make Extra Money - Without Quitting Your Day Job
Chris Guillebeau - Skin in the Game: The Hidden Asymmetries in Daily Life
Nassim Nicholas Taleb - Small Giants: Companies That Choose to Be Great Instead of Big
Bo Burlingham - So Good They Can't Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love
Cal Newport - The Sovereign Individual: Mastering the Transition to the Information Age
James Dale Davidson & William Rees-Mogg - Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days
Jake Knapp - Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action
Simon Sinek - Steve Jobs
Walter Isaacson - Stillness Is the Key
Ryan Holiday - Stumbling on Happiness
Daniel Gilbert - Super Pumped: The Battle for Uber
Mike Isaac - "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!": Adventures of a Curious Character
Richard P. Feynman - Sweat the Technique: Revelations on Creativity from the Lyrical Genius
Rakim - Tao of Charlie Munger: A Compilation of Quotes from Berkshire Hathaway's Vice Chairman on Life, Business, and the Pursuit of Wealth
David Clark - The Tao of Pooh
Benjamin Hoff - That Will Never Work: The Birth of Netflix and the Amazing Life of an Idea
Marc Randolph - Things Hidden Since the Foundation of the World
René Girard - Thinking, Fast and Slow
Daniel Kahneman - This Is Marketing
Seth Godin - The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference
Malcolm Gladwell - Traction: How Any Startup Can Achieve Explosive Customer Growth
Gabriel Weinberg & Justin Mares - Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us
Seth Godin - Trillion Dollar Coach: The Leadership Playbook of Silicon Valley's Bill Campbell
Eric Schmidt and Jonathan Rosenberg - Trust Me, I'm Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator
Ryan Holiday - The Truth: An Uncomfortable Book About Relationships
Neil Strauss - Turning the Flywheel: A Monograph to Accompany Good to Great
Jim Collins - Unfreedom of the Press
Mark R. Levin - The Unpublished David Ogilvy
David Ogilvy - UX for Beginners: A Crash Course in 100 Short Lessons
Joel Marsh - Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel
Rolf Potts - The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism
Ayn Rand - Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion
Sam Harris - Walden: Or, Life in the Woods
Henry David Thoreau - The War of Art: Winning the Inner Creative Battle
Steven Pressfield - What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20: A Crash Course on Making Your Place in the World
Tina Seelig - White
Bret Easton Ellis - Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams
Matthew Walker - Win Bigly
Scott Adams - Work Rules!: Insights from Inside Google That Will Transform How You Live and Lead
Laszlo Bock - ZAG: The #1 Strategy of High-Performance Brands
Marty Neumeier - Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future
Peter Thiel
Fiction
- 1984
George Orwell - The Alchemist
Paulo Coelho - American Psycho
Bret Easton Ellis - Animal Farm
George Orwell - Atlas Shrugged
Ayn Rand - The Baron in the Trees
Italo Calvino - The Boys
Garth Ennis - Brave New World
Aldous Huxley - The Course of Love: A Novel
Alain de Botton - Crime and Punishment
Fyodor Dostoyevsky - Crooked Little Vein
Warren Ellis - The Curse of Lono
Hunter S. Thompson - Daytripper
Fabio Moon - The Death of Ivan Ilyich
Leo Tolstoy - Ender's Game
Orson Scott Card - Factotum
Charles Bukowski - Fahrenheit 451
Ray Bradbury - Fight Club
Chuck Palahniuk - Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
Hunter S. Thompson - The Fountainhead
Ayn Rand - The Greatest Salesman in the World
Og Mandino - Ham on Rye
Charles Bukowski - The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Douglas Adams - Ichi The Killer
Hideo Yamamoto - Jurassic Park
Michael Crichton - The Last Question
Isaac Asimov - Lolita
Vladimir Nabokov - The Little Prince
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry - The Lottery
Shirley Jackson - The New Atlantis
Francis Bacon - On Love
Alain de Botton - Post Office
Charles Bukowski - Preacher
Garth Ennis - Pulp
Charles Bukowski - The Punisher MAX
Garth Ennis - The Rum Diary
Hunter S. Thompson - Slaughterhouse-Five
Kurt Vonnegut - Stories of Your Life and Others
Ted Chiang - Uzumaki
Junji Ito - Y: The Last Man
Brian K. Vaughan
Online
- Peter Thiel’s CS183: Startup
Blake Masters - The Education of a Libertarian
Peter Thiel - Back To The Future
Peter Thiel - The End of the Future
Peter Thiel - The Straussian Moment
Peter Thiel - Stanford Commencement Speech
Steve Jobs - IT'S TIME TO BUILD
Marc Andreessen - The Pmarca Blog Archive
Marc Andreessen - On Creativity
John Cleese - Maker's Schedule, Managers Schedule
Paul Graham - How To Think For Yourself
Paul Graham - Do Things that Don't Scale
Paul Graham - How to Get Startup Ideas
Paul Graham - How Not To Fail
Jessica Livingston - YC’s Essential Startup Advice
Y Combinator - E Pur Si Muove
Sam Altman - How To Be Successful
Sam Altman - Kung-Fu
Jason Cohen - Why I Am a Bad Correspondent
Neal Stephensonn - Ideas are just a multiplier of execution
Derek Sivers - If you’re not feeling “hell yeah!” then say no
Derek Sivers - My favourite fable
Derek Sivers - Relax for the same result
Derek Sivers - 68 Bits of Unsolicited Advice
Kevin Kelly - 82 Commandments for Successful Living
Alejandro Jodorowsky
Contact
Not on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter — but you can be creepy and stalk me on LinkedIn if you really want to.