We discuss three essential books that help us break through uncertainty and focus on the most important work. If you want to get better at designing products and building companies, we think you should read:

Getting Real by 37signals, for how to get real about what matters
Good Strategy Bad Strategy by Richard Rumelt, for how to give your business an unfair advantage
Deep Work by Cal Newport, for staying focused and actually doing the work

On episode 11 of Jake & JZ, we also talked about:

Why your business needs an enemy
Insights from the “survival days” of successful companies (like the Startup Wayback Machine)
Crafting strategy based on your unique advantages
Why strategy is a hypothesis
How to summarize an entire book in 25 words
More lessons from journalism
Bad graphic design

Have a question for us? Send it to hey@jakeandjz.com and we’ll answer it on the show.

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💸 Learn more about our seed fund at Character Capital

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🤠 Find JZ on LinkedIn, Bluesky, and X

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