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These three books shaped how I see systems. The interactive lab below turns their ideas into simulations you can poke.


Books that significantly influenced how I see systems, craft, and work. The three foundational books (Meadows, Norman, Taleb) are featured above with interactive simulations.

Small Is Beautiful
E.F. Schumacher

Economics as if people mattered. The book behind my subsidy analysis.

The Craftsman
Richard Sennett

The best articulation of why hand skills matter in a digital age.

How Buildings Learn
Stewart Brand

Architecture as a process, not a product. Directly influenced how I think about websites.

The E-Myth Revisited
Michael Gerber

Why most small businesses fail and what to do about it. The distinction between working in vs on the business.

Built to Sell
John Warrillow

How to build a company that can run without you. The book that made me rethink Hibrkraft's structure.

Fooled by Randomness
Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Before Antifragile. The book about survivorship bias that changed how I evaluate risk across all three companies.

How to Take Smart Notes
Sonke Ahrens

The gateway to Zettelkasten. 4,000+ cards since 2019 because of this book.

The Effective Executive
Peter Drucker

Written in 1967, still the clearest book on getting the right things done. No filler, no hype.

The Founder's Mentality
Chris Zook & James Allen

What gets lost when companies scale. Relevant every time I wonder whether three companies is too many.

If you read only four books this year, make it these.

Working in Public
Nadia Eghbal

The best book on what happens when open-source logic meets platform economics.

The Mom Test
Rob Fitzpatrick

Short, brutal, correct. Should be given to every UMKM founder before they build anything.

Obviously Awesome
April Dunford

Positioning explained by someone who actually does it. I recommend this to every client.

Show Your Work!
Austin Kleon

The reason this website exists. Build in public. Document the process.

Available on Google Play Books.

Books that don't exist yet but should. If you write any of these, tell me.

The Book of Why Industrial Pumps Fail at 3 AM

A practitioner's manual on pump failure modes, written by someone who has been called at 3 AM to fix them.

Twenty Years of Glue

A book about adhesives in book conservation. The kind of knowledge that only exists in workshop conversations.

The Platform Tax

How much Indonesian UMKM producers actually pay to marketplace platforms, not just the commission.

Invisible Infrastructure

How the plumbing, wiring, and digital systems behind Indonesian cities actually work.


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