Have you read Good to Great? The book describe those founders as rockstar CEOs. Very charismatic and good for morale, but not so much for business.

http://amzn.to/1SVR48M

I'm a huge believer in going back to primary texts, and understanding where ideas came from. If you've liked a book, read the books it references (repeat). I also feel like book recommendations often oversample recent writings, which are probably great, but it's easy to forget about the generations of books that have come before that may be just as relevant today (The Mythical Man Month is a ready example). I approach the reading I do for fun the same way, Google a list of "classics" and check for things I haven't read.

My go to recommendations:

http://www.amazon.com/Structure-Scientific-Revolutions-50th-... - The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Thomas Kuhn, (1996)

http://www.amazon.com/Pragmatic-Programmer-Journeyman-Master... - The Pragmatic Programmer, Andrew Hunt and David Thomas (1999)

Things I've liked in the last 6 months:

http://www.amazon.com/How-Measure-Anything-Intangibles-Busin... - How to Measure Anything, Douglas Hubbard (2007)

http://www.amazon.com/Mythical-Man-Month-Software-Engineerin... - Mythical Man Month: Essays in Software Engineering, Frederick Brooks Jr. (1975, but get the 1995 version)

http://www.amazon.com/Good-Great-Some-Companies-Others/dp/00... - Good To Great, Jim Collins (2001)

Next on my reading list (and I'm really excited about it):

http://www.amazon.com/Best-Interface-No-brilliant-technology... - The Best Interface is No Interface, Golden Krishna (2015)

Here is what I did when I moved from development to product & Marketing

1. Follow people in the same field 2. Ready up on blogs and posts : I use Zite, Flipboard and medium 3. A book that helped me to a large extent is Good to great by Jim Collins (http://www.amazon.com/Good-Great-Companies-Leap-Others/dp/00...)

Also The Personal MBA by Josh Kaufman http://www.amazon.com/Personal-MBA-World-Class-Business-Educ...

4. Video from people in the same field. 5. This article https://medium.com/@noah_weiss/50-articles-and-books-that-wi...

Some great tools:

1. Trello - Project/product and pretty much manage any thing 2. Qlikview - Data Analysis : Excel on Steroids

It's a very short list, but I am learning on the job :)

In my experience the bottom line is that you need good people around you in order to succeed. It doesn't matter if that's a co-founder, a CEO, developers, etc.. If you don't have good people around you helping you in your journey of success you won't have any.

For example, in my first startup I had a very good co-founder but we were both very young and inexperienced. We didn't hire the right people to surround us and help us in our journey. As a consequence we had a great run but were out maneuvered by other companies. In the startup I'm doing now, I started with great co-founders and we then proceeded to hire more great people to surround us. We haven't completed our journey yet but the driving force in the company now is not only me (the other co-founder left to pursue other interests) but many others that share my passion and goals.

Take your time and look for people that share your vision and passion. These people are out there it just takes time. And remember, no one can do it by themselves.

If you never read it, by a copy of Good To Great (http://www.amazon.com/Good-Great-Companies-Leap-Others/dp/00...). There's a whole chapter devoted to how great companies need great entourages.

This is essentially the main idea described in Jim Collins' Good to Great[1]. It's pretty boring (to my taste, anyway), but it's also short.

The idea makes sense if you think about it. You're liable to get less accomplished if you spend most of your time covering yourself and positioning for your own advancement. The same applies to everyone else. The hard part, then, is identifying and removing people who waste a lot of time covering themselves and positioning to the detriment of what they're nominally being compensated to do.

[1]http://www.amazon.com/Good-Great-Companies-Leap-Others/dp/00...

but good is the enemy of great.

http://www.amazon.com/Good-Great-Companies-Leap-Others/dp/00...