Category Report
Which books are shaping founder thinking this month, as mentioned across top entrepreneurship podcasts.
Biggest mover: WTF?! (Willing to Fail) by Brian Scudamore #7, rising 197 places.
The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing by Marie Kondo was the top newcomer at #8. In total 78 books had their debut mentions.
My First Million drove the most book chatter, with 15% of this months book mentions.
Across January’s cross-category conversations, listeners gravitated toward enduring questions of how individuals change their lives and navigate modern power structures. Atomic Habits sits at the center, frequently cited as a practical operating system for turning intentions into behavior, underscoring a preference for small, repeatable processes over abstract goal-setting. Alongside it, The Psychology of Money and Sam Walton: Made in America highlight a focus on financial judgment, frugality, and operational discipline in volatile conditions. Classic titles like The 48 Laws of Power, How to Win Friends and Influence People, Man’s Search for Meaning, and Influence point to ongoing concern with persuasion, status, and meaning in work and life. Meanwhile, Superagency signals a growing effort to translate these long-standing themes—habits, leverage, and decision-making—into an AI-enabled future, where iterative experimentation and “willingness to fail” become strategic necessities.
Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones
James Clear
5
mentions
The Psychology of Money: Timeless lessons on wealth, greed, and happiness
Morgan Housel
4
mentions
The 48 Laws of Power
Robert Greene, Joost Elffers
3
mentions
How to Win Friends and Influence People
Dale Carnegie
3
mentions
Man's Search for Meaning
Viktor E. Frankl
3
mentions
Sam Walton: Made in America
Sam Walton
3
mentions
WTF?! (Willing to Fail)
Brian Scudamore
2
mentions
The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing
Marie Kondo
2
mentions
Influence : The Psychology of Persuasion
Robert B Cialdini
2
mentions
Superagency: What Could Possibly Go Right with Our AI Future
Reid Hoffman, Greg Beato
2
mentions
Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones to #1.
Significant outlier with 4.2x as many mentions as the average book.
The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing to #8.
Highest ranking new entry to the chart.
WTF?! (Willing to Fail) to #7.
Up 197 places from #204 last month.
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People to #22.
Down from #1 last month
The Beginning of Infinity: Explanations That Transform the World to #177.
No mentions after ranking #3 last month.
The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail to #178.
No mentions after ranking #4 last month.
The shows that surfaced the most book mentions this month.
Mentions recorded per 30-day window (past 8 months)
How many of the mentions were for the top 10 books.
The podcasts included in this report are curated by MavenSignal to represent the trusted voices in this category.
We ingest public RSS feeds, analyze each episode, extract book mentions with AI, and validate with humans. The resulting data is normalized and deduplicated, building the canonical signal for the MavenSignal platform. Every insight and ranking is drawn from that verified layer.
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