High Growth Handbook
by Elad Gil
Recommended by 12 notable people, including Keith Rabois and Cleo Abram
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Reading Profile
Should I read this?
It reads like a compressed operating manual from a C-suite insider. The value is in its pattern-matching across hypergrowth companies—concrete advice on hiring executives, managing boards, and internationalization, often boiled down into bullet lists. The book wastes no words, which suits a time-pressed founder, but the absence of narrative or failure cases makes it feel more like a reference doc than a strong read. It’s most useful when you’re in a specific bind and need a fast, opinionated direction.
Read this if...
- •A Series B CEO who just closed funding and must hire a VP of Engineering without derailing the culture—this gives a step-by-step on role definition, sourcing, and integration.
- •A startup COO navigating an expansion into a second country who needs a structural playbook for legal entities, tax, and hiring, not theory.
- •An angel investor advising portfolio companies who wants a concise, pattern-based lens to diagnose scaling pitfalls before founders hit them.
Skip this if...
- •You'll likely put it down in the first third if you're pre-revenue and need customer discovery advice; the board governance and organizational design chapters feel dense and premature.
- •The back half drags if you're reading cover to cover—each chapter runs the same bullet-list playbook, becoming repetitive once you've internalized the format.
- •You'll lose interest around the international expansion section if you came for founder stories; the book is dense with directives and offers no narrative relief.
High Growth Handbook is the playbook for growing your startup into a global brand. Global technology executive, serial entrepreneur, and angel investor Elad Gil has worked with high-growth tech companies including Airbnb, Twitter, Google, Stripe, and Square as they’ve grown from small companies into global enterprises. Across all of these breakout companies, Gil has identified a set of common patterns and created an accessible playbook for scaling high-growth startups, which he has now codified in High Growth Handbook. In this definitive guide, Gil covers key topics, including: - The role of the CEO - Managing a board - Recruiting and overseeing an executive team - Mergers and acquisitions…
Before You Buy
Reading Specifications
Difficulty:hard
Length:326 pages (Medium)
Audience Fit
- A Series B CEO who just closed funding and must hire a VP of Engineering without derailing the culture—this gives a step-by-step on role definition, sourcing, and integration.
- A startup COO navigating an expansion into a second country who needs a structural playbook for legal entities, tax, and hiring, not theory.
- An angel investor advising portfolio companies who wants a concise, pattern-based lens to diagnose scaling pitfalls before founders hit them.
- You'll likely put it down in the first third if you're pre-revenue and need customer discovery advice; the board governance and organizational design chapters feel dense and premature.
- The back half drags if you're reading cover to cover—each chapter runs the same bullet-list playbook, becoming repetitive once you've internalized the format.
- You'll lose interest around the international expansion section if you came for founder stories; the book is dense with directives and offers no narrative relief.
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Why recommended
Recommended by 23 sources and appears in Books Recommended by Investors, Most Recommended Books, and Entrepreneurship.
Recommended by notable people
People and public figures who have recommended this book.
Recommendation Signals
Recommendation proof is sourced from public posts, interviews, reading lists, and cited references.
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Appears In
Not sure if this is the right fit?
Consider Good to Great by Jim Collins. Recommended by 32 sources.
“The book walks you through a multi-year research project, contrasting spectacular performers with mere survivors. The core insight—that sustained greatness hinges on disciplined people, thought, and action—feels sturdy and actionable. But the book’s arguments rely on retrospective selection of companies, and some of its darlings later faltered. You’ll find a methodical, almost monastic tone that rewards patience but may irritate if you want contemporary, tech-savvy lessons.”
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How recommendation signals are reviewed
Each recommendation is collected from a public source — interviews, articles, or curated lists — and linked to its original URL. Books with many verifiable recommendations from respected people rank higher.