CEO Talks About How to Read 52+ Books a Year While Running a Startup

I work 60+ hours a week building my venture-backed startup, but last year I still read over 52 books. That’s a book a week. In this video, I break down the tactical strategies that helped me make reading a habit without sacrificing productivity as a founder.

Whether you're an entrepreneur, creator, or busy professional — these simple hacks will help you read more, learn faster, and level up.

Tips I cover:
- Pocket Kindle hack
- Kindle on your bed
- Family Kindle account
- Why I drop books I’m not vibing with
- Why fiction raises your ceiling and nonfiction raises your floor

???? Favorite Books Mentioned:

Atomic Habits by James Clear
Getting Things Done by David Allen
Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss
The War of Art by Steven Pressfield
Shantaram by Gregory David Roberts
Pachinko by Min Jin Lee
The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu
Ender’s Game by Orson Scott Card
Endurance by Alfred Lansing (Ernest Shackleton’s journey)
Be Useful by Arnold Schwarzenegger

If you’re a founder, Doola helps you handle the unsexy but critical back office tasks, so you can focus on growth. Over 10,000 entrepreneurs from 175+ countries have launched with us. ????

Comment your favorite book below! What should I read next?

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CONNECT W/ ME:
- X (Twitter): https://x.com/ArjunMahadevan
- LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/in/mahadevanarjun
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/ceo.arjunmahadevan
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- TikTok: https://tiktok.com/@ceo.arjunmahadevan

ABOUT ME:
If you’re new to my channel, my name is Arjun Mahadevan. I’m the founder and CEO of doola.com— a Business-in-a-Box™ for LLCs. We help entrepreneurs incorporate, get EINs and bank accounts, and handle compliance like bookkeeping and taxes—so they can focus on building. Given this is the internet and anyone can claim anything, I’ll give you some stuff you can google to verify below.

How I got here…

21 yrs old: Graduated from the University of Pennsylvania and The Wharton School of Business with a BA in Mathematics and a BS in Economics with a Statistics concentration.

21 yrs old: Landed a job at Dropbox—my "dream job."

24 yrs old: Realized my dream job wasn’t my dream and left. I had the itch to build.

25 yrs old: Started doola to help global founders launch U.S. businesses.

26 yrs old: Went through YCombinator, pitched at demo day, and raised our $3M+ seed round.

27 yrs old: Raised our $8M+ Series A from investors like Nexus Venture Partners, the YCombinator Continuity fund and more.

29 yrs old: Raised a strategic round of $1M+ in funding from HubSpot Ventures and strategic angels like Codie Sanchez and Graham Stephan,

30 years old: Scaled doola into a global business, with customers in over 175 countries and over 10,000 customers served.

Today: We’re on a mission to help 1B founders start and scale their dream business. Talent is everywhere, but opportunity is not, and I’m all in on e-commerce, entrepreneurship, and enabling builders. If you’re a founder who wants to spend less time on admin and more time growing your business, we built doola for you.

To all the entrepreneurs out there building, I’m rooting for you.

Starting an LLC, sending an email, and talking to a stranger are all examples of asymmetric upside, and life is too short not to shoot your shot and do the damn thing.

Keep on climbing cringe mountain.

Keep on shooting your shot.

And ignore the crabs,

Arjun