Episode · Lenny's Podcast · 2026-03-08
Lenny Rachitsky & Qasar Younis: books mentioned on Lenny's Podcast
The most successful AI company you’ve never heard of | Qasar Younis
Qasar Younis is the co-founder and CEO of Applied Intuition, a $15 billion AI company that adds intelligence to cars, tractors, planes, submarines, and other vehicles—essentially, Tesla or Waymo without the hardware.
Qasar Younis recommended House of Huawei by Eva Dou, The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Malcolm X, The Emperor of All Maladies by Siddhartha Mukherjee, Sam Walton, Made in America by Sam Walton and others, My American Journey by Colin Powell and others, Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond, and Collapse by Jared M. Diamond, and discussed Vibe Coding by Gene Kim and others and SPQR by Mary Beard and others.
Books mentioned, in the order they came up
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House of Huawei
Recommended“The summary version of this is I think the way you we we recently read as a company we read this book uh house of Huawei which is just a really great interesting book”
Where to get it
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The Autobiography of Malcolm X
Recommended“I absolutely believe reading uh a a book like Malcolm X's autobiography will make you a better founder and it's not I again it's like the whole cleaning zen all the way to clean code.”
Where to get it
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Vibe Coding
Discussed“I think like a good I'm the books I'm currently reading. This is kind of a random you know slot of books like I'm reading the the vibe coding book that came out where our whole company's reading that”
Where to get it
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The Emperor of All Maladies
Recommended“Um but uh the emperor of all maladies the the cancer book uh fantastic book I'm almost done with it. Like I think it changes the way I think.”
Where to get it
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Sam Walton, Made in America
Recommended“I think Sam Walton's book made in America is a unbelievable book. It's very very good. He wrote it on his deathbed.”
Where to get it
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My American Journey
Recommended“You know my American Journey is also very good. Cole Powell's book it's not it's not on my website but it's it's really good.”
Where to get it
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Guns, Germs and Steel
Recommended“And so guns books like Guns, Germs, and Steel really are top of that list. A fantastic fantastic book or Collapse, also same author.”
Where to get it
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Collapse
Recommended“Guns, Germs, and Steel really are top of that list. A fantastic fantastic book or Collapse, also same author. Um, so yeah, but my my my point to to founders is read the stuff.”
Where to get it
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SPQR
Discussed“I often when I'm trying to find the next book to read, like I remember uh the way I picked up SPQR, which is the book on on Roman history, was like I was like I don't actually know a lot about Roman history.”
Where to get it
Other mentions in this episode (2) — ad reads, self-promotion and passing references, never counted
Passing The Score Takes Care of Itself
“your point, last point there makes me think of that um the score takes care of itself. Uh classic. Yeah. So Joe Montana is actually one of our investors”
Passing High Output Management
“Everyone's going to you know if I say high output management classic Andy Gro you guys know that so book here.”