x-book ®

How I Built This

Get in the xigxag app
This book is not purchasable in your country. Please select another book.
Pre-order Buy Now £{{ price }}
How does xigxag pricing work?

Listen to a sample

What to expect

The #1 Wall Street Journal Business Book Bestseller & Top 10 New York Times Bestseller.

Based on the highly acclaimed NPR podcast, How I Built This with Guy Raz, his book offers priceless insights and inspiration from the world’s top entrepreneurs on how to start, launch and build a successful venture.

Great ideas often come from a simple spark: a football player on the New Zealand national team notices all the unused wool his country produces and figures out a way to turn them into shoes (Allbirds). A former Buddhist monk decides the very best way to spread his mindfulness teachings is by launching an app (Headspace). A sandwich cart vendor finds a way to reuse leftover pita bread and turns it into a multi-million dollar business (Stacy’s Pita Chips).

Award-winning podcast creator Guy Raz has interviewed more than 200 highly successful innovators from across the world, from the founders of Five Guys, Airbnb and Bumble to James Dyson and Reed Hastings of Netflix, to uncover amazing true stories like these. In How I Built This, he shares tips for every entrepreneur’s journey: from the early days of formulating your idea, to raising money and recruiting employees, to finding your market and, finally, to paying yourself a real salary. This is a must-read for anyone who has ever dreamed of starting their own business or wondered how trail-blazing go-getters made their own dreams a reality.

'A must read for anyone who wants to start a business, grow a business, or be inspired by those who do' – Adam Grant, author of Originals

'These stories of founders and their companies are told with the same energy and openness it takes to be an entrepreneur' – Eric Ries, author of The Lean Startup

'Guy Raz is supremely himself in this guide for aspiring entrepreneurs: brilliantly perceptive, incessantly curious, infectiously energetic and above all, a master storyteller' - Angela Duckworth, author of Grit

Critics Review

  • A must-read for anyone who wants to start a business, grow a business, or be inspired by those who do.

    Adam Grant, author of Originals

  • Guy Raz is supremely himself in this guide for aspiring entrepreneurs: brilliantly perceptive, incessantly curious, infectiously energetic and above all, a master storyteller.

    Angela Duckworth, author of Grit

  • If only this book would have come out years ago, building my business would have been so much simpler. At least we have it now!

    Simon Sinek, author of Start with Why

  • An indispensable guide for anyone eager to challenge the status quo in pursuit of some new and better version of the world. Highly recommended.

    Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn and co-author of Blitzscaling

  • Anyone who reads How I Built This will have an incredible advantage. Guy provides the compass, the map and the headlamp you need to navigate the wilderness of entrepreneurship

    Joe Gebbia, entrepreneur and co-founder of Airbnb

  • Guy Raz has an extraordinary talent for not only unearthing the most powerful ideas in any story, but also translating those ideas into wisdom accessible for everyone

    Chris Anderson, head of TED

Subscribe to our newsletter

Sign up to get tailored content recommendations, product updates and info on new releases. Your data is your own: we commit to protect your data and respect your privacy.