Reading List

Authors Like Emma Grede

Q: Who should I read if I love Emma Grede?

Sheryl Sandberg's Lean In is the book Start with Yourself is most often compared to. Mel Robbins and Reshma Saujani deal with the same habit of waiting for permission, Arlan Hamilton and Sophia Amoruso write founder stories from hard starts, and Bozoma Saint John and Indra Nooyi write about ambition alongside family.

Q: What books are like Start with Yourself?

Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg (2013), Brave, Not Perfect by Reshma Saujani (2019), It's About Damn Time by Arlan Hamilton (2020) and The Urgent Life by Bozoma Saint John (2023) are the closest: each mixes a personal story with practical advice about work and ambition. For the same direct tone, try Jen Sincero's You Are a Badass.

Q: How is Emma Grede's book different from Lean In?

Lean In (2013) was written by a corporate executive and focuses largely on the barriers women meet inside large organisations and how to navigate them. Start with Yourself comes from a founder and starts with the reader's own assumptions about ambition, money and guilt. The Wall Street Journal called Grede's book “Lean In for the post-girlboss era”.

Q: Are there founder memoirs like Emma Grede's?

Yes. Phil Knight's Shoe Dog (2016) is the classic founder memoir, about the early years of Nike. Sophia Amoruso's #GIRLBOSS (2014) covers building the fashion retailer Nasty Gal, and Arlan Hamilton's It's About Damn Time (2020) tells how she founded the venture fund Backstage Capital.

Emma Grede was born in 1982 and grew up in Plaistow, East London, the eldest of four sisters, raised by her mother and a Jamaican stepfather. She left education at sixteen, worked her way through event production, and at 26 co-founded the talent and marketing agency ITB Worldwide. In 2016 she launched the size-inclusive denim brand Good American with Khloé Kardashian, after pitching the idea to Kris Jenner; three years later she became a founding partner of Skims. Start with Yourself: A New Vision for Work & Life, published by Simon & Schuster in April 2026, is part memoir and part manual, built around what she calls “Old Thoughts”: inherited beliefs about money, ambition and work-life balance that she argues are biases rather than rules. Readers come to her for that combination — a working-class founder's story told plainly, and advice that does not apologise for wanting more. The writers below share it: women (and one man) who turned their own rise, setbacks included, into a usable account of how work actually gets done.

By Lisanne Swart · 10 authors · Ambition · Founder memoirs · Women at work · Updated October 2026

Quick answer

If you love Emma Grede, start with Sheryl Sandberg, whose Lean In is the book reviewers keep putting hers next to. For the waiting-for-permission problem, read Mel Robbins. For another founder's honest climb, Arlan Hamilton and Sophia Amoruso. And for ambition alongside grief and motherhood, Bozoma Saint John.

10 authors like Emma Grede

The book hers is measured against

Sheryl Sandberg

American · b. 1969 · Executive and author

Sandberg ran online ad sales at Google before becoming Facebook's chief operating officer in 2008, a role she left in 2022. Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead (2013), written with Nell Scovell, sold more than a million copies within months; Option B (2017), with Adam Grant, is about resilience after the sudden death of her husband, Dave Goldberg, in 2015. Her record at Facebook has been sharply criticised since, including in Sarah Wynn-Williams's 2025 memoir Careless People, whose account some former colleagues dispute.

The Wall Street Journal called Start with Yourself “Lean In for the post-girlboss era”, and the pairing is useful precisely because the two books disagree on where the obstacle sits. Sandberg writes from inside a large corporation and spends much of her book on institutions; Grede starts with the reader's own assumptions. Read Lean In to see the argument Grede is updating.

— Lisanne

Every book by Sheryl Sandberg →

Stop waiting for permission

Mel Robbins

American · b. 1968 · Self-help writer

Robbins worked as a public defender in New York before becoming a coach and broadcaster. The 5 Second Rule (2017) and The High 5 Habit (2021) were bestsellers, and The Let Them Theory (2024), written with her daughter Sawyer, became one of the most-discussed self-help books of the decade. The Mel Robbins Podcast, launched in 2022, is one of the most popular in the United States.

The same target as Grede's “Old Thoughts”: the habit of waiting for other people's approval before you act. Robbins builds her case from coaching and simple behavioural tools rather than from a business history, and her tone is warmer and more therapeutic. Grede is the one to read for work; Robbins for everything around it.

— Lisanne

Every book by Mel Robbins →

From homeless to venture capital

Arlan Hamilton

American · b. 1980 · Investor and author

Hamilton, born in Dallas, spent years as a tour manager in the music industry before running out of savings in 2014 and becoming homeless while teaching herself about venture capital. In 2015 she founded Backstage Capital to invest in founders who are women, people of colour or LGBTQ+. It's About Damn Time: How to Turn Being Underestimated into Your Greatest Advantage was published in 2020.

The closest match to Grede's arc of starting with no connections and no capital and treating that as information rather than a verdict. Hamilton is rawer and angrier about who gets funded; Grede is more interested in the reader's own head. Both turn a hard start into a practical playbook rather than a sob story.

— Lisanne

Every book by Arlan Hamilton →

The original girlboss

Sophia Amoruso

American · b. 1984 · Entrepreneur and author

Amoruso started selling vintage clothes on eBay at 22 in 2006 and turned the shop into the fashion retailer Nasty Gal. #GIRLBOSS (2014) became a bestseller and a Netflix series in 2017. Nasty Gal filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in November 2016 and was bought by Boohoo the following year.

Read her to see the era Grede is said to be moving past. Both are fashion founders without degrees who built brands on the internet and wrote it up as advice, but #GIRLBOSS was written at the top of the climb, before the fall; Grede writes with a decade more of the business behind her, and her chapters on failure carry that weight.

— Lisanne

Every book by Sophia Amoruso →

Ambition and grief, in one life

Bozoma Saint John

Ghanaian-American · b. 1977 · Marketing executive and memoirist

Saint John was born in Connecticut, spent much of her childhood in Ghana, and became one of the best-known marketers in America: head of music and entertainment marketing at PepsiCo, then senior roles at Apple Music, Uber, Endeavor and, from 2020 to 2022, chief marketing officer of Netflix. The Urgent Life (2023) sets that career against the death of her husband, Peter, in 2013 and her years as a single mother.

Grede argues that ambition and a full family life are not opposites; Saint John shows what that looks like under the worst pressure. Like Grede, she is a Black woman who built a career in rooms not designed for her, and she writes about it with the same refusal to apologise. Her book is more memoir than manual, and more moving for it.

— Lisanne

Every book by Bozoma Saint John →

The corporate long game

Indra Nooyi

Indian-American · b. 1955 · Executive and memoirist

Nooyi was born in Madras (now Chennai), studied at the Yale School of Management, and was chief executive of PepsiCo from 2006 to 2018; when she took the job she was one of only eleven women running a Fortune 500 company. My Life in Full: Work, Family, and Our Future (2021) tells that story and makes a sustained case for paid leave, flexible work and care infrastructure.

The best counterweight to Grede's founder story: the same insistence that work and family have to be designed together, from someone who spent twelve years running one of the largest companies in the world. Where Grede starts with the individual, Nooyi ends with policy, and the two books together cover the whole argument.

— Lisanne

Every book by Indra Nooyi →

Brave, not perfect

Reshma Saujani

American · b. 1975 · Activist and author

Saujani, born in Chicago to Indian parents expelled from Uganda under Idi Amin, ran for Congress in New York in 2010, and in 2012 founded Girls Who Code to close the gender gap in computing. Brave, Not Perfect (2019) argues that girls are trained for perfection and boys for bravery; Pay Up (2022) turns to the structures that push mothers out of work.

Brave, Not Perfect is the closest book on this list to Grede's “Old Thoughts”: an account of rules women absorb early and mistake for facts. Saujani adds what Grede mostly leaves out, the argument that some of those rules are written into workplaces and need changing from outside.

— Lisanne

Every book by Reshma Saujani →

The closest voice

Jen Sincero

American · b. 1965 · Self-help writer

Sincero worked in record-company marketing and played in bands before becoming a writer and coach. You Are a Badass (2013) has sold more than five million copies; it was followed by You Are a Badass at Making Money (2017) and Badass Habits (2020).

If what you liked in Grede was the register — direct, funny, impatient with excuses — Sincero is the nearest match. You Are a Badass at Making Money covers the same territory as Grede's chapters on money guilt, with less business and more swagger.

— Lisanne

Every book by Jen Sincero →

Working-class roots, enormous ambition

Michelle Obama

American · b. 1964 · Memoirist

Obama grew up on the South Side of Chicago, studied at Princeton and Harvard Law School and worked as a lawyer at Sidley Austin before moving into public service. Becoming (2018) sold about fourteen million copies worldwide within two years, and its audiobook won the Grammy for Best Spoken Word Album. The Light We Carry (2022) is a more practical follow-up about fear, friendship and resilience.

Grede sits on the board of the Obama Foundation, and the books share more than that: both are stories of a working-class girl who did not expect the life she got, and both are frank about the guilt of being an ambitious working mother. Becoming is a memoir rather than a guide, but its middle section on marriage, children and career is the best companion to Grede's chapters on balance.

— Lisanne

Every book by Michelle Obama →

The founder memoir, uncensored

Phil Knight

American · b. 1938 · Entrepreneur and memoirist

In 1962, just out of business school, Knight borrowed fifty dollars from his father and began importing running shoes from Japan, selling them from his car; the company became Nike. Shoe Dog (2016) covers its first two decades, up to the company going public in 1980, with its cash crises, lawsuits and near-collapses.

The one man here, and the founder memoir most often recommended to people who want to build a brand. Like Grede, Knight is more interested in the mistakes than the triumphs, and in the people around him than in himself. It is the long-form version of the founder stories Grede tells in compressed form.

— Lisanne

Every book by Phil Knight →

Where to start if you loved Emma Grede

If you want the book hers is compared to, read Sheryl Sandberg.

Lean In: the 2013 argument Grede is updating.

If you want the Old Thoughts idea in more depth, read Reshma Saujani.

Brave, Not Perfect names the rules women learn as girls.

If you want another founder's honest climb, read Arlan Hamilton.

It's About Damn Time: from homelessness to her own fund.

If you want ambition and family in one story, read Bozoma Saint John.

The Urgent Life — Netflix, grief and single motherhood.

Frequently asked questions about authors like Emma Grede

Who should I read if I love Emma Grede?

Sheryl Sandberg's Lean In is the book Start with Yourself is most often compared to. Mel Robbins and Reshma Saujani deal with the same habit of waiting for permission, Arlan Hamilton and Sophia Amoruso write founder stories from hard starts, and Bozoma Saint John and Indra Nooyi write about ambition alongside family.

What books are like Start with Yourself?

Lean In by Sheryl Sandberg (2013), Brave, Not Perfect by Reshma Saujani (2019), It's About Damn Time by Arlan Hamilton (2020) and The Urgent Life by Bozoma Saint John (2023) are the closest: each mixes a personal story with practical advice about work and ambition. For the same direct tone, try Jen Sincero's You Are a Badass.

What is Start with Yourself about?

Emma Grede's book, published in April 2026, is part memoir and part guide. It follows her from a working-class childhood in East London to building Good American and Skims, and is organised around “Old Thoughts”: inherited beliefs about money, ambition and work-life balance that she argues are biases rather than real rules, with tools for replacing them.

How is Emma Grede's book different from Lean In?

Lean In (2013) was written by a corporate executive and focuses largely on the barriers women meet inside large organisations and how to navigate them. Start with Yourself comes from a founder and starts with the reader's own assumptions about ambition, money and guilt. The Wall Street Journal called Grede's book “Lean In for the post-girlboss era”.

Who is Emma Grede?

A British-born entrepreneur, born in London in 1982. She co-founded the agency ITB Worldwide in 2008, launched Good American with Khloé Kardashian in 2016 and is a founding partner and chief product officer of Skims. She has appeared as a guest investor on Shark Tank and hosts the podcast Aspire with Emma Grede.

Are there founder memoirs like Emma Grede's?

Yes. Phil Knight's Shoe Dog (2016) is the classic founder memoir, about the early years of Nike. Sophia Amoruso's #GIRLBOSS (2014) covers building the fashion retailer Nasty Gal, and Arlan Hamilton's It's About Damn Time (2020) tells how she founded the venture fund Backstage Capital.

Footnotes

List last reviewed 15 October 2026.

Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021. Every comparison here is a judgement about method and subject, not an algorithmic match. See more on her personal bookshelf.

Authors Like Emma Grede

10 authors like Emma Grede

Sheryl Sandberg

Mel Robbins

Arlan Hamilton

Sophia Amoruso

Bozoma Saint John

Indra Nooyi

Reshma Saujani

Jen Sincero

Michelle Obama

Phil Knight

Where to start if you loved Emma Grede

Frequently asked questions about authors like Emma Grede

Who should I read if I love Emma Grede?

What books are like Start with Yourself?

What is Start with Yourself about?

How is Emma Grede's book different from Lean In?

Who is Emma Grede?

Are there founder memoirs like Emma Grede's?

Footnotes

Lisanne Swart

Thanks for reading,

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