The problem with business books is survivorship bias. This book does not have that problem.

The First Kudu is the story of HouseMe, a South African residential letting start-up that nearly could, until it couldn’t. You get a boardroom seat through the wild ride. Those tentative first days. Problems with the Board. The ‘maybe we should have focused more on ops automation’ car-crash. The big strategic decisions: Take the money, dilute the strategy? And we join them for the final funding drama amid the chaos of covid..

Ben and Lorne are students of start-up thinking. It is wonderful to watch them wrestle with how the lessons of Silicon valley apply to their little startup on the Southern tip of Africa.

My heart sank when I discovered that the final section of the book was a ‘lessons learned’ section. These tend to be terrible in most books. Rather just tell me the story and let me learn the lessons. But this was a wonderful surprise. It is Ben and Lorne arguing about what the real lessons were. What a great way to end it.  

It’s a great story, honestly told. You are left rooting for HouseMe to survive even though you know it won’t. Oh for an Angel at the right time!

I feel like I could taste this one. Humanball is the story of Tom’s journey with UCT Rugby. And what a journey. It felt like we were in the camp, at the games, in the dugout.  You feel the victories. You are crushed when the losses come.

This is a fascinating insight into leadership done differently. I am sceptical of easy transfers of sports leadership wisdom to other spheres, but there is something courageous about Tom’s style of leadership. He is so intentional about how he creates themes, culture, how he creates accountability. He is willing to risk looking foolish in order to have a chance at success..

This story is made richer by the fact that it ends with defeat in the final. This isn’t a story of ‘Do everything I did and get guaranteed success’. This is a challenge to me to lead with intentionality and bravery. And effort is a love language.

A well told story can break your heart. 

Khaya is an extraordinary story teller. Many of the stories he tells are of a world I only know in caricatures. Stories of life growing up with his grandparents in rural Transkei. Stories of moving to the city with his mother. Stories of model C life as a young black kid. Khaya connects these worlds to the world I am much more familiar with: Cape Town, Joburg, corporate life and the world of marketing.

This allows him to transport me to faraway Dutyini, a little nearer to Mdantsane, and so close to me in Cape Town, where we were close enough to bump into each other, and yet his story was so different to mine.

This book ends with stories of great sadness.  Khaya tells the stories of the loss of his brother and mother with authenticity and courage, processing his emotions, his feelings of culpability. 

The intimacy makes this book feel almost holy to me.

You already have a view on Elon Musk. Your view may have been shaped by the allure of his achievements, or perhaps a repulsion at something he said, or even by a sense of patriotism – one of our South Africans has achieved so much.

Whatever your view, it probably isn’t right.

Elon is a stranger beast than I had ever imagined. It is to our great benefit that one of our generation’s best biographers, Walter Isaacson, was allowed into an almost boundary-crossing intimacy with Musk. And it’s to Musk’s credit that he clearly didn’t care what Isaacson wrote.

The result is an extraordinarily intimate telling of the life of Elon Musk up to 2023. It avoids the oversimplifying traps of villainising or glorifying. Isaacson’s guiding light as a biographer is that the answer to every question the reader asks is, “Let me tell you a story,” and man, are there stories.

It leaves us with an unusual paradox. Elon is way more impressive than I had realised. One can almost feel the intensity he creates, enjoy the hierarchy he crashes, admire the new thinking he forces. The insane focus and drive are just breathtaking. At the same time, he seems wracked by his trauma, leaving a wake of personal destruction. I am not at all drawn to be like him, and I don’t want to work with anyone like him.

This is the twist at the heart of the Musk story. It is so unusual to see an impressive performance and yet be repelled. Normally, achievement triggers inspiration – but not here. And we are left with that sad feeling that the trauma inflicted on Musk, and now passed on by Musk to those around him, might just be a necessary condition for his particular type of achievement.

Since this book, Musk’s influence has only grown. If you want to understand the awkward, crazy cipher that seems built for the meme generation, this book is a great place to start.

One enduring reminder from this book: Beware of people with enormous moral goals. Any sacrifice is worth it to achieve such a goal, but you might be the sacrifice.