The 2025 founder’s bookshelf: what high-growth teams can’t put down

Brex data shows what 30,000+ founders, builders, and leaders are reading to stay ahead in H2 2025

Author

Michael Morgenstern
August 26, 2025

Happy Tuesday Brex Community,

This month’s Brex Benchmark makes one thing clear: AI isn’t just reshaping workflows and product roadmaps, it’s curating our bookshelves too. The standout technical bestseller of 2025 among Brex customers is AI Engineering: Building Applications with Foundation Models. The go-to manual for anyone intent on building scalable, agent-powered apps. On the business side, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team and Atomic Habits remain must-reads for leaders navigating hypergrowth, while EOS (Entrepreneurial Operating System) staples like Traction provide operating discipline and fresh voices like Let Them encourage CEOs to step back and empower their teams. The fastest-growing companies aren’t just upgrading their tools, they’re upgrading the way they think, lead, and build.

And as we close out August, those so-called “dog days” of summer are exactly when sharp founders seize the edge. When the rest of the world slows down, this is your chance to capture attention, set momentum, and get a head start on Q3. My own goal is simple: connect with at least 30 of you, the great founders and investors in this community, before the month ends. I’ll be pinging many of our most active readers directly, but if you’ve got thoughts on how to make this newsletter more useful, more ambitious, or more tailored to your work, email me and let’s talk.

Growing together, Michael Morgenstern 

  • Brex Flex Club

    🧘 8/28 · NYC · Founders & Investors Mixer

    A workout + recovery series for Brex customers.

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  • Brex Padel Club

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    Partnering with Offstream during NY Climate Week, bringing together project developers, founders, and VCs shaping the future of carbon removal.

    Apply Here: Brex Host: Shai Goldman

Pujun Bhatnagar and Jeff Gibson are the co-founders of Kintsugi

Kintsugi is the first AI-native sales tax automation platform built end-to-end for global scale. For fast-growing SaaS and e-commerce companies, it cuts compliance costs in half and reduces prep time by 75%. By moving beyond spreadsheets and legacy vendors, Kintsugi enables finance, RevOps, and tax teams to stay ahead of risk with an automated system that spans monitoring, calculation, and filing.

Ambassador POV: Sales tax is a hidden bottleneck for global scale, and legacy vendors can’t keep up. Kintsugi is solving it — and the market is taking notice. In just three months, the company doubled its valuation as Vertex, Inc. (NASDAQ: VERX) invested $15M for a 10% stake, with Chief Strategy Officer Chirag Patel joining the board. With deep integrations into Stripe, QuickBooks, and other revenue platforms, Kintsugi is fast becoming the system of record for tax compliance. Already live across the US, Canada, and Europe, it’s defining the new standard for cross-border tax automation — and opening a massive category ripe for disruption.

 

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