The best business book ever written?

Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
No, seriously.

It’s not tucked away in HBR. It won’t help you scale your SaaS.

But it will teach you something most MBAs never learn.

Because if you’ve ever tried to build, scale, or rescue a company, you’ve lived a version of this book. It’s just that your convertible was a P&L and your suitcase was full of broken dashboards, missed forecasts, and wishful thinking.

KNOW WHEN THE WAVE HAS CRESTED

“With the right kind of eyes, you can almost see the high-water mark. That place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.”

This is the operator’s instinct: knowing when a trend, strategy, or market cycle has peaked, even when the numbers still look good.

Too many ride momentum straight into the crash. The best know when to slow down, shift gears, or exit early.

In Vegas, it’s the moment when the high wears off but the lights are still flashing.
In business, it’s the moment when growth still looks fine, but feels off.

Trust that feeling.

OPERATING IN CHAOS IS A SKILL

The bats. The desert. The no-plan, all-in energy.

It’s not just a trip, it’s Tuesday in a high-growth business.

You don’t always get clarity. You get noise. Misalignment. Burnout. Capital pressure. And still, decisions need to be made.

Anyone can lead in a bull market with clean dashboards and happy teams.
Operators earn their stripes when things get weird.

THE EDGE IS WHERE THE LESSONS ARE

Hunter wrote from the edge of legality, of control, of collapse.

That’s also where most growth companies live at some point.
Margins get thin. Teams stretch. Culture frays. Cash disappears.

But that’s where the signal is.

Every useful lesson I’ve learned about people, risk, scale, and systems came when things were nearly broken. That’s where the clarity is, if you can survive long enough to see it.

It’s not meant to be a business book.
But it’s better than most of the ones that are.