I recently had lunch with Ori Brafman one of the authors of Sway, a recent New York Times Best Seller.

Ori is about as high-energy as they come, wound up by an insatiable curiosity. When he wasn’t rapid fire injecting insights into our discussion based on research from his two popular books, he was asking “why” and jotting down mental notes for future book topics.

At the lunch he gave me a copy of his new book, Sway, which I knew would be good after our conversation. Sway is a deep dive into the drivers of our irrational decision making – how we are “swayed”. It’s a fun read that weaves all sorts of interesting studies and insights into a coherent thesis about this aspect of human behavior.

Reading this book is helpful for two reasons. First, it makes its readers brutally aware of their own shortcomings – when they were swayed for the wrong reasons. Second, its insights comprise a toolkit for entrepreneurs on how to influence others: employees, customers and yes, VCs. In a nutshell – I thought it was a fun read.