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Most posts offer the obvious suggestions (The Mom Test, High Growth Handbook, The Personal MBA, The Power Law, Hard Thing about Hard Thing, Will It Fly, etc), so I'll focus on some non-obvious suggestions. For tactical advice, I find talks/podcasts and mastermind groups more useful than books. My favorite podcast (by far) is Rob Walling's Startups for the Rest of Us, which is oriented towards building a capital-efficient bootstrapped business. The archive is full of extremely valuable tactical advice. The books I've found most helpful on my entrepreneurship journey are about mental health, emotional intelligence, and relationships of all kinds. Sharing a few that have had a profound impact, since they helped me metabolize and understand what drove me to become a founder in the first place. 1. The Self-Compassion Skills Workbook by Tim Desmond 2. Path of Compassion by Thich Nhat Hanh 3. The Book You Wish Your Parents Had Read, Philippa Perry 4. Burnout, Emily Nagoski 5. Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents, Lindsay C. Gibson 6. Self-Compassion, Dr. Kristin Neff 7. How to Keep House While Drowning, KC Davis 8. Deploy Empathy, Michele Hansen 9. The Body Keeps the Score, Bessel A. Van der Kolk 10. Atlas of the Heart, Brene Brown 11. What Happened to You? Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing by Bruce D. Perry and Oprah Winfrey
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1. "Lean Startup" (pretty standard) 2. "Spin Selling" (sales) 3. "The Four-Hour Work Week" (not because of the way of life promised in the misleading title, but because of the links to useful Websites, and for motivational reading) 4. "The One Billion Dollar App" (silly title but fantastic book from an actual taxi app product manager - I almost didn't buy it because of the title, thank God I opened it anyway and started reading about viral marketing which like the tracking of pandemic is based on the r coefficient). 5. "Business Model Generation" (the mechanics of making money) 6. "The Startup Owner's Manual" 7. "Why Startups Fail" (anti-patterns - better read about them before you get trapped by them) 8. "The Company Secretary Handbook" (UK only) 9. "Die Unternehmergesellschaft (UG): Gründung, Geschäftsführung, Recht und Steuern für kleinere Unternehmen und Start-Ups" (Germany only) 10. "Founders At Work" (motivational) 11. "Financial Times Essential Guides Writing a Business Plan: How to win backing to start up or grow your business" (to get clarity, write a plan - for yourself, to align all co-founders and the team, to get VC funding, to convince yourself that the business is financially viable)
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Spin Selling: Situation Problem Implication Need-payoff, or The Spin Selling Fieldbook: Practical Tools, Methods, Exercises and Resources?
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As someone who is more interested in building the product than marketing it, I found the following recent reads helpful in achieving a balance: 1. Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey A. Moore - making your product work for the masses 2. The Cold Start Problem by Andrew Chen - achieving escape velocity, getting viral referral traffic 3. Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss - it might seem a bit gimmicky but negotiation always comes off gimmicky Motivational stories: 4. The Almanack Of Naval Ravikant by Eric Jorgenson 5. The Founders by Jimmy Soni 6. The Upstarts by Brad Stone 7. Hatching Twitter by Nick Bilton 8. That Will Never Work by Marc Randolph 9. Grinding It Out: The Making of McDonald's by Ray Kroc Can't skip: 10. Zero To One by Peter Thiel
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As a technical founder this book on negotiation was highly valuable: "Never Split the Difference: Negotiating as if Your Life Depended on It". Negotiation is a skill you need as a startup founder that is not necessarily needed for technical work. "Innovators Dilemma" - helps put in perspective acceptable state of early products and good strategies for deploying new innovative products
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I assume you're not interested in hearing the obvious ones (zero to one, lean startup, etc., etc.) so I'll recommend two. At the early stages when you're defining your strategy? "Good strategy/bad strategy" by Richard P. Rumelt. "Strategy" is thrown around a whole lot in business, often by somebody who is talking about a goal, as opposed to how to reach it. This book can get a little repetitive but the overarching teachings are valuable and will serve you well throughout your entrepreneurship journey. After the startup phase (growth/acquisition)? I recommend "The messy middle" by Scott Belsky.
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I read The Messy Middle and thought like the chapter titles were phenomenal, but felt everything in the actual chapters was fluff. Maybe I'll give it another try!
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The messy middle was fantastic. Only reason I didn't list it in my comment below was that I read it recently and I'm 11 years in. Highly recommend the book.
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“The Mom Test” by Rob Fitzpatrick - How to talk to customers & learn if your business is a good idea when everyone is lying to you. https://a.co/d/8KzUk8b It ended up saving us a lot of time.
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I can't recommend this book enough. Even if you have a lot of experience with early stage customer development, you'll learn things from The Mom Test
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The E-Myth - creating systems and processes The Personal MBA - crash course MBA Founders At Work - understanding how different startups survived Buy Back Your Time - management and delegation The Charisma Myth - to help w/ charm for sales SPIN Selling - this + The Charisma Myth more than doubled our sales conversion rate These books were the most crucial for me
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I second E-Myth and Founders at Work. And let me add Crossing the Chasm, which totally shaped my understanding of who buys what when.
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+1 for mentioning Neil Rackham's (1988) classic "Spin Selling". Got it recommended from a friend after his exit (and after buying a French mansion from his share of the proceeds) when I asked him what he can recommend on understanding sales, in particular sales of (complex) technology. It's indeed a marvel for people new to selling.
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Traction, by Weinberg. It goes over the various sales channels. How you get customers should really be the #1 priority for your startup. Building stuff is easy. Getting customers is hard. And "if you build it they will come" doesn't really work most of the time IRL.
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Here are a few others I haven't seen mentioned.
- The Price Whisperer (pricing is important and mostly ignored by startups)
- Startup Myths and Models (title explains it)
- Measure What Matters (using OKRs)
- Growth Units (figure out your unit economics - LTV and CAC)
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Here are some suggestions on the more creative and less tactical spectrum. How To Get Rich: Felix Dennis Don’t be fooled by the title. A lifetime of insights and experience from a pioneering publishing magnate condensed into a light enjoyable read. Creativity Inc by Ed Catmull goes into great detail about the early days of Pixar. So many actionable lessons about entrepreneurship and operating a creative organization. The War of Art by Steven Pressfield Not just for artists this book is a bible for anyone who has difficulty getting out of their own way. provides useful frameworks to understand the concept of resistance and recognize negative self defeating thought patterns that many entrepreneurs struggle with.
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Blue Ocean Strategy by Renée Mauborgne and W. Chan Kim
has not been mentioned here and is an amazing read, and very well regarded by a lot of high profile folks.
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Entrepreneurship Negotiation by Dinnar and Susskind covers some of the most fundamental topics anyone wanting to become an entrepreneur must know. I also find Richard Thaler work (Nudge, Misbehaving) very helpful particularly if you are in the B2C domain. The Black Swan by Taleb is another book I find myself going back to often; it's been of great help for decision making under lots of uncertainty.
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You can get all the meaning you need from The Black Swan by just reading the first few chapters. Taleb has a nasty habit of saying the same thing over and over again and stretching it out to an entire book.
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The E-Myth is the only business book which ever left a lasting impression on me. It's about "working on your business rather than in it" and systematising everything.
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Here are some of the most popular ones: The Lean Startup by Eric Ries
Zero to One by Peter Thiel
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey
Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill
The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber
Good to Great by Jim Collins
The Art of Possibility by Rosamund Stone Zander and Benjamin Zander
The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz
The Innovator's Dilemma by Clayton Christensen
Rework by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson
These books cover various aspects of entrepreneurship, from idea generation and innovation to leadership and management. Each one offers a unique perspective and valuable insights that can help entrepreneurs navigate the challenges and opportunities of starting and growing a business.
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Start Small, Stay Small by Rob Walling Company of One by Paul Jarvis
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Start Small, Stay Small is one of the least fluffy books I've ever read, with tons of practical advice. It's unfortunately a bit dated, but I heard he's working on a new one.
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‘The Millionaire Fastlane’ by MJ DeMarco. Laughable title aside, the content is life changing.
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Hourly Billing Is Nuts by Jonathan Stark From all the "business" books I've read this one is just packed with actionable advice instead of motivational gibberrish. I've built my productivized consulting offer based on these tips, and it helped me quit full-time job over 3 years ago. So far no plans to go back.
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"Ready, Fire, Aim" by Michael Masterson. It's a bit cheesy, but it has a publishing industry slant which suited me and enough things resonated that filtered into decisions I made that I'm thankful for it. I never went it past the first half of the book as you're meant to be doing $10m revenue before you move on ;-)
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Rejection Proof: How I Beat Fear and Became Invincible Through 100 Days of Rejection by Jia Jiang Highly enjoyable read! This book really captures the entrepreneurial experience of interviewing for insights while focusing on the fear of rejection, which is a major problem that isn't typically found in most other books on entrepreneurship.
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Oh, one smaller but useful book: Design is a job, by Mike Monteiro Even though it's targeted towards designers, it's actually about businesses that happen to be small design shops. The same principles apply: value your work, don't do work for free, dealing with clients, contacts, etc.
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* Crossing the Chasm
* The Mom Test
* The Almanack of Naval Ravikant
* The Cold Start Problem
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"The Art of Action" It has changed how I approach everything, not just how I run my business. Is applying approaches used in militaries to organize action around the leader's intent, taking action in the right general direction, and delegating the "what" (the intent) but not the "how" of the way it is actually achieved.
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Lots of good suggestions here. One I don't see is Wotdke's "Radical Focus". It's about OKRs, but don't be put off by prior big-corp experiences with it. The book focuses on using them in an entrepreneurial context and it's great. Even if you decide to come up with your own system, this will help clarify what you want out of a way to set goals and make sure you're on track for them.
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The Divine Comedy and The Prince. Not joking.
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The Four Steps to the Epiphany - Steve Blank The Discipline of Market Leaders - Fred Wiersema and Michael Treacy It's Not the Big that Eat the Small...It's the Fast that Eat the Slow - Jason Jennings Mastering The Complex Sale - Jeff Thull How To Measure Anything - Douglas Hubbard
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A book that I really want to recommend to anybody in the process of validating product and business ideas:
“The right it” by Alberto Savoia
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The Hard Thing About Hard Things. We bought a copy for every employee at my last company to help convey the messages that startups are not designed to be tons of fun but rather a tough (yet rewarding) grind. This was especially important for people who were coming from bigger companies to understand.
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The Mouse Driver Chronicles Not totally game changing, but a great story that can help keep you motivated!
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1) The richest man in Babylon
2) The four agreement
3) Secrets of the Millionaire Mind
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Think and Grow Rich - Napoleon Hill Making Money Is Killing Your Business - Chuck Blakeman
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Sprint (product development and testing) It left me with a more fundamental, "first principles" outlook on the 5 key stages of doing _anything_: 1. Understand 2. Explore 3. Decide 4. Prototype/Build 5. Test So for example, when things often go wrong it's because a stage was skipped, done out of sequence, or extremely neglected.
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- Awareness by Anthony DeMello - The Courage to Be Disliked by Ichiro Kishimi - The Virtue of Selfishness by Ayn Rand - Only the Paranoid Survive by Andy Grove More stuff here: http://www.ryanglover.net/library/ (not flagged specific to entrepreneurship but all have had an influence in one way or another).
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Traction by Weinberg. Understanding the distribution of your product, how to think about it and how much resources to devote to it was a missing piece for me as a technical founder. I easily fall into the fallacy of "build it and they will come" even when I don't think I do.
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While I briefly ran a 'start up' with a friend (we weren't what most people here would consider a start up), we used the book 'Business Model Generation' almost weekly as we adjusted our business and pitched for new work. I still go back to that when kicking off a new project.
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Steve Blank's blog (not a book, I know) + The Startup Owners Manual also by Steve Blank. Lean Product Playbook by Dan Olsen. The two helped me understand what it meant to 'get out of the building'. 7 Powers + Good Strategy Bad Strategy helped me think long term about the business model and evolution of the company.
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I've read a tall stack of business books, and in all honesty, I think only one of them was of any real value to me. It also has the benefits of being short and an easy read. "The Incredible Secret Money Machine II" by Don Lancaster
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Mr Nice by Howard Marks Yes, he was a criminal, with great entrepreneur spirit.
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How to get rich by Felix Dennis - at least it is entertaining.
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Looking back my too three are: Hooked by Nir Eyal
Viral Loop by Adam L. Penenberg
Shoe Dog by Phil Knight
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Atlas shrugged, Minto Pyramid Principle, Nail it then Scale it
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Venture Deals: Be Smarter Than Your Lawyer and Venture Capitalist
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- The Mom Test - 4 Steps to the Epiphany - The Personal MBA (Josh Kaufman) - Lean Analytics - Good Strategy Bad Strategy
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I love autobiographies. Made in Japan (Sony), Made in America (Walmart), My Father Marconi (not quite an autobiography, but by his daughter). My Father Marconi especially. The story of when he sent the first radio transmission across the air in his attic as a boy is wild.
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