5 Valuable Books Every Startup Founder Should Read At Some Point

Most startups fail, but many of those failures are preventable. New approaches are being adopted across the globe, changing the way companies are built and the ways new products are launched.

To be a successful entrepreneur, you need to be able to juggle several hats at the same time. Identifying a problem and developing a scalable solution is often considered the easy part. In addition to that, you have to manage employees, customer service, finances and so much more to be successful in the long haul.

In an ideal scenario, founders already have experience in what it takes to build a company. They might have worked different jobs in the past, acquired a college degree or built a startup company in the past that has given them enough insight to get started. For those that don’t have that insight, there’s a wealth of advice out there from people who’ve achieved brilliant things and wanted to give their knowledge to others like them.

Here are 5 valuable books every startup founder should read at some point:

1. The Hard Thing About Hard Things

The author, Ben Horowitz is the co-founder of one of the most recognized names in venture capital – Andreessen Horowitz. Before his role as a VC, Ben worked at Netscape, eventually going on to build an enterprise software company called Opsware. That company was later sold to HP for $1.6 billion USD in cash. He’s been there and done that.

The Hard Thing About Hard Things outlines Ben’s journey in refreshing honesty. It takes you through the highs and lows, an inevitable course for any entrepreneur trying to make it big. The book is written more in a personal narrative style and it goes to show no founder can ever dream of making an impact without having to go through trials and tribulations. There’s advice on almost everything you need to do to build a world-class company. You can find quality content on acting and thinking like a leader, measuring performance and focusing on product.

2. The Lean Startup

Rated as a New York Times bestseller, The Lean Startup teaches founders how to hustle, stretch budgets and scale operations without burning too much cash. The author, Eric Ries, wants you to learn how to be successful without wasting too many resources. The book counts on five basic principles as the cornerstone of success, allowing you to make better, faster business decisions in a landscape where speed and execution are everything. It cites Dropbox as one of the companies which successfully incorporated their advice to scale quickly.

The beauty of The Lean Startup is that it preaches failing fast. As a startup founder, you’d much rather fail in the next 3 months than in the next 3 years. Those additional 33 months can allow you to launch new ventures or improve the existing ones. The Lean Startup takes a fast paced approach that gives startup founders all the information they need early on to decipher whether they’re wasting time or on the right path.

3. The $100 Startup

In The $100 Startup, Chris Guillebeau shows you how to lead a life of adventure, meaning, and purpose all while earning a good living. In preparation to write this book, Chris identified 1,500 individuals who have built businesses earning $50,000 or more from a modest investment (in many cases, $100 or less), and from that group, he’s chosen to focus on the 50 most intriguing case studies. In nearly all cases, people with no special skills discovered aspects of their passions that could be monetized and were able to restructure their lives in ways that gave them greater freedom and fulfillment.

The author, Chris, tells you exactly how many dollars his group of unexpected entrepreneurs required to get their projects up and running. In addition to that, he shares what these individuals did in the first weeks and months to generate significant cash, some of the key mistakes they made along the way and the crucial insights that made the business stick.  If you’re looking for a book to show you how to launch a business for close to nothing, this is the one for you!

4. Hooked: How To Build Habit Forming Products

Why do some products capture widespread attention while others flop? What makes us engage with certain products out of sheer habit? Is there a pattern underlying how technologies hook us? Nir Eyal answers these questions and so much more by explaining the Hook Model. The Hook Model is a four-step process embedded into the products of many successful companies to subtly encourage customer behavior. Through consecutive “hook cycles,” these products reach their ultimate goal of bringing users back again and again without depending on costly advertising or aggressive messaging.

Hooked is based on Eyal’s years of research, consulting and practical experience. He wrote the book he wished had been available to him when he was building his businesses. Hooked is written for product managers, designers, marketers, startup founders and anyone who seeks to understand how products influence our behavior. If you’re looking for practical insights to create user habits that stick and actionable steps for building products that people love, this is the book for you.

5. Startup Playbook 

Sam Altman is the president of Y Combinator, a Silicon Valley-based accelerator and he is also one of the most prestigious names in the startup world today. The accelerator is responsible for companies such as Dropbox, Airbnb and Reddit. It is known for its unnerving focus on urging founders to “build something people want.”

The Startup Playbook is an effort by Sam Altman to accumulate all the advice Y Combinator gives its resident companies. The book discusses how to start a company, one that users love and are eager to spread the word about. The entire focus of this book in particular is to help individuals identify what it takes to build a company that is actually wanted and in need by others. He does plan to launch a second book, which will discuss the scaling of companies.

Conclusion

Reading books for a startup founder is always a great idea to acquire new knowledge and thinking patterns. In this post, I shared with you 5 valuable books every startup founder should read at some point.