TOPIC · 55 BOOKS
Startups and entrepreneurship
Books I have read about startups and entrepreneurship, brought together across genres, periods and countries.
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👍🏼👍🏼⭐️ExcellentPredictable Revenue: Turn Your Business Into a Sales Machine with the $100 Million Best Practices of Salesforce.com
Aaron RossOne of the books that most influenced how I think about SaaS sales. It explains sales-team specialisation and how to build a repeatable system instead of relying on isolated efforts. The ideas have become overused, but it remains a useful reference for building a sales organisation, even if it now feels slightly dated in the age of AI.
👍🏼GoodPaul Graham: The Art of Funding a Startup
Andrew WarnerA short introduction to some of Paul Graham’s ideas about startups and funding. It contains interesting material, but felt too brief and superficial compared with reading his essays directly, which I recommend to any entrepreneur.
👍🏼👍🏼Very goodChaos Monkeys: Obscene Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon Valley
Antonio García MartínezOne of the funniest and most honest books I have read about Silicon Valley. It covers Facebook, startups, money and egos from the inside, without trying to make any of its characters look particularly admirable. It is hilarious on the author's journey from one large technology company to another and all the bullshit surrounding them.
👍🏼👍🏼⭐️ExcellentThe Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers
Ben HorowitzIt's my business bible, and it's my reference book for anything related to my business. Of the best books I've ever read about running a company when things go wrong. It talks about layoffs, crises, impossible decisions and loneliness with an honesty that doesn't usually appear in business books.
👍🏼👍🏼⭐️ExcellentCompeting Against Luck
Clayton M. ChristensenOne of the product books that I've applied most. The idea of understanding what kind of work a customer is really trying to solve seems simple, but it completely changes the way you think about a product and talk to whoever uses it.
👍🏼GoodDisrupted: My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble
Dan LyonsIt's a very funny and rather cynical look at the world of startups from within HubSpot. It has very good moments, although sometimes it gives the feeling that the author is more interested in adjusting accounts than understanding why he lived his experience this way.
👍🏼GoodThe Lean Startup
Eric RiesIt has essential ideas about experimenting, measuring and learning before spending months building something nobody wants. I found it useful, although the book became more repetitive than I needed.
👍🏼GoodTraction: A Startup Guide to Getting Customers
Gabriel WeinbergIt works well as a map of the different channels available for finding customers, and helps you avoid relying on the same ideas every time. Some parts are very useful, but overall I kept it more as a reference manual than as a great book.
👍🏼👍🏼⭐️ExcellentWho: The A Method for Hiring
Geoff SmartOne of the most helpful books I've ever read on hiring. It's a great way to define what you need, interview without getting lost in impressions and see if a person can actually do the job.
👍🏼👍🏼Very goodReality Check: The Irreverent Guide to Outsmarting, Outmanaging, and Outmarketing Your Competition
Guy KawasakiA huge and very practical manual on how to create, finance, sell and run a business. I especially liked the direct tone of Guy Kawasaki and the amount of advice that can be applied without too much theory.
👍🏼👍🏼⭐️ExcellentRework
Jason FriedA short, straightforward book full of ideas that question many absurd corporate customs. I loved it because you can open it on any page and you almost always find something useful to do things in a simpler way.
👍🏼👍🏼Very goodFounders at Work: Stories of Startups' Early Days
Jessica LivingstonA collection of interviews with founders recounting the early days of their companies, when almost nothing was clear.
👍🏼👍🏼Very goodBad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup
John CarreyrouThe story of Theranos is so absurd that at times it feels like fiction, and it's amazing how well he reconstructed fraud and, above all, how investors, media and employees were accepting signals that looked obvious from the outside.
👍🏼👍🏼⭐️ExcellentThe Entrepreneur's Club: UNIQLO
Kigyoka NetworkI loved this little book about UNIQLO and the way of thinking of Tadashi Yanai. It's very short, straightforward and full of concrete business decisions that explain how the company was built.
👍🏼👍🏼Very good¿Tienes una startup?: Todas las claves para conseguir financiación
Luis Martín CabiedesIt's a very practical book about how investors think and what a startup needs before asking for funding. I liked it because it's written from experience and because it avoids much of the empty language of this kind of manual.
👍🏼👍🏼⭐️ExcellentThe Sales Acceleration Formula: Using Data, Technology, and Inbound Selling to go from $0 to $100 Million
Mark RobergeA very important book to understand how to build a sales team using data, processes and training. It's interesting because it reduces ideas to very specific decisions and because many of them are still useful years later.
👍🏼👍🏼⭐️ExcellentZero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future
Peter ThielOne of the startups books that made me think the most -- the idea of creating something really different instead of competing by doing the same thing that everyone seems obvious, but it's explained in a very useful way.
👍🏼👍🏼Very goodExactly What to Say: The Magic Words for Influence and Impact
Phil M. JonesA very practical book about how small differences in the way you ask or explain something can change a conversation. It has phrases that I have applied to sales and normal life situations.
👍🏼👍🏼Very goodProduct Demos That Sell: How to Deliver Winning SaaS Demos
Steli EftiA short, practical book on how to make a demo thinking about the customer's problem instead of teaching non-stop functions.
👍🏼👍🏼⭐️ExcellentThe Four Steps to the Epiphany: Successful Strategies for Products that Win
Steve BlankOne of the most important books to understand is that a startup has to discover its customers before it runs like a big company.
👍🏼👍🏼Very goodWinning with Data: Transform Your Culture, Empower Your People, and Shape the Future
Tomasz TunguzI loved it because he explains that working with data isn't just about hiring analysts, it's about changing the way a company makes decisions.
👍🏼👍🏼⭐️ExcellentSell More Faster
Amos SchwartzfarbThe best selling books I've ever enjoyed and influenced me the most, very strategic, has had practical application in Pulpo since chapter one.
👍🏼👍🏼Very goodLevers
Amos Schwartzfarb, Trevor BoehmIt's great to understand all the levers that move a business. Almost nothing is new, but understanding it together gives you a very good perspective on what to do to grow your company.
👍🏼👍🏼⭐️ExcellentOnly the paranoid survive
Andrew GroveA perfect book written by the CEO of Intel in the '90s to deal with this crisis on a professional and personal level, how to deal with periods of uncertainty, learn to reinvent yourself as a company and as a professional, and how to survive in turbulent markets.
👍🏼👍🏼⭐️ExcellentObviously Awesome
April DunfordA great book on how to position a product or service in ten steps. It has been extremely useful and directly applicable to my business.
👍🏼👍🏼Very goodAnything You Want
Derek SiversThe lessons of Derek Sievers in his ten years of creating and growing his company, CDBaby. It's 40 lessons about entrepreneurship and life that don't go to waste.
👍🏼👍🏼Very goodThe Art of the Deal
Donald TrumpMore than a business manual, I found it a very interesting way to understand how Trump thinks, how he negotiates and how he built his character around his real estate operations.
👍🏼👍🏼⭐️ExcellentHigh Growth Handbook
Elad GilIt's already become one of my reference books on how to run a startup, covering all the details and situations.
👍🏼👍🏼⭐️ExcellentThe cult of we
Elliot Brown, Maureen FarrellThe story of WeWork, the cult of its founder, its vision and its downfall. It's all real, and it reads like a novel.
👍🏼👍🏼⭐️ExcellentAmp It Up!
Frank SlootmanMy favorite book of the year, and the top 3 business books I've read, which I'm going to re-read a thousand times. It's one of those books that doesn't tell you how to do things, but it puts rhythm and speed into your body, pushes you forward and grows.
👍🏼👍🏼Very goodMeasure What Matters
John DoerrIt's changed the way I run my business, the best guide on OKRs, how to develop and take advantage of them.
👍🏼👍🏼Very goodExtreme Ownership
Joko Willink, Leif BabinIt's one of those books about leadership that's really worth reading. Two ex-navy seals, through the events of the Iraq War, tell of the importance of being responsible for your actions and your goals, among many other lessons.
👍🏼👍🏼⭐️ExcellentHappy at any cost: The revolutionary vision and fatal quest of Zappos CEO
Katherine Sayre and Kirsten GrindThere's very little talk about this book among entrepreneurs, and it's a basic one. How sad the story of Tony Hsie, founder of Zappos, a company sold to Amazon that inspired thousands of entrepreneurs more than ten years ago with his book Delivering Happiness.
👍🏼👍🏼Very goodMuji: Entrepreneurs Club
Kygyoka ClubIt's a book about the culture and business behind Muji, a Japanese brand that I love.
👍🏼👍🏼Very goodTurn the ship around
L. David MarquetMarquet recounts his experience as captain of the submarine USS Santa Fe and how he radically transformed traditional command-following leadership into a model in which team members are encouraged to make decisions and take responsibility.
👍🏼👍🏼⭐️ExcellentMonetizing Innovation
Madhavan RamanujamI've finally figured out how to design a product around the price, how to align it with your value proposition, and how not to leave money on the table.
👍🏼👍🏼⭐️ExcellentBehind the Cloud
Marc BenioffThe story of Salesforce told by its founder, very interesting lessons for starting a business and for a SaaS.
👍🏼GoodTrailblazer
Marc BenioffMarc Benioff, although I admire him greatly as an entrepreneur, in this book abuses the "me" when something is his idea and the "us" when it is someone else's idea.
👍🏼👍🏼Very goodInspired
Marty CaganIf you need to create or design a digital product, this is your book. How to structure your team, culture, processes, organization, etc. with the sole goal of launching and evolving a product.
👍🏼👍🏼⭐️ExcellentThe Great CEO Within
Matt Mochary, Alex MacCaw y Misha TalaveraA terrific book. If you run a startup or scaleup, or work at C-level, this is one of the best guides you can read for organising your day, structuring your company or function, creating a cadence and building a winning team.
👎🏼BadShip It
Nathan Thomas (Product School)Bad book on product development, full of obvious stuff.
👍🏼👍🏼⭐️ExcellentCustomer Success
Nick MehtaHow to organize an area of customer success, measure customer success and permeate a customer-focused company.
👍🏼👍🏼Very goodHooked
Nir EyalOne of the product books that has helped me the most to understand how habits are created around an app or service and why some products keep us coming back.
👍🏼GoodIn Chocolate We Trust: The Hershey Company Town Unwrapped
Peter KurieI really like the stories of companies, entrepreneurs, and even more so if they're about iconic companies like Hersheys.
👍🏼👍🏼⭐️ExcellentShoe Dog
Phil KnightThe autobiography of Nike’s founder. It had been recommended to me many times, and rightly so. A terrific book. It reads like a novel and teaches lessons about both life and business.
👍🏼👍🏼⭐️ExcellentPrinciples
Ray DalioA book you should always have for consultation. Tips for life, work and entrepreneurship. Clearly, direct, well-explained messages from the founder of one of the world's largest investment funds.
👍🏼👍🏼Very goodNatura Bissé
Ricardo FisasAutobiography of the founder of Natura Bissé, one of Spain's leading cosmetics brands. I was delighted not only by the author's values but also by the familiar, close and innocent style with which he writes the book.
👍🏼👍🏼Very goodScrew it, let’s do it
Richard BransonA short, straightforward and energetic book by Richard Branson. More than a complete autobiography, it's a collection of stories and lessons about entrepreneurship, taking risks, having fun working and not waiting forever to get things done.
👍🏼👍🏼Very goodWhen They Win, You Win
Russ LarawayIt's one of the best books I've ever read about leadership. About team management and how to have a leader who really helps people get better and give their best. Very grounded, concrete recipes, well organized and easy to read.
👍🏼GoodSecrets of Sand Hill Road
Scott KuporIt's perfect for someone who doesn't know how startups are funded and how venture capital dynamics work. I expected a lot more from the book, but I don't think I was his audience. Recommended to anyone looking to get funding or setting up their startup.
👍🏼👍🏼Very goodThe New One Minute Manager
Spencer JohnsonIt has become one of my favourite management books. Through a story, it presents a very simple model for setting goals and giving feedback that makes day-to-day team management easier. Very useful for anyone who manages people.
👍🏼👍🏼⭐️ExcellentSubscribed
Tien TzuoMy new guru. :) I learned so much in this book about the rational nature of subscription business models, how companies should adopt them and how it affects culture and customer relationships.
✋🏼MehGrowth IQ
Tiffani BovaDifferent formulas for growing a company using real cases.
👍🏼👍🏼Very goodThe product-led organization
Todd OlsonIt's very good to understand the structure, culture and dynamics that a company should have if it wants to focus on growing using its software product as leverage.
👍🏼👍🏼Very good