In this era of burgeoning startups, when the competition is at its peak, it’s becoming quite difficult for entrepreneurs and business professionals to stay motivated and get their businesses off the ground.

So, what can you do to pick yourself up and get back on track?

Develop a habit of reading startup books.

Business books are a great source to get insights into how successful business leaders think, what strategies they’ve adopted to keep their business afloat, and how smartly they spot hidden opportunities and navigate through growth stages.

They are an excellent source of information for startup founders and entrepreneurs to help them speed up their business growth, reduce the possibility of failure, and increase their chances of success.

Whether you are looking for a step-by-step framework to evaluate your business ideas or are finding the right venture capital (VC) fund for your business, there are guides for every CEO and founder.

Here are the ten must-read books by experienced professionals for every would-be founder that will set them in the right direction.

1- Blue Ocean Strategy by Chan Kim & Renée Mauborgne

If you’re just contemplating starting a new business, then Blue Ocean Strategy is a “must-read” for you.

Authors Chan Kim & Renée Mauborgne, in their classic book “Blue ocean strategy”, described the market universe through two impactful concepts; red ocean and blue ocean.

In Red Ocean, companies exploit the existing market and try to outperform their rivals to grab a greater share of existing demand.

However, in Blue Ocean, the companies identify untapped markets, look for ways to convert noncustomers into customers, and aim to align the three strategy propositions–value, profit, and people–to create a win-win outcome.

For instance, Apple made traditional sources of music distribution irrelevant to its strategic innovative product iTunes, which enabled customers to quickly find, purchase and download the music they want.

2- The Lean Startup by Eric Ries

It is one of the best business books and a quintessential read for entrepreneurs who use continuous innovation to create radically successful businesses.

Starting a business is one of the riskier things you can do, but with the right strategy, you can improve the odds of a startup’s success. Eric has outstandingly outlined significant techniques for startup founders to help their businesses get off the ground quickly and successfully.

The author uses his experiences and a rich array of fresh entrepreneurial stories in the book to explain the Lean Startup financial model, which focuses on creating a minimum viable product for the customers and receiving their feedback to improve the value of the product.

The key principle of lean startup methodology is based on the build, measure, learn method wherein the entrepreneur builds a minimum viable version of the product, receives feedback from the customers, and based on the evaluation, the entrepreneur attempts to minimize the risks of building an irrelevant product and save valuable time and resources.

In contrast to the traditional approaches, where one creates a comprehensive business plan, pitches to an investor, creates a team, launches a product and markets it as hard as one can. The lean startup methodology encourages entrepreneurs to base their decisions on user feedback data to guide and speed up the product’s iterative development.

Dropbox is considered one of the first successful lean startups as Mr Drew Houston, CEO and Founder of Dropbox, mentioned that in just 15 months their company went from 100,000 registered users to over 4,000,000.

 3- Zero to One by Peter Thiel

Startup founders referred to this book as an excellent read as it explains the significance of making innovation a key business process and outlines the different approaches you can take.

Peter Thiel, the founder of PayPal, encourages entrepreneurs to build monopolies to stay ahead of the competition.

He creates some interesting frameworks entailing entrepreneurial tips and trails for becoming a monopoly, including starting small, scaling up slowly, and keeping a low profile to avoid competition.

The author calls on pragmatic business professionals to find new opportunities, think about unique ideas, question old ways, and find new solutions.

Zero to One encourages companies to create new things and build a valuable business around innovative ideas for a better future. He referred to innovation to be the key to a startup’s survival and is fundamental to problem-solving as it adds value to your business so that you can increase your profits otherwise you would end up making similar things, promoting unnecessary competition, and minimizing the profitability.

Some of the best examples of Zero to One Startups are Tesla, SpaceX, Apple, Airbnb, and Google, to mention a few.

 4- The $100 Startup by Chris Guillebeau

In this book, Chris Guillebeau shares interesting hacks and tools for startup entrepreneurs who want to make a living doing what they love. The New York Times Bestselling Author assessed 1500 people who successfully turned their passions into profits and met the following criteria:

1- They followed their passion.

2- They spent less than $1000 on a startup business and currently make more than $50, 000 a year.

3- Their business required no special skills.

4- Their business has less than 5 employees.

The business startup book revealed the essential ingredients for the solopreneurs and encouraged them to find a convergence between their passion and other people’s interests.

Here, he took the example-driven approach to build a streamlined small and medium enterprise (SEM), providing the following framework for readers to follow.

(Passion + Skill) > (Problem + Marketplace) = Opportunity

Guillebeau crafted a concrete business plan for the staunch professionals, including the following key questions:

What do you want to sell?

Who do you want to sell it to?

What problem (s) does your product/service solve?

How do your customers hear about it?

How do you solve XYZ’s hardships?

When is the deadline?

 5- Business Model Generation by Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur

Are you striving to find innovative ways of doing business to replace outdated ones? We have got you covered.

 This book is an inspirational read for Senior Executives, Consultants, Entrepreneurs, and Leaders of organizations who defy outmoded business models and trying to design tomorrow’s enterprise.

Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur guide you step-by-step throughout this book on how to implement innovative ideas in your organization. The author explains the need to update your business plan to keep all your information up to date based on concepts from leading business thinkers and helps you reinterpret them for your context.

Here you will learn at a much deeper level your customers, distribution channels, partners, revenue streams, costs, and your core value proposition.

The reader will get an understanding of the following concepts:

1- The Business Model Canvas; helps in analyzing, and designing business models.

2- Business Model Patterns

3- key tools and techniques

 4- Re-interpreting strategy

5- A strategic framework; helps in designing innovative business models

The book features practical innovation techniques used overwhelmingly today by leading companies worldwide, including 3M, Ericsson, Capgemini, Deloitte, and others.

 6- Starting a Business Quick Start Guide by Ken Colwell

This book contains a comprehensive guide for managers, business owners, and decisions makers who struggle to win their first customer and deliver true value.

Here, the author has brilliantly shown some useful principles that all new entrepreneurs should know to get started, find success, and live life on their terms.

It serves as a template for launching your own business and embarking on an entrepreneurial journey where you’ll learn things you would never be taught in any other bestseller.

Ken Colwell emphasizes that a small business owner and hardcore entrepreneur should have a strategic plan, the right knowledge, strategies, and tools to make a profit in business.

The author focuses on the various resources that entrepreneurs need to start, maintain, and grow an enterprise; therefore, it’s a great read to start with for building a startup.

 7- Rework by Jason Fried, David Heinemeier Hansson

This book has almost become required reading for any startup founders; helping readers to move from talking to doing. It has addressed all the issues you need to know when starting a business by challenging the conventional wisdom.

Here, the authors say that anyone can start a business without working miserable 80-hour weeks and ruining their health. The book challenges the old thoughts of running a business, offering radical solutions on everything from productivity to communication and product development.

Instead of quitting your office job, start small by simply working on your concept for a few hours per week. Instead of taking on crippling debts, use the resources you have at your disposal. You should only consider the external investment as a last choice, as it will not only diminish your stake in the idea, but it will also be time-consuming and distracting.

 8- The Innovator’s Dilemma by Clayton M. Christensen

Business founders considered this book to be a business classic on innovation that explains why outstanding companies lose their market leadership and go bankrupt in the wake of disruptive innovation.

Here the author shares compelling stories from a cross-section of industries and highlighted the need for businesses and entrepreneurs to stay informed on technological trends as it helps you build credibility and shows that you know where your field is heading in the future otherwise you may disappear completely.

In the book, Clayton Christensen discusses IBM that how they found it easy to build thinner hard disks and yet harder to switch to 1.5-inch format disks while the day’s 14-inch standard was selling best.

9- Tools of Titans by Tim Ferriss

This business book equipped entrepreneurs with all the tools and tactics they would need to launch and build a business. This masterpiece contains the life experiences of business leaders and tycoons belonging to every other imaginable industry.

The #1 New York Times best-selling author Tim Ferriss has combined some inspiring habits, indispensable facts of life, and mind-boggling routines of world-class performers. 

It’s a toolkit of essential tips, tidbits, and trials for entrepreneurs to change their life. One interviewee includes Shay Carl, a YouTube sensation, who, with fierce determination and self-belief, opted for the non-traditional path from manual labourer to YouTube star to co-founder of a startup sold for nearly $1 billion.

Certainly, understanding the concepts curated in this book can help startup founders scale their businesses and achieve their dreams.

 10- Who by Joff Smart, Randy Street

WHO makes the heavily referenced reading book in business management as it gives the business owners an understanding of hiring processes — a key factor for a successful business.

Small business owners and would-be entrepreneurs will find a wealth of value within the pages of the remarkable book where Smart and Randy Street explain the need of hiring the right talent with the right skills to run your business successfully as it will give you an edge in the market.

Creating a team with the wrong people can make your business struggle, simultaneously harming your market competitiveness.

The authors urge businesses to focus more on the WHO concept than the WHAT as you are who you hire.

 Final Thought:

Keeping in view the hectic schedule of aspiring entrepreneurs and business professionals as they are too busy to read, we’ve comprehensively explained why you should choose any respective book from the list.

Approach every book with a clear objective in mind for what you want to get out of it. You will take great pleasure in the convincing stories with real-world examples illustrated in the bestselling business books mentioned here.

At Numberly, we educate startup founders and aspiring entrepreneurs on best startup practices, key performance indicators, vital financial metrics and the fundamentals that will jump-start their strategy development process. Leveraging our expertise allows you to leave the financial plan to us so you can focus on what you know best – your business.

Schedule a meeting as per your convenience and availability; we can walk through your goals and get all of your questions answered.