Entrepreneur? Must Read These Books

By: Vijay Soni | Founder & C.E.O. Scipreneur

Reading book is the most important way to improvise yourself as a leader. Because someone who doesn’t read is going to make more dumb mistakes than someone who reads and pays attention. There are some survey books that might be helpful — the ones I turn to often are:

• The Entrepreneur Mind: 100 Essential Beliefs, Characteristics, and Habits of Elite Entrepreneurs by Kevin Johnson
• Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future by Peter Thiel
• The 7 Day Startup: You Don’t Learn Until You Launch by Dan Norris
• The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses by Eric Ries
• Platform Scale: How an emerging business model helps startups build large empires with minimum investment by Sangeet Paul Choudary
• TOP 101 Growth Hacks: The best growth hacking ideas that you can put into practice right away by Aladdin Happy
• The $100 Startup: Reinvent the Way You Make a Living, Do What You Love, and Create a New Future by Chris Guillebeau
• Exponential Organizations: Why new organizations are ten times better, faster, and cheaper than yours by Salim Ismail
• Startup Idea Action Plan: Validate Your Startup And Get Customers in 7 Days, When All You Have is a Business Idea by Ryan Mulvihill
• The Startup Owner’s Manual: The Step-by-Step Guide for Building a Great Company by Steve Blank
• ReWork: Change the Way You Work Forever by Jason Fried
• Craft Business Power: 15 Days To A Profitable Online Craft Business by Cinnamon Miles
• Traction: How Any Startup Can Achieve Explosive Customer Growth by Gabriel Weinberg
• Startup Growth Engines: Case Studies of How Today’s Most Successful Startups Unlock Extraordinary Growth by Sean Ellis
• The Magic of Thinking Big
• Blue Ocean Strategy by W. Chan Kim
• The Compound Effect by Darren Hardy
• Good to Great by James Collins
• The Four Steps to the Epiphany by Steven Blank
• Contagious: Why Things Catch On by Jonah Berger
• David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants by Malcolm Gladwell
• The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail–but Some Don’t by Nate Silver
• The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers by Ben Horowitz
• The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less by Barry Shwartz
• Influencer: The New Science of Leading Change, Second Edition by Joseph Grenny, Kerry Patterson, et al.
• The Art of the Start 2.0: The Time-Tested, Battle-Hardened Guide for Anyone Starting Anything by Guy Kawasaki
• Founders at Work: Stories of Startups’ Early Days by Jessica Livingston
• The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses by Eric Ries
• Rework by David Heinemeier Hansson
• The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It by Michael E. Gerber
• The Black Swan: Second Edition: The Impact of the Highly Improbable: With a new section: “On Robustness and Fragility” (Incerto) by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
• Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose by Tony Hsieh
• Losing My Virginity: How I Survived, Had Fun, and Made a Fortune Doing Business My Way by Richard Branson
• The Power of Full Engagement: Managing Energy, Not Time, Is the Key to High Performance and Personal Renewal by Jim Loehr, Tony Schwartz
• The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right by Atul Gawande
• The $100 Startup: Reinvent the Way You Make a Living, Do What You Love, and Create a New Future by Chris Guillebeau
• Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work, and Think by Kenneth Cukier
• The Fine Art of Small Talk: How To Start a Conversation, Keep It Going, Build Networking Skills — and Leave a Positive Impression! by Debra Fine
• The Score Takes Care of Itself: My Philosophy of Leadership by Bill Walsh, Steve Jamison, Craig Walsh
• The Thank You Economy: Gary Vaynerchuk by Gary Vaynerchuk
• Crowdsourcing: Why the Power of the Crowd Is Driving the Future of Business by Jeff Howe
• Where Good Ideas Come From: Steven Johnson by Steven Johnson
• The Strategy and Tactics of Pricing: A Guide to Growing More Profitably by Thomas Nagle, John Hogan, Joseph Zale
• Leaving Microsoft to Change the World: An Entrepreneur’s Odyssey to Educate the World’s Children: John Wood by John Wood
• The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding by Al Ries, Laura Ries
• Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? by Seth Godin
• The Black Swan: Second Edition: The Impact of the Highly Improbable: With a new section: “On Robustness and Fragility” (Incerto) by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
• The Four Steps to the Epiphany by Steve Blank
• The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change by Stephen R. Covey
• The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses by Eric Ries
• Blue Ocean Strategy: How to Create Uncontested Market Space and Make Competition Irrelevant by W. Chan KimRenee Mauborgne
• Business Model Generation: A Handbook for Visionaries, Game Changers, and Challengers by Alexander OsterwalderYves Pigneur
• The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It by Michael E. Gerber
• Hackers & Painters: Big Ideas from the Computer Age by Paul Graham
• Predictably Irrational, Revised and Expanded Edition: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions by Dan Ariely
• The Innovator’s Solution: Creating and Sustaining Successful Growth by Clayton M. ChristensenMichael E. Raynor
• Warfighting by U. S. Marine Corps Staff
• Get Back in the Box: How Being Great at What You Do Is Great for Business by Douglas Rushkoff
• Googled: The End of the World As We Know It by Ken Auletta
• The Curse of the Mogul: What’s Wrong with the World’s Leading Media Companies by Jonathan A. KneeBruce C. GreenwaldAva Seave
• Planet Google: One Company’s Audacious Plan to Organize Everything We Know by Randall Stross
• Spent: Sex, Evolution, and Consumer Behavior by Geoffrey Miller
• Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future by Peter ThielBlake Masters
• Word of Mouth Marketing: How Smart Companies Get People Talking by Andy Sernovitz
• Guerilla Marketing: Easy and Inexpensive Strategies for Making Big Profits from Your Small Business by Jay Conrad Levinson
• The Art of the Start: The Time-Tested, Battle-Hardened Guide for Anyone Starting Anything by Guy Kawasaki
• Information Rules: A Strategic Guide to the Network Economy by Carl ShapiroHal R. Varian
• Do More Faster: TechStars Lessons to Accelerate Your Startup by Brad FeldDavid Cohen
• The Thank You Economy by Gary Vaynerchuk
• The Innovator’s Dilemma: The Revolutionary Book That Will Change the Way You Do Business by Clayton M. Christensen
• The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development: A cheat sheet to The Four Steps to the Epiphany by Brant CooperPatrick Vlaskovits
• Venture Deals: Be Smarter Than Your Lawyer and Venture Capitalist by Brad FeldJason Mendelson
• The Monk and the Riddle: The Art of Creating a Life While Making a Living by Randy Komisar
• The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture by John Battelle
• The Little Kingdom: The Private Story of Apple Computer by Michael Moritz
• The New New Thing: A Silicon Valley Story by Michael Lewis
• Founders at Work: Stories of Startups’ Early Days by Jessica Livingston
• Don’t Make Me Think, Revisited: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability (3rd Edition) (Voices That Matter) by Steve Krug
• Theory of Fun for Game Design by Raph Koster
• The Art of Game Design: A Book of Lenses, Second Edition by Jesse Schell
• Losing My Virginity: How I Survived, Had Fun, and Made a Fortune Doing Business My Way by Richard Branson
• Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln by Doris Kearns Goodwin
• Primal Leadership, With a New Preface by the Authors: Unleashing the Power of Emotional Intelligence by Daniel GolemanRichard BoyatzisAnnie McKee
• The World Is Flat 3.0: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century by Thomas L. Friedman
• Hot, Flat, and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution – and How It Can Renew America, Release 2.0 by Thomas L. Friedman
• Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcolm Gladwell
• The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell
• Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell
• Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies (Harper Business Essentials) by Jim CollinsJerry I. Porras
• Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap…And Others Don’t by Jim Collins
• Good to Great and the Social Sectors: A Monograph to Accompany Good to Great by Jim Collins
• How The Mighty Fall: And Why Some Companies Never Give In by Jim Collins
• How to Change the World: Social Entrepreneurs and the Power of New Ideas, Updated Edition by David Bornstein
• Essential Creativity in the Classroom: Inspiring Kids by Kaye Thorne
• Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, Revised Edition by Robert B. Cialdini
• The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron by Bethany McLeanPeter Elkind
• Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die by Chip HeathDan Heath
• Improv Wisdom: Don’t Prepare, Just Show Up by Patricia Ryan Madson
• The Art Of War by Sun Tzu
• Crossing the Chasm, 3rd Edition (Collins Business Essentials) by Geoffrey A. Moore
• Inside the Tornado: Strategies for Developing, Leveraging, and Surviving Hypergrowth Markets (Collins Business Essentials) by Geoffrey A. Moore
• Marketing High Technology by William H. Davidow
• The Breakthrough Imperative by Mark GottfredsonSteve Schaubert
• The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene
• Competitive Strategy: Techniques for Analyzing Industries and Competitors by Michael E. Porter
• The Art of Seduction by Robert Greene
• The 33 Strategies of War (Joost Elffers Books) by Robert Greene
• Extraordinary Popular Delusions and The Madness of Crowds by Charles MacKay
• Term Sheets & Valuations – A Line by Line Look at the Intricacies of Term Sheets & Valuations (Bigwig Briefs) by Alex WilmerdingAspatore Books com
• Agile Estimating and Planning by Mike Cohn
• Dealers of Lightning: Xerox PARC and the Dawn of the Computer Age by Michael A. Hiltzik
• The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable by Patrick Lencioni
• The SPEED of TRUST: The One Thing That Changes Everything by Stephen M .R. Covey
• Divide or Conquer: How Great Teams Turn Conflict into Strength by Diana McLain Smith
• CustomerCentric Selling, Second Edition by Michael T. BosworthJohn R. HollandFrank Visgatis
• Answering the Ultimate Question: How Net Promoter Can Transform Your Business by Richard OwenLaura L. Brooks PhD
• Behind the Cloud: The Untold Story of How comWent from Idea to Billion-Dollar Company-and Revolutionized an Industry by Marc BenioffCarlye Adler
• The Toyota Way: 14 Management Principles from the World’s Greatest Manufacturer by Jeffrey Liker
• Start-up Nation: The Story of Israel’s Economic Miracle by Dan SenorSaul Singer
• The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook: A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal by Ben Mezrich
• The Design of Everyday Things: Revised and Expanded Edition by Don Norman
• Think and Grow Rich: The Original 1937 Unedited Edition by Napoleon Hill
• High-tech Ventures: The Guide For Entrepreneurial Success by C. Gordon BellJohn E. Mcnamara
• Delivering Profitable Value : A Revolutionary Framework to Accelerate Growth, Generate Wealth, and Rediscover the Heart of Business by Mike Lanning
• The Stand by Stephen King
• The Structure of Scientific Revolutions: 50th Anniversary Edition by Thomas S. Kuhn
• The Silicon Boys: And Their Valley of Dreams by David A. Kaplan
• Essentials of Entrepreneurship : What it Takes to Create Successful Enterprises by TiE: The Indus EntrepreneursTiE
• The Small Business Start-Up Kit for California by Peri H. Pakroo J.D.
• Change by Design: How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation by Tim Brown
• The Facebook Effect: The Inside Story of the Company That Is Connecting the World by David Kirkpatrick
• The Whuffie Factor: Using the Power of Social Networks to Build Your Business by Tara Hunt
• High Stakes, No Prisoners: A Winner’s Tale of Greed and Glory in the Internet Wars by Charles Ferguson
• Never Eat Alone: And Other Secrets to Success, One Relationship at a Time by Keith FerrazziTahl Raz
• Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision and Reality by Scott Belsky
• How to Win Friends & Influence People by Dale Carnegie
• The Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid: Eradicating Poverty Through Profits, Revised and Updated 5th Anniversary Edition by C. K. Prahalad
• Peopleware: Productive Projects and Teams (3rd Edition) by Tom DeMarcoTim Lister
• Naked in the Boardroom: A CEO Bares Her Secrets So You Can Transform Your Career by Robin Wolaner
• By William C. Taylor: Practically Radical: Not-So-Crazy Ways to Transform Your Company, Shake Up Your Industry, and Challenge Yourself by -William Morrow-
• What I Wish I Knew When I Was 20: A Crash Course on Making Your Place in the World by Tina Seelig
• Get Noticed by Marcus TaylorRob Lawrence
• Mastering the Rockefeller Habits: What You Must Do to Increase the Value of Your Growing Firm by Verne Harnish
• The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding by Al RiesLaura Ries
• The Founder’s Dilemmas: Anticipating and Avoiding the Pitfalls That Can Sink a Startup (The Kauffman Foundation Series on Innovation and Entrepreneurship) by Noam Wasserman
• Business: The Ultimate Resource by Editors Of Perseus PublishingPerseus PublishingDaniel Goleman
• Everything I Know About Business I Learned from the Grateful Dead: The Ten Most Innovative Lessons from a Long, Strange Trip by Barry Barnes
• Culture & Empire: Digital Revolution by Pieter Hintjens
• The Essence of the Church: A Community Created by the Spirit by Craig Van Gelder
• The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin (Dover Thrift Editions) by Benjamin Franklin
• Business Adventures: Twelve Classic Tales from the World of Wall Street by John Brooks
• Rich Dad Poor Dad: What The Rich Teach Their Kids About Money That the Poor and Middle Class Do Not! by Robert T. Kiyosaki
• Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?: Seth Godin by Seth Godin
• How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by Malcolm Gladwell
• Outliers: The Story of Success: Malcolm Gladwell by Malcolm Gladwell
• What the Dog Saw: And Other Adventures by Malcolm Gladwell
• The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich by Thomas Ferriss
• The Success Principles(TM): How to Get from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be by Jack Canfield, Janet Switzer
• How to Win Friends & Influence People by Dale Carnegie
• Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen
• The Talent Code: Greatness Isn’t Born. It’s Grown. Here’s How by Daniel Coyle
• How I Made My First Million on the Internet and How You Can Too!: The Complete Insider’s Guide to Making Millions with Your Internet Business by Ewen Chia
• SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance by Steven D. Litt
• Street Smarts: An All-Purpose Tool Kit for Entrepreneurs eBook by Norm Brodsky
• Strategy for Sustainability: A Business Manifesto by Adam Werbach
• The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine by Michael Lewis
• Who Says Elephants Can’t Dance?: Leading a Great Enterprise through Dramatic Change by Louis V., Jr. Gerstner
• The Ten Faces of Innovation: IDEO’s Strategies for Defeating the Devil’s Advocate and Driving Creativity Throughout Your Organization by Tom Kelley
• Too Big to Fail: The Inside Story of How Wall Street and Washington Fought to Save the FinancialSystem–and Themselves by Andrew Ross Sorkin
• The Innovator’s Dilemma : The Revolutionary National Bestseller That Changed The Way We Do Business by clayton m. christensen
• The Paypal Wars : Battles with eBay, the Media, the Mafia, and the Rest of Planet Earth by Eric M. Jackson
• Origin of Wealth: Evolution, Complexity, and the Radical Remaking of Economics by Eric D. Beinhocker
• Create Your Own Economy: The Path to Prosperity in a Disordered World by Tyler Cowen
• One Click: Jeff Bezos and the Rise of comby Richard Brandt
• Predictably Irrational, Revised and Expanded Edition: The Hidden Forces That Shape Our Decisions by Dan Ariely
• The Upside of Irrationality: The Unexpected Benefits of Defying Logic by Dan Ariely
• Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age by Clay Shirky
• Super Crunchers: Why Thinking-By-Numbers is the New Way To Be Smart by Ian Ayres by Ian Ayres
• The Curse of the Mogul: What’s Wrong with the World’s Leading Media Companies by Jonathan A. Knee, Bruce C. Greenwald, Ava Seave

You don’t need to read any of these books before you get started trying to build a company (indeed, reading them all and the other books that they’ll direct you towards will take you a very, very long time, and you’ll be dead before you get to start a company if you take that approach), but you should try to read these (or something else) at least once per week, even when you’re building your company. You need to get perspective, all the time, to be a successful entrepreneur.

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