20 must read books for entrepreneurs in 2020
Learning is the right way to evolve the next best version of yourselves. I would like to suggest you top 20 must-read books for entrepreneurs in 2020 to help you reach the next level. Some books are very well-known while some are newer to the foil, but all books will elevate your courage, your potential to connect with new people and improve the way you approach building your company in 2020. So without wait, here you go-
Check out the new edition here - 30 Must Read Books for Entrepreneurs in 2021
1. Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future by Peter Thiel
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Zero To One teaches you the way Peter Thiel thinks, how he approaches to drive his business, how you can build your own startup’s future, and how you can give a shape to the industry. Zero to One presents at once an optimistic view of the future of progress in America and a new way of thinking about innovation: it starts by learning to ask the questions that lead you to find value in unexpected places. After reading this book, I understood founders need a vision that helps them to take their business from “zero to one.”
2. The Lean Startup: Eric Ries
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In 2011, Eric Ries published his book “The Lean Startup” to guide entrepreneurs about methods that can entrepreneurs to develop and manage their startups. He believes, standard or specific business practices are not the ultimate solution for startups. Entrepreneurs can set their policies and strategies according to the business need; they will not make it without method or conscious decision. You should read this book to understand how today’s entrepreneurs use continuous innovation to create radically successful businesses.
3. The Greatest Salesman in the World
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What you are today is not important, for in this runaway best seller you will learn how to change your life by applying the secrets you are about to discover in the ancient scrolls.The Greatest Salesman in the World is a book that serves as a guide to a philosophy of salesmanship, and success, telling the story of Hafid, a poor camel boy who achieves a life of abundance.
4. The Startup Owner’s Manual: The Step-by-Step Guide for Building a Great Company by Steve Blank
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This book is an out-and-out reference guide for entrepreneurs who want to start a company. Steve Blank and Bob Dorf wrote this book to give businesses the right direction. As we all know that during initial days startups face many challenges and difficulties, keeping this in mind, The Startup Owner’s Manual delivers a step-by-step guide to build a great company. This book follows the theory of customer development, agile, and lean engineering.
5. ReWork: Change the Way You Work Forever by Jason Fried
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No, all business books do not give you the same old advice. Rework indicates a faster, better, more natural way to achieve success. Read it, and you will know why pre-plans are harmful to your business. It also shows why you do not require outside investors, and why you should ignore the competition. The truth is that you do not need to be a workaholic to be successful. Believe in your actions, not your plans.
6. Traction: How Any Startup Can Achieve Explosive Customer Growth by Gabriel Weinberg
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In the words of Eric Ries, author of The Lean Startup — ‘Anyone trying to break through to new customers can use this smart, ambitious book’.
Traction will teach you the nineteen channels you can use to build a customer base and offers a three-step framework to figure out which ones will work best for your business. No matter how you apply them, the lessons and examples in Traction will help you create and sustain the growth your business desperately needs.
7. The Signal and the Noise: Why So Many Predictions Fail — but Some Don’t by Nate Silver
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In The Signal and the Noise, the New York Times political forecaster Nate Silver, who accurately predicted the results of every state in the 2012 US election, reveals how we can all develop better foresight in an uncertain world. From the stock market to the poker table, from earthquakes to the economy, he takes us on an enthralling insider’s tour of the high-stakes world of forecasting, showing how we can all learn to detect the true signals amid the noise of data.
8. The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers by Ben Horowitz
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The Hard Thing About Hard Things has been the most recommended book for startups today. Most business books focus on how to do things correctly, whilst Ben acknowledges upfront that there is no such thing as a perfect business and however much planning you make, screw-ups will inevitably happen. He addresses all the major screw-ups that have occurred during his time leading billion $ corporations and how his team made decisions to turn things around and to avoid screwing things up further.
9. Principles: Life and Work by Ray Dalio
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Ray Dalio, one of the world’s most successful investors and entrepreneurs, shares the unconventional principles that he’s developed, refined, and used over the past forty years to create unique results in both life and business — and which any person or organization can adopt to help achieve their goals.
10. Founders at Work: Stories of Startups’ Early Days by Jessica Livingston
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Jessica Livingston, author of the Founders at Work: Stories of Startups’ Early Days, gathers a collection of unique interviews from some of the founders of great startup enterprises such as PayPal, TiVo, Yahoo, and TripAdvisor. The book focuses on the importance of having a talented team, investment and listening to your customers.
11. Losing My Virginity: How I Survived, Had Fun, and Made a Fortune Doing Business My Way by Richard Branson
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An evergreen book, Losing My Virginity, gives a mirror to Branson describing the many life events that shaped his character — his naivety, his sense of adventure and steely resolve — and led him to revolutionize the music and airline industries. Overall an awe-inspiring journey of a self-made man.
12. The Thank You Economy: Gary Vaynerchuk by Gary Vaynerchuk
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The ThankYou economy tells about how one-on-one customer care and relationships have returned to business, thanks to social media, and why companies will lose a lot of money if they don’t engage with their customers and fans on this two-way street. The book talks about how customer courtesy went from essential, to useless, back to super important. It also packs useful lessons on social media and managing your brand.
13. Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? by Seth Godin
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I think the best sentence to summarize the essence of this book is a line by Seth Godin himself:
“The only way to get what you’re worth is to stand out, to exert indispensable, and to produce interactions that organizations and people care deeply about.” The book teaches you all about it.
14. Hackers & Painters: Big Ideas from the Computer Age by Paul Graham
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An entrepreneur’s classic, Hackers and Painters by Paul Graham paints a prototype of how tech entrepreneurs can become successful. It also teaches you about the history of the tech industry so as to plan the future in the tech industry.
15. The Entrepreneur Mind: 100 Essential Beliefs, Characteristics, and Habits of Elite Entrepreneurs
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To achieve unimaginable business success and financial wealth — to reach the upper echelons of entrepreneurs, where you’ll find Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, Sara Blakely of Spanx, Mark Pincus of Zynga, Kevin Plank of Under Armour, and many others — you have to change the way you think. In other words, you must develop the Entrepreneur Mind, a way of thinking that comes from learning the vital lessons of the best entrepreneurs.
16. The Innovator’s Dilemma: The Revolutionary Book That Will Change the Way You Do Business by Clayton M. Christensen
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The Innovator’s Dilemma is a business classic that explains the power of disruption, why market leaders are often set up to fail as technologies and industries change and what incumbents can do to secure their market leadership for a long time.
17. The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture by John Battelle
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This ambitious book comes with a strong pedigree. This book is your key to understanding search from a business perspective — past, present and probably well into the future. Battelle draws on more than 350 interviews with major players from Silicon Valley to Seattle to Wall Street, including Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin and CEO Eric Schmidt, as well as competitors like Louis Monier.For anyone who wants to understand how Google really succeeded — and the implications of a world in which every click can be preserved forever — THE SEARCH is an eye-opening and indispensable read. Ofcourse it motivates you to the core as well.
18. Think With Full Brain: Strengthen Logical Analysis, Invite Breakthrough Ideas, Level-up Interpersonal Intelligence, and Unleash Your Brain’s Full Potential
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Think with full brain is all about how to harness the full potential of your brain by developing multiple thinking approaches. The book offers a holistic approach to empower you unleash your left brain’s logical, organized thinking as well as your right brain’s emotional, and creative thinking preference. This is your guide to avoid thinking in silos and develop a full brain thinking approach to take your decision making and problem solving skills to the next level.
19. Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell
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Malcolm Gladwell takes us on an intellectual journey through the world of “outliers” — the best and the brightest, the most famous and the most successful. He asks the question: what makes high-achievers different?
“His answer is that we pay too much attention to what successful people are like, and too little attention to where they are from: that is, their culture, their family, their generation, and the idiosyncratic experiences of their upbringing. Along the way, he explains the secrets of software billionaires, what it takes to be a great soccer player, why Asians are good at math, and what made the Beatles the greatest rock band.”
20. How to Win Friends & Influence People by Dale Carnegie
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This book enables you to be friendlier and seem a positive person to others; it helps you become a famous person who is liked by the majority, and in business terms, it enables you to win new clients. It increases your earning power by helping you use your potential to the fullest, and it helps you to become a better public speaker and to be liked by the mass audience. Written by Dale Carnegie and published in 1936, it has sold over 30 million copies. It was on Time magazine’s 100 most influential books list in 2011. This book is a guide in improving a person’s aura in the world. It is about changing how the world views and treats you by changing your own behavior- Must have skills for any entrepreneur.
What’d I miss?
Yes, there are many more to recommend, but these were the ones that came to my mind first. You could comment names of more books if I missed mentioning any.
What’s your favorite book to recommend? Is it in the list? Or would you like to add
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