The best reading for any startup employee

13 books for winter travel or stocking stuffers

I’m no Oprah, but members of the FiscalNote team are often asking for book recommendations. They were familiar with my library of startup strategy and general management.

Many of these books I had read before or in the early stages of the company and were invaluable in getting FiscalNote to where it is today. Because I’m a pretty quick reader (about 1–2 books a week), I still find it helpful today to go back and review some core concepts from each book every now and again.

Below is the list I provided my team. Some of these books we’ve included in FiscalNote’s management training track, while others we’ve featured in our optional company book club. The list might be a little long, but when providing it I stressed that each team member should read at their own pace.

Still, as individuals have finished each book it’s been great to see how they’ve applied the ideas to their work. They often express excitement as they move onto the next book, and have encouraged others to do so as well. By using this collective knowledge, our whole office is embracing our company value to “level up.”

Required Reading for a Startup Executive:

• The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni — This book has been incredibly useful as a teaching tool for diagnosing why teams fail to work together.
• Predictable Revenue by Aaron Ross — This is a must read for almost any SaaS company founder or early employee as it lays out the basic building blocks on the business side of the company.
• The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz — While not entirely prescriptive, Horowitz’s book is a good primer into what can go wrong in a startup.
• The Lean Startup by Eric Ries — The Lean Methodology, while controversial, was revolutionary in defining how many companies conduct product strategy — it’s still a good book to this day.
• How Google Works by Eric Schmidt — Eric Schmidt has a gold mine of very tactical and pragmatic lessons from his time running Google in this book.

Great but Optional/Department-specific:

• The Sales Acceleration Formula by Mark Roberge — How to scale a sales team
• Peopleware by DeMarco & Lister — Software product management
• Innovator’s Dilemma by Clayton Christensen — Business strategy
• Blue Ocean Strategy by Kim and Mauborgne — Competitive strategy
• High Output Management by Andy Grove — Classic management book
• The Effective Executive by Peter Drucker — Another great classic
• Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey Moore — Market adoption and the theory of the early adopter
• The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement by Eliyahu M. Goldratt and Jeff Cox

Have you read these books? Do you have anything you’d add to the list? Leave a comment or tweet your thoughts to me at @timthwang