Every single book in this post has been recommended to me by a much more experienced entrepreneur while trying to figure out how to run a startup. I hope that this will give you some essential and basic building blocks to start your company, just as it did for me.
- The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses by Eric Ries
It seems so basic now for me to read The Lean Startup but it was groundbreaking for us to understand the mindset of entrepreneurs. When you’re given or only have a small amount of funds, you have to think scrappy. You can’t spend all your money on testing out 5% of your idea when you have to find a way to build out your minimum viable product (MVP) and determine if there is a demand for your product. It’s all about reiterating and I don’t think we would have been able to build out our MVP with just $25,000 from crowdfunding as non technical cofounders (it can get VERY pricey if you’re not the one coding)! I think this book is worth rereading as it’s a good idea to always keep being lean regardless of what stage you are in your company.
2. Venture Deals: Be Smarter Than Your Lawyer and Venture Capitalist by Brad Feld and Jason Mendelson
It’s easy to feel in the dark when it comes to legal and fundraising but it doesn’t mean you have to. This book gave me confidence to understand what my lawyer and potential investors will want and how to competently navigate your way. I will admit that it took me several attempts to read this book all the way through as it was easy to fall asleep. It can be a very dry read but worth every page. It breaks down everything you need to know to understand the basics of how fundraising will work and what you’re getting into when you ask for money. Think about it, you’re busting your ass off building this company, why not understand what you’re giving in order to get that amount of funding?
3. Get Backed: Craft Your Story, Build The Perfect Pitch Deck, and Launch the Venture of Your Dreams by Evan Baehr and Evan Loomis
Get Backed is a great follow up to Venture Deals in that it breaks down the full process of fundraising in a way that’s very easy to understand. For many of us who are new to the startup world and have yet to raise our first round, this is your cheat sheet. I love that it breaks down everything from best ways to tell your story, pitch deck details down to the individual slides (even font size), and how to approach investors. Reading this early on validated our thoughts on building relationships and gave us confidence of the best way to approach people. In the end, regardless of how things go with Homads we know that we’ve built amazing relationships that will span past any venture we get into. I think this has been worth all the sacrifices we’ve made so far.
4. Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future by Peter Thiel
I read this book while on vacation on a plane to Costa Rica. It helped me understand what I was building and pushed me to create something greater. I attribute a major “ah ha” moment to this book. Thiel mentions something along the lines of you can’t just be an improvement of your competitor, you have to be 10 times better. That was the moment that I realized Homads was just an improvement and spent the rest of my vacation building out the market network that we’re creating today. Zero to One is great in using history and examples of other companies to illustrate what you have to do to build a great startup. It’s a brilliant read to motivate you to push your product to the best that it can be.
5. The Obstacle is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumphs by Ryan Holiday
I don’t know how many times I’ve nodded in agreement while reading The Obstacle is the Way. It is less of how to build a startup and more of how to think while building your startup. 90% of all startups fail. What I’ve found out in the last 2 years while bootstrapping Homads is that most startups fail because the founders gave up. I’m sure there are a million other reasons why a startup will die in the later stages but I’ve found that at least in the early stages, it has a lot to do with the founder’s mindset. To be in a startup you have to have resiliency (I thank our refugee parents for this)! Holiday pulls in great examples throughout history of leaders who succeeded or failed because of their mental strength. Are you able to look at an unfortunate situation and see what good that can come from it? Are you able to learn and grow from these situations? The Obstacle is the Way shows you that you can redirect how you think to be more positive and constructive. I highly recommend this to anyone, not just entrepreneurs.
