🚀 From 0 to a 500+ team in 5 years: a reading list 📚
There is no school, no lecture, no method for creating and scaling a startup from 2 founders to a team of 500+ in a few years.
The only way to acquire the skills to do it is to either: learn from your mistakes (not ideal), get a mentor (still looking for one), network with fellow experienced entrepreneurs (limited time to learn from them), or read 📚.
How did I forge this opinion?
I am the co-founder and CEO of papernest.
I am also the guy standing in front of this high pile of books (#sizematters, but I must confess I only read two-third of them because business books are for most of them excruciatingly boring).
At papernest, we centralize your contracts and take care of all your administrative hassles for free — especially when you move. We launched mid-2015 and grew from 2 co-founders in a living room to a 500+ team, overseeing the French 🇫🇷, Spanish 🇪🇸 and Italian 🇮🇹 markets (many more to come) and have been doubling in size every year🔥.
Reading helped me a lot to scale and grow with the company. When I meet with starting entrepreneurs looking for advice, I often start by recommending good references. Lately, I received more and more requests regarding this subject, so I took the liberty to craft this reading list.
This is my two cents on entrepreneurial readings:
- Avoid auto-biographical content ( book, interview, or the worst: Medium post): favor biographies by inquisitive journalists as they will cover the good parts (growth story, human adventure, strong team spirit, etc…) and the less attractive/hidden side (lawsuits, desperation moments, insane hard work, conflicts…). Biographies allow you to have hidden insights that are otherwise covered behind the companies’ communication/propaganda.
- Take into account who’s writing (is it a journalist, consultant, speaker, professor, a VC, an entrepreneur ?) and their biases: usually the less they need to sell/shine for a living the more reliable (IMHO, it goes speakers < consultants < VC/current entrepreneurs (B2B < B2C) < former entrepreneurs < professors < journalists in terms of reliability).
People always have an agenda when writing content (selling, outreach, self-promotion, hiring, building their stature, inflating their ego, you name it…) and it will strongly taint what they write. - Read mostly what is relevant for you right now/next 12 months. Reading about companies several times your size can allow you to think ahead of the curve but can be misleading if you apply it too soon to your company right now.
- Avoid book summaries: scaling a startup from 0 to 500+ people in a few years isn’t “natural” company behavior: your readings are here to help you navigate this storm and deliver the counter-intuitive truths, the experience needed to properly run complex teams which often requires decades of training.
Reading digests isn’t enough to educate you thoroughly to implement their theories or even to fully understand them. For example, I think the only reason I applied The Lean Startup method is that I read the book (because this is unpleasant and a summary is usually not enough to convince you to do it). - Carefully select what you read: focus on what is going to help you the most — research your books before reading them, even if it will strip your experience from the excitement and suspense. Spoiler: this is not an issue for business readings…
Biographies
My favorites. I find biographies inspiring, energizing, and deeply interesting. They reveal how companies and founders — not so different from you and me usually — managed to build giants. Every one of them was once sitting where you are now.
Biographies are inspiring because they show you there is no magic behind these tremendous success stories: this is the next best thing to witness yourself as an investor or team member a startup success (the best thing being a very successful startup founder yourself).
Most importantly, they will show the bright side you may know (usually positive stories that are talked about extensively by founders or companies to shine a little more) or may not know (plenty of useful tricks, anecdotes, etc..).
But even more, this is in my experience the only way, apart from meeting other trusted entrepreneurs, to learn about the hidden truth: hard work, conflicts, treasons, tricks enabling success, etc… as you will never hear it anywhere else.
Elon Musk by Ashlee Vance
The king. The guy scored with Zip2, Paypal, Tesla & SpaceX. Luck usually plays an important role in entrepreneurship, but here it can only be raw talent.
He dealt with incredibly hard problems (space, EVs) and succeeded. Cherry on the cake, SpaceX and Tesla are really contributing to human progress. The man is legendary for his intense work schedule, ability to deliver excruciatingly hard goals. He is also well known for weird Twitter messages and naming his daughter “X Æ A-12”.
The Everything Store by Brad Stone
The adventure of Jeff Bezos, from finance to e-commerce king. The book starts off with Amazon’s first intense years (executive meetings every Saturday because work week was too short), and the post IPO /internet bubble burst era where Amazon was considered to be an underdog compared to eBay and how Bezos turned the tables by optimizing boring logistics through data, focusing on the customer and later emerged as the giant we know today.
No filter by Sarah Frier
The story of Instagram, from Burbn to Facebook acquisition and how it grew post-acquisition to reach a billion MAU. Interesting insights on the Facebook galaxy, social apps dark patterns with an incredible growth story.
Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson
A classic, with unsettling insights on Jobs’ uncompromising personality, his quirks (dying of cancer because he wanted to focus on the iPad launch, denying his paternity, not taking showers at first) but also his innate ability to impress, inspire and focus to deliver great products, both at Apple and Next. Depicts how Jobs made great business decisions (stopping half of Apple products when he came back to lead Apple) as well as more controversial ones (building products way too costly for the time).
Mark Zuckerberg by Daniel Ichbiah
Not sure this is the best biography of Zuckerberg but I am not aware of any other “household name” biography about him. Similar to The social network movie with additional funny stories (how Facebook spent 10% of its first fundraising on a bus deposit after someone threw up on an air vent when they celebrated the fundraise, or key company decision being made only after 10 pm at the beginning) and the proof that Facebook has weathered so many storms it might keep doing so while being constantly criticized as ‘doomed’. Facebook seems so evident today that learning about its product evolution is enlightening: in my opinion, what we take for granted today was based on a long series of smart decisions/evolutions. Facebook could have stumbled many times but managed to succeed instead — so far.
Xavier Niel, la voie du Pirate by Solveig Godeluck
The story of the French ecosystem godfather, from Minitel Rose to the telecom challenger: Free.
How to beat established players with an insanely small team (for e.g; Free had 5 people for marketing and communication while SFR had 800+ at the same time), great storytelling, and the start of the growth hacking spirit.
Patrick Drahi, l’ogre des Telecoms by Elsa Bembaron
The other rise of a telco mogul, through huge LBOs, drastic cost-cutting (which led to downfalls in customer service with harsh customer complaints but apparently controlled business impact) and no fear of a few regulatory fines. Great success story from a man who owned nothing to owning SFR.
Alibaba by Duncan Clark
Interesting story of Alibaba and China’s ecosystem — not very well known compared to the GAFA…even if in my opinion, Jack Ma would deserve a better biography (this one lacks insider information to be truly exciting). In general, I think we have not enough books about the impressive rise of Chinese startups whose scale and speed dwarf anything was created in Europe: if you know any good articles/books about other Chinese startups, please leave them in the comments!
Airbnb Story by Leigh Gallagher
The hustling story of Airbnb, from 3 guys renting Air mattresses to YCombinator, Rocket Internet irruption (they threw a lot of cash and several times more people to replicate and tried to force Airbnb hand into a merger — and failed), aggressive platform piggybacking (Craigslist) and the creation of a great brand.
Other worthwhile readings (but less focused on tech) :
The Snowball: Warren Buffett and the Business of Life by Alice Schroeder
L’ange exterminateur : Bernard Arnaud by Airy Routier
Francois Pinault : les secrets d’une incroyable fortune by Pierre Angel Gay
Vincent Bolloré : enquête sur un capitaliste au dessus de tout soupçon by Nathalie Raudin
Culture
Culture is a tricky subject because many people writing about it are just telling nonsense they’ve read somewhere else. Avoid Medium posts about culture made by consultants or even entrepreneurs unless they are true experts (most CEOs will just write down something because they have to: it is expected of you to talk about this subject so you will end up reading a mix of how they implemented stuff and content they read somewhere else with no guaranty of quality). Leverage content written by people who successfully created culture several times (vs. people who just attempted to do so):
What you do is how you are by Ben Horowitz
Very useful and insightful book on how to build and make your culture evolve and most importantly why you should choose value XYZ instead of another one, this is a key element that is always left out from contents about culture.
This is why this is such a great book: instead of just telling you to gather your team and come up with shared and mind-blowing cultural values (mostly based on what you saw at other startups which of course will do little help to your startup), Ben Horowitz explains what kind of values can apply to what kind of businesses, mission, strategy, market positioning, funding, etc…and how to evolve them and how to make sure they are truly applied.
The hard things about the Hard things by Ben Horowitz
Great stories by Ben Horowitz on how he turned his company around several times, during terrible situations and how the culture he built helped him doing so. A lot of refreshing advice that you will not be able to find elsewhere: Horowitz deals with tricky subjects few dare to expose publicly (for e.g. one chapter is about how to let go C-levels: as it is a tough decision that no one can be proud of, almost no one will ever write a blog post “How I just fired my CXO”. But this is exactly the kind of advice you might need one day, however grim this is).
🛑 NOT Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh (🛑 Not recommended)
This is a classic about corporate culture, that I somehow disliked and I think it is the root cause of a lot of bad content on culture IMHO.
The author tells you how he made choices that seemed crazy at the time (like offering people money to resign) but offers close to no rationale on WHY he did this.
There is also no analysis on to what extent it was beneficial to the company.
When reading Horowitz you clearly understand the need for shocking rules, their goals and effect, and how to tailor your culture to your company’s mission, market, situation, size and needs to build an effective business.
I think many people reading Tony Hsieh only kept the crazy stuff in mind without the faintest idea of its purpose, especially if they did not run their own business.
Shocking cultural points usually make great blog posts/press articles, but is it really helping you? Without a clear understanding of why, first-time founders/unexperienced teams following this kind of advice will do more harm than good.
Post-product-market fit strategy
Once you crossed the holy product/market fit threshold things start to become…interesting.
As a founder, your job is going to evolve at a much greater pace than before: you have to stop executing yourself, build an A team of C levels, mature your culture into a strong and timely adapted set of clear values, build fast HR, Sales & Marketing functions, double down on Product/Tech team growth and organization to finally dedicate more time on company strategy.
Making the right choices now can make the difference between a 30% yearly growth rate and a 100+% one next year.
The bigger the company you build, the more talents, revenues, or funds you get, consequently people and capital allocation will be increasingly impactful: strategy is then of the utmost importance. With scale, there are more and more things you can do: how to do the right ones?
High Growth Handbook by Elad Gil
Once your company reaches 200 team member threshold, this book becomes an absolute must-read (not really useful before because it only deals with scale issues). Elad Gil interviews most successful company founders and top executives on how to scale from a few hundred to a few thousand, covering many subjects from strategy, organizational changes, culture evolution, COO role, C level hires, board management, transverse functions (HR, legal, etc…) and sales scaling, etc…One of the most useful books I could recommend for fast-growing companies with significant headcount/complexity.
Strategy Beyond The Hockey Stick (McKinsey)
An excellent read — alright, I am a former McKinsey consultant so this might be a little biased… The chapters on strategy psychology are eye-opening: how not to end up the next year with the same market share because competition matched your efforts, how your executives might try to game your strategy plan process to get more resources, how to avoid stretching your investments on non-strategic projects, etc…The book is based on data (a nice change for a business book) and highlights the need for ballsy plans. Applicable for all businesses even though better fit for very large corporations.
Blitzcalling by Reid Hoffman
Reid Hoffman (Linkedin founder) delivers a must-read with deep insights on companies that experienced insane growth (PayPal, LinkedIn, Airbnb, Uber, etc), and their organizational process. It underlines the key success factors as well as dangers of hyper-growth with a lot of counter-intuitive facts (for e.g. how Paypal decided to just completely stop answering exponentially furious customers during their hyper-growth history because it wasn’t their priority — they didn’t even answer their phones when customers called their private lines).
The Innovator Dilemma by Clayton Christensen
How to stay on top once you got big and dominate your market? Christensen gives great insights on companies that remained successful while others that were the darlings of their era faded away and why.
On this matter, I also recommend Reinventing Organizations by Frederic Laloux and Built to Last by Jim Collins.
Founder starter pack
If you are starting a business as a first-time founder, I would advise not to waste your time on too much reading on fancy subjects like scale or culture (post-product-market fit related subjects). All that should matter to you is to reach the famous product-market fit. If you do not, all the work you dedicated to your organization, scaling strategy, and culture might be reduced to ashes by your company bankruptcy. As they say, first things first. The following books can help you a lot on that matter:
The Lean Startup by Eric Ries
An absolute must-read, THE starter bible. Basically telling you to stop shying away from your customers and stop perfecting your product: even if you think this does not apply to your business, there is a code-free way to test if your product can be sold/used by your target audience. Test as fast as you can and iterate/pivot if needed.
The principle is simple but very hard to implement (no one wants to launch a shitty product, which is exactly what you should do anyway). Read it carefully, this is the only way to have the fortitude to apply it. I saw several founders not applying it and wasting at least a full year as a consequence: don’t be that company…
Who by Geoff Smart
50% (at least) of a company's success lies in the people it hires — cliché but true. The first people you will hire will not only be enablers of your success to product/market fit journey, but they will also define the quality of the next round of people joining you (hire B players, they can only attract C players), and so on. The people you hire will also be expressions and catalysts of your culture.
You must be extra careful with your first hires because this will define your culture and the quality of future hires. Who will give you all the tools to attract, screen, and hire the bests.
Secrets of Sand Hill Road by Scott Kupor
How VCs work, think, and what they are looking for. This book will give you a basic understanding of how to set up preliminary relationships with VCs, how to market yourself, perform your roadshow, and raise the money you need.
Sales
One of Andreessen Horowitz's thesis is that sales/distribution excellency often decides market dominance — not product. Whether you like it or not, building an excellent sales team is both hard and a must for many founders. These are the books I read to familiarize myself with this challenge.
The Sales Acceleration Formula by Mark Roberge
The advice from a self-claimed sales “virgin” guy who created and scaled up Hubspot salesforce up to a 100 Mn ARR.
Cracking the Sales Management Code by Jordan Vazzan
A good reference on salesforce specialization benefits, processes to implement, and all the best practices you need to have in mind.
Management
The bigger you get, the more enabling your teams will impact your velocity. Even if you are an innately born high effective executive and inspiring manager (kudos!), not everyone you hire can be, and they will need training.
Reading will enable you to structure your thinking which is key to teach it to your team members and grow them into the stars you need them to be.
Essential Management by First Round
First Round is well known for its excellent blog posts. This book gathers various insights from industry leaders on leadership, management, organization, decision-making process, and team engagement for large organizations. Useful read once you scale.
High Output management by Andrew Grove
Pretty old book (you do not often see references to USSR in startup literature), with however lots of interesting chapters on how to optimize your team's performance, your time, with lots of concrete examples and actionable advice. Old school but effective.
Rework by Jason Fried
Sound advice from the creators of Basecamp and Ruby on Rail. Interesting company that chose to create value by doing less rather than more and limited its growth willingly. So probably not suited advice for the future unicorn founders that you may be, but worth reading.
Radical candor by Kim Scott
How to deliver candid and caring feedback, very useful for managers.
Product
Product is one of the most important areas to master when launching a tech business, however, it is one of the least documented. I myself never found a good book nor any kind of quality content on product management. If you know great references, please share them in the comments!
Inspired by Marty Cagan
The reference in modern product management: making sure that your product team is having the company work on worthwhile projects through relentless testing and discovery; a must read!
Don’t make me think by Steve Krug
One of the only books on product available as far as I know. There are interesting insights on the product but this is not exhaustive and a little (a lot in fact) outdated.
You can also read Emotional design and The design of everyday things by Don Norman (more focused on design obviously) as well as a few chapters of the Hard things about the Hard things by Ben Horowitz who has a good definition of Good & Bad product manager.
Customer care
L’obsession du Service client by Jonathan Lefèvre
The customer obsession (Zappos level) by a French startup. The medium post is very clear and will give you access to 90% of the book content.
Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh, even if I am not a fan of the book, this is a reference, and I felt that the insights on customer care are much more useful than the ones on culture.
Mix feelings readings
Here are some books I think are worth reading but where the core thesis has to be taken with a grain of salt.
Good to Great by Jim Collins
A business strategy classic. After studying long-lasting successful companies in Build to Last, Jim Collins shifted to companies that performed badly and then shifted to consistently over-perform their market for decades. It tells the glorious tale of 7 businesses changing their leadership, strategy, even markets, and ending up very successful. Jim Collins analyses what these companies shared and how to replicate this turnaround.
However, according to me, you need more than 7 companies to perform statistically reliable pattern recognition, therefore I am very doubtful about the findings. Still a nice read, theses companies turn around are inspiring.
The 4-hour workweek by Tim Ferriss
The famous and title provocative book I read following a discussion with one of my team- member. He was advocating that hard work was not a key aspect of building a successful company, I was arguing that all my readings about great companies included repeated mentions of insane hard work at first — Amazon Saturday’s meeting, SpaceX/Tesla usual 70 hours work weeks, Facebook key meetings at 10 pm, Apple « I work 60 hours a week » proudly worn tee shirts, Alibaba and Chinese startups common 6/9/9 (working 6 days a week from 9 am to 9 pm, etc…). He said that the 4-hour workweek would prove me wrong, so I gave it a shot.
My conclusion after reading is twofold:
- The 4-hour workweek thing is total BS. Basically Tim Ferriss tells us that after working like a dog for years and building a successful website / company generating hundreds of thousands of dollars per month, he became aware that by focusing on the priorities / delegating he could achieve the same results vs. working insanely.
To me, this is the very definition of a « rente » (an annuity). Once you have built something very successful by working your ass off, of course, you can stop working and keep the cash pouring in. It is like selling it and investing it in real estate: zero work, plenty of money. But you need the hard work first (or luck or inheritance, not sure this would make an inspiring bestseller…) - However, it was inspiring: by forcing you to question your beliefs, habits, conventional wisdom, and by focusing on real efficiency and good prioritization, this is a true enabler of starting up the projects that could lead you to your deepest dreams.
Play Bigger by Al Ramadan
This is not only about successful companies but about the one who managed to define their very industry (Amazon, Salesforce, Uber, Ikea). The authors defend an interesting thesis that founders went beyond traditional marketing and « defined » a new category that enabled them to define market rules and dominate the field. However appealing, I still feel that this is a chicken and egg problem and that defining the category — while being definitely very useful- is more a consequence of success rather than its very cause.
Miscellaneous
Other interesting reads on various subjects
Magic Box Paradigm by Ezra Roizen
Basically a framework on how to sell your company. It is not at all our current focus at papernest so I cannot tell you if this is good advice, but the content is sound and probably very useful.
Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey Moore
How to go beyond early adopters and scale your product and company to conquer the majority of the market.
The mythical man-month by Fred Brooks
Software development organization basics, worthwhile reading for non-tech founders to better understand why good software integration takes longer than the POC you created at the very beginning of your company creation (which is frustrating but for good reasons).
Thanks for reading! This is only my reading list, I am sure many of you have better references on these subjects: if you feel they are missing, please write them down in the comments!
And you can also find other entrepreneurs reading lists on this website: mustread.fyi
I will also try to publish comments on books I recommend on Twitter in the future.
