Entrepreneur books
If you’re an entrepreneur or want to become one, these books can teach you much. I’ve read each of these books and thoroughly recommend them. (Disclosure: the links below to Amazon have a referral code in them and you will make me a few cents if you buy them from here.) You can also click on the Entrepreneur Books Amazon Listmania and add them all to your cart in one go.
Founders at work: Stories of startup’s early days — This is an excellent collection of interviews/stories from all sorts of entrepreneurs, the risks they took, their worries, the problems they faced, their way of thinking. Some of the names are legendary, some are more obscure. I continue to come back over and over again to this book to learn practical skills by example. What I love the most about this book is that it demystifies the figure of the entrepreneur and shows you many of them as what they are: smart people who had an itch to change something and set out to do it.
The Art of the Start – Guy Kawasaki is one of my favorite writers. He thinks with great clarity, is funny, original and insightful. The Art of the start condenses a lot of entrepreneur disciplines into very succinct thinking and practical tools to get started. Guy does an awesome job of debunking a lot of myths about entrepreneurship.
The Startup Company Bible for Entrepreneurs – A sort of wikipedia or almanac for entrepreneurs, this book aims to be a comprehensive reference resource. Some sections, focused more on the business side, are worse than others. But if you want practical advice on money raising, hiring, law, etc, a great book to have.
The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Business Law – Another reference tome. Unless you’ve spent many years dealing with contracts, this is an area where it’s easy to get lost. This book is excellent at explaining the guiding principles behind clauses in contracts and will help you give solid guidance to your lawyer as to what you want.
Money Hunt – This book, from the PBS series with the same name, is a collection of profiles of entrepreneurs that illustrates 27 important principles or attitudes of successful entrepreneurs. Top notch material, especially if you like learning by example.
Reality Check – When Guy Kawasaki finally discovered blogging, he put together a series of posts of incredible caliber. They were so good, indeed, that he hired an editor and turned it into a book. This collection is chock full of advice and, in my opinion, is his best book, period.
The Bootstrapper’s Bible — In this short Ebook, Seth Godin teaches the philosophy of bootstrapping and shows you how you can beat large corporations by being different and playing to the strengths of your very small company. This book both inspires and teaches. It’s also probably the best value of the bunch.
Growing a Business – Paul Hawken is going to teach you how to organically grow a business by focusing on doing something that matters and caring for your customers. He’s the anti-build-to-flip proponent and there is something very profound about what he teaches. You’re probably not going to get any VC money with his approach, though.
Behind the Cloud — Marc Benioff’s book just came out, but I believe it’s destined to be a classic. Marc is bold and original in how he runs his business and the book follows the same line. Broken down into different kinds of “plays”, his text is easily digestible and teaches lessons that are applicable from the start, all the way to multi-billion dollar high growth software company.
