Running a business is no easy task and starting your entrepreneurial journey can become just as challenging a task, having some advice on where to start, what pitfalls to anticipate and ways to spend time and money to get your idea off the ground will serve you a lot in the long run.
Here are a few of our books for every startup founder, entrepreneur or aspiring entrepreneur should read.
1. Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki
Robert Kiyosaki’s “Rich Dad Poor Dad” is the quintessential book that everyone should read to gain financial education and have good knowledge about money. The book’s focus is aimed at helping people in understanding the real difference between being wealthy and being poor. This book is very strongly recommended for everyone regardless of being a business beginner and otherwise.
2. How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie
Dale Carnegie’s How to win friends and influence people is a classic recommendation that everybody should read to help gain success in your entrepreneurial journey and having a deep understanding of dealing with people which plays an essential role in it. This book is an essential read on how to communicate with people, build relationships and then win them over to your way of thinking without causing resentment.
3. The Startup Owner’s Manual: The Step-By-Step Guide for Building a Great Company by Bob Dorf and Steve Blank
The authors’ Bob Dorf and Steve Blank have designed this book for people who want to create a startup business. The book focuses on the problems of today’s startups and helps in explaining questions that anybody might have in their journey in creating a startup business, using a highly practice-oriented solution approach.
The Startup Owner’s Manual is an essential book for anybody who wants a book that can provide you with all the information you might need and all the questions you might have.
4. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey
Author Stephen R. Covey’s book is a classic with over 25 million copies sold in 40 languages has outlined habits which anybody can inculcate in themselves to become effective and productive, two things which are essential if you want to run a business.
This Bestseller can be read and implemented by people from any profession and place, and whose principles are more ethical and mental than practical. the book and will help you discover 32 principles that will help you in finding and sticking to your “true north” to attain your goals.
5. Stay Hungry Stay Foolish by Rashmi Bansal
Author Rashmi Bansal’s book is about 25 IIM Ahmedabad graduates who all decided to become entrepreneurs and chronicles their journey through their struggles, how they came up with ideas about entrepreneurship, and how they chose the less convenient route while shunning the comfortable option of high-paying corporate jobs.
6. Zero to One by Blake Masters and Peter Thiel
Peter Thiel was one of PayPal’s co-founders and one of the first Facebook investors. The book is based on a course that Peter Thiel taught about startups at Stanford back in 2012. The Book which has been recommended by Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk is full of challenging ideas has backed up by compelling justifications that are hard to ignore. Although the book is aimed at tech startups it remains a quintessential favourite of startup founders who think unconventionally.
7. The Lean Startup by Eric Ries
“The Lean Startup” by Eric Ries has been an Amazon bestseller for a long period, and not without real cause, the book lists methods on operating a new startup while leveraging human creativity and the way to startup with minimal resource costs all the while being faced by a large number of potential challenges.
The author has designed the book which gives us examples of potential mistakes made by startups in their journeys, and the ways to avoid the mistakes which affect startup’s budget and avoid the downward spiral which many startups fall into. all of this make it one of the best business startup books on the market.
8. Blue Ocean Strategy by Renée Mauborgne and W. Chan Kim
Written by Rene Mauborgne and W. Chan Kim the book is considered one of the most iconic and impactful strategy books ever written.
The aim is to employ a market strategy to make the competition irrelevant by creating and employing uncontested market space and thus removing the cutthroat rivalry which comes with the red ocean and leads to infighting over a shrinking profit pool.
9. The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss
The 4 Hour Workweek is one of the best business books for entrepreneurs, which went on to spend more than four years on the New York Times Best Sellers list, this book is written for people who are feeling overwhelmed with work and help you live in the moment, right now.
The book is filled with hacks that will help you reframe your work, make more money and help people in living the life they want without postponing it till their retirement
10. Connect The Dots by Rashmi Bansal
Another book by Rashmi Bansal, which was nominated for the Economist Crossword Popular Award 2011, is a curation of stories of 20 entrepreneurs who decided to forge their path despite not having the required/usually pursued MBA Degrees.
The curated stories portray the beauty of following your passion and bringing them to reality, and how they dodged the conventional problems faced by entrepreneurs in their journeys.
