The Ultimate Summer Reading List for Startup Founders

Aug 14, 2018

Sometimes in order to grow your revenue, you need to grow yourself.

Today’s article will help you do it. 40 books to help you go from great to incredible

Fortunately, summertime is the perfect moment to dive into books and to learn something new, or maybe just brush up on some skills.

Below you will find a list of 40 books, divided into 5 categories. Choose what you like or what you want to learn, and make your summer count.

At the bottom, I’ve also added a list of 5 books, one from each category, which I personally find the most interesting. If you need less than 40 books, then just scroll to the bottom.

Leadership & Teamwork

Lean In: Women, Work and the Will to Lead by Sheryl Sandberg
The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni
The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups by Daniel Coyle
Radical Candor: Be a Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity by Kim Scott
The Startup Owner’s Manual by Steve Blank
The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz
Build Your Dream Network: Forging Powerful Relationships in a Hyper-Connected World by J. Kelly Hoey
Superbosses: How Exceptional Leaders Master the Flow of Talent by Sydney Finkelstein
Originals: How Nonconformists Move the World by Adam Grant
The Founder’s Dilemmas: Anticipating and Avoiding the Pitfalls That Can Sink a Startup by Noam Wasserman

Product & Customers

Setting The Table: The Transforming Power of Hospitality in Business by Danny Meyer
Hug Your Haters: How to Embrace Complaints and Keep Your Customers by Jay Baer
Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products by Nir Eyal
Will It Fly?: How to Test Your Next Business Idea so You Don’t Waste Your Time and Money by Pat Flynn
The Sprint Book by Jake Knapp
How To Transform Your Ideas Into Software Products by Poornima Vijayashanker

Growth & Marketing

Traction: How Any Startup Can Achieve Explosive Customer Growth By Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares
Competing Against Luck by Clayton M. Christensen et al.
Hacking Growth: How Today’s Fastest-Growing Companies Drive Breakout Success by Sean Ellis & Morgan Brown

Strategy & Success

Good To Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap…and Others Don’t by Jim Collins
Thinking, Fast and Slow By Daniel Kahneman
Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit Of Less by Greg McKeown
Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell
The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right by Atul Gawande
Business Model Generation: A Handbook For Visionaries, Game Changers and Challengers by Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur
Mindset: The New Psychology of Success by Carol Dweck
The Tools of Titans: The Tactics, Routines and Habits of Billionaires, Icons and World-Class Performers by Tim Ferriss
What to Do When It’s Your Turn (And It’s Always Your Turn) by Seth Godin
The Happiness Track: How to Apply the Science of Happiness to Accelerate Your Success by Emma Seppälä

Startup Life

Lost And Founder: A Painfully Honest Field Guide to the Startup World by Rand Fishkin
The Lean Startup by Eric Ries
The $100 Startup: Reinvent the Way You Make a Living, Do What You Love and Create a New Future by Chris Guillebeau
Startup Playbook by Sam Altman
Venture Deals: Be Smarter Than Your Lawyer and Venture Capitalist by Brad Feld and Jason Mendelson
Founders at Work: Stories of Startups’ Early Days by Jessica Livingston
Startupland: How Three Guys Risked Everything to Turn an Idea into a Global Business by Mikkel Svane
Remote: Office Not Required by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson
The Year Without Pants: WordPress.com and the Future of Work by Scott Berkun
The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon by Brad Stone
Startup: A Novel by Doree Shafrir