What book should every tech entrepreneur read?
To help you discover your next read, we asked entrepreneurs and book-loving tech professionals this question for their best recommendations. From The Hard Thing About Hard Things to Shoe Dog, there are several books that every tech entrepreneur should read to inspire and shape their mindset.
Here are 14 books every tech entrepreneur should read:
The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz is a must-read for tech entrepreneurs. Written by a Silicon Valley venture capitalist, the book provides an honest account of the challenges founders faced and offers practical and actionable advice. This work strips away the romanticism that surrounds the lifestyle and equips entrepreneurs with the mindset and grit needed to endure the grueling and competitive startup landscape.
Michael Alexis, TeamBuilding
The author presents a no-nonsense approach to developing a tech business fast and effectively. It offers a roadmap to launching with practical steps from defining an MVP, product validation, marketing strategies and more.
Rebeca Sena, GetSpace.digital
Business books often discuss the advantages and disadvantages of methodologies, strategies, and business ideas, however few delve into why and how we come to our decisions, which is why I think every entrepreneur should read Chip & Dan Heath’s book, Decisive. Entrepreneurs tend to be driven to reach a goal, but are not always aware of their own thinking processes that can cloud their judgment.
Decisive breaks down how our prejudices, biases, and irrational beliefs that infect and influence the decisions we make and shows us how we can dissect and analyze this flawed thinking so it does not negatively impact our business actions. Their ingenious four-step method gives entrepreneurs a roadmap on how to challenge some of these instincts, to keep a clear thought process in order to make rational and sound decisions and to open your innovative side.
This bestseller by Dale Carnegie remains a top recommendation for every tech entrepreneur to read. Like all other sectors of the economy, to excel in tech, you need to create a network that helps you get your ideas in front of the people that matter the most. Reading this book will help you learn how to build friendships that create these networks and help propel your career to the next level.
Harriet Chan, CocoFinder
The book that changed the way I think about business actually had nothing to do with business at all. Mark Manson published his book, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, in 2016 and this book will make you view your life in a better way. The title alone is great for every entrepreneur because as an entrepreneur, you have to not care what people think. This book will teach you to not care what people around you are thinking, life has struggles for a reason, and as long as you keep doing what you want, your life will always have purpose. Highly recommend this book for any and every entrepreneur.
Connor MacDonald, The Ridge Wallet
Every tech entrepreneur should read Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman. It is a book about how humans think and make decisions. It is a fascinating read for anyone in a business or decision-making role, but tech entrepreneurs, in particular, can get a lot out of it. The book discusses how humans are biased and make mistakes, and offers strategies for overcoming these biases and making better decisions.
Matthew Ramirez, Paraphrasing Tool
In this book, Carmichael is helping other entrepreneurs to follow their passion and shares the secret to turbo-charging your path to success on your terms. It’s an empowering and thought-provoking book with great examples of finding your passion and following it. It lets you ask yourself that word you want to be in life, not what others want you to be.
Look, there are a lot of great business books out there, but if you want to be a tech entrepreneur then you’ll want to really get a good understanding of how to run tests even before you build your product. For this The Lean Startup by Eric Ries was hugely important to me in my entrepreneurial career. So, if I had to pick one book to recommend, I would start with The Lean Startup.
Mike Miller, Wilderness Times
Not many books will give a specific answer like Lean Analytics to most questions tech startups ask. For example — How many metrics are sufficient? How to find my way via numbers, pie charts and graphs? How to determine if to persevere, pivot, or quit? What are essential metrics for each stage? Which metric matters for my business?
The authors of this book know how vital it is for any tech entrepreneur to find the answers they seek, especially about using data to build a better startup faster. They can’t stress more on the essence of having relevant data to measure progress. The best part is the book helps with analytics basics, and gives clues about minimizing investments and maximizing your marketing campaign gain. Readers will know how to analyze data by choosing a meaningful metric. Every tech entrepreneur must read this book as it is the final unknown in the build-measure-learn cycle.
Startupland by Mikkel Svane. It’s an inspirational book that not only talks about how Svane founded his company, Zendesk, but it also recounts the lessons learned along the way. The book is great for any tech entrepreneur to read, including a serial tech entrepreneur. It can definitely give you food for thought and help you apply some of what Mikkel has learned to your business.
The Four: The Hidden DNA of Amazon, Apple, Facebook, And Google, by Scott Galloway. When you study the most successful names in any business, you also learn essential lessons. In tech, few brands have accumulated the kind of success that Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google have garnered and continue to garner. This book explores some key strategies and anecdotal lessons that define the innovative and brilliant streaks of these breakthrough brands. It also uses humor and opinion to provide you with more insights. Every tech entrepreneur will do well to explore the dominance these companies enjoy to learn some key lessons.
Azmaira Maker, Ph.D., Aspiring Families
Solving Product: Reveal Gaps, Ignite Growth, and Accelerate Any Tech Product with Customer Research (Lean B2B) by Étienne Garbugli. Tech entrepreneurship is mostly about setting up lean and efficient B2B products and platforms, and this book shows you how to get every element right. It gives you a roadmap, shows you how to navigate it, and even gives you tips on how to keep things going when nothing seems to be going your way. Filled with highly relevant case studies, live frameworks, and actionable methodologies, a perfect mix of theoretical and practical insights make the book a resourceful read.
Venture Deals by Brad Feld should be required reading for any startup seeking to raise outside capital. There’s a lot of confusing lingo in this space, and this book makes it all easy to understand. From the basics of talking to investors to negotiating complex deals, you’re way more likely to make good decisions with this book under your belt.
Shoe Dog — Phil Knight’s memoir from building Nike. There are so many business books I have learned so much from, but for pure memorability and being something I consistently refer back to, Shoe Dog takes the cake. No one business book can have all the answers to all the challenges tech entrepreneurs face but a great business story can remind us that every question in business is answerable if we stay true to our vision, focus on the customer’s needs, and most of all do not capitulate to the struggles and stresses that every entrepreneur invariably faces. Shoe Dog is more than just a great business book, it’s a great work of literature.
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Originally published at https://www.thrivacy.io.
