Books like Startup

01

The Hard Thing About Hard Things

Ben Horowitz · Business

The Hard Thing About Hard Things is Ben Horowitz's account of what it actually feels like to run a company through crisis.

A kindred business read.

02

Lost and Founder

Rand Fishkin · Business

Rand Fishkin built Moz, the SEO software company, from a bootstrapped consultancy into a venture-backed business with millions in revenue — and then watched it nearly collapse under the weight of that growth.

Shares entrepreneurship and venture capital with Startup.

03

Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup

John Carreyrou · Business

Bad Blood is Wall Street Journal reporter John Carreyrou's account of Theranos, the blood-testing startup founded by Elizabeth Holmes that claimed its proprietary technology could run hundreds of diagnostic tests from a single finger-prick of blood.

A kindred business read.

04

Founders at Work: Stories of Startups' Early Days

Jessica Livingston · Business

Founders at Work is Jessica Livingston's collection of interviews with the founders of some of the most influential technology companies of the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries.

Both dig into entrepreneurship.

05

The Power Law

Sebastian Mallaby · Business

The Power Law is Sebastian Mallaby's history of venture capital, told through the people who built the industry from its roots in postwar military research to its current position as the primary financing mechanism for technology startups worldwide.

Shares entrepreneurship and silicon valley with Startup.

06

Venture Deals: Be Smarter Than Your Lawyer and Venture Capitalist

Brad Feld and Jason Mendelson · Business

Venture Deals is Brad Feld and Jason Mendelson's guide to understanding venture capital term sheets — the documents that define the economic and control terms of startup funding.

Shares entrepreneurship and venture capital with Startup.

07

How the Internet Happened

Brian McCullough · History

How the Internet Happened covers the commercial history of the internet from the release of Mosaic in 1993 to the launch of the iPhone in 2007 — the window in which the web went from academic experiment to the defining infrastructure of modern life.

Shares entrepreneurship and silicon valley with Startup.

08

AI Superpowers

Kai-Fu Lee · Business

AI Superpowers is Kai-Fu Lee's argument that the geopolitical competition to lead in artificial intelligence is primarily a two-country race between the United States and China, and that the outcome will reshape the global economy in ways most people haven't started to reckon with.

Both dig into entrepreneurship.

09

Anything You Want

Derek Sivers · Business

Anything You Want is Derek Sivers' account of building, running, and eventually selling CD Baby, the independent musician distribution company he founded accidentally in 1998 when a few friends asked him to sell their CDs online.

Both dig into entrepreneurship.

10

Behind the Cloud

Marc Benioff · Business

Behind the Cloud is Marc Benioff's account of building Salesforce from a startup in his apartment to the first cloud computing company to reach $1 billion in revenue.

Both dig into entrepreneurship.

11

Beyond Entrepreneurship

Jim Collins & William Lazier · Business

Beyond Entrepreneurship is Jim Collins's first major book, co-written with William Lazier and published in 1992, before the research that produced Built to Last and Good to Great.

Both dig into entrepreneurship.

12

Blitzscaling: The Lightning-Fast Path to Building Massively Valuable Companies

Reid Hoffman and Chris Yeh · Business

Blitzscaling is Reid Hoffman's argument that certain markets — primarily those with strong network effects and winner-take-most dynamics — reward companies that prioritize speed of growth over efficiency, even at the cost of significant operational risk.

Both dig into venture capital.