Fifty Books on Startups

On the road of building a company, I ended up reading quite a few books, little by little. A good number of them gave me conviction and encouragement when I was lost. Entrepreneurs are often lonely, yet these books offer more than experience and know-how. They often give you that feeling of "virtue is never alone; it always has neighbors." That stayed with me.

One time, sometime after midnight, I walked out of the office, and the first line echoing in my head was from The Hard Thing About Hard Things: "They leave home at 8 in the morning and get back at 12 at night." In that moment, it felt as if standing beside you were countless other founders too, all of them working under the stars and heading home under the stars.

Some of the books I read have already been published in China and have Chinese editions. Others I read as ebooks or in English.

1. Entrepreneurship Fundamentals

1. The Lean Startup — Eric Ries

• About the author: Eric Ries is an American entrepreneur and writer, best known for advocating the lean startup method.
• What it's about: The book lays out a new way to build startups, stressing rapid iteration, customer feedback, and the importance of product-market fit.
• What stood out to me: The lean approach in this book has been adopted by many founders and large companies alike. The core idea is to make the most effective use of limited resources.

2. Zero to One — Peter Thiel

• About the author: Peter Thiel is a well-known investor and the co-founder of PayPal and Palantir Technologies.
• What it's about: Thiel talks about how to build a unique, innovative company in a world full of competition.
• What stood out to me: The book offers sharp insight into building something genuinely valuable, and puts innovation ahead of competition.

3. The Hard Thing About Hard Things — Ben Horowitz

• About the author: Ben Horowitz is an American entrepreneur and venture capitalist, and a co-founder of Andreessen Horowitz (A16Z).
• What it's about: Horowitz shares his experience as a CEO, especially how to make decisions and manage teams in hard times.
• What stood out to me: It gives a brutally honest picture of the challenges and pain of entrepreneurship, and offers advice you can actually use.

4. The Founder's Dilemmas — Steve Blank Wasserman

• About the author: Steve Blank has been a major force in innovation. With a fresh perspective, he reshaped how startups are built and how entrepreneurship is taught. This book is another contribution aimed at founders.
• What it's about: A comprehensive, detailed handbook for running a startup step by step. It helps founders understand the customer development process, get out of the office and talk to real customers, and eventually build products people are happy to pay for.
• What stood out to me: The book gives systematic analysis and advice on the problems that show up in the early stage of a startup. It's especially useful for first-time founders.

5. The Lean Startup — Brant Cooper and Ryan Holiday

• About the authors: Brant Cooper and Ryan Holiday are both experienced entrepreneurs focused on innovation and startup strategy.
• What it's about: The book explains how to validate product and market effectively with the smallest possible investment of resources.
• What stood out to me: If you want to build in an agile, lean way, this book gives practical guidance and case studies.

6. The Entrepreneur Mind — Kevin D. Johnson

• About the author: Kevin Johnson is a successful entrepreneur with deep experience in business operations and consulting.
• What it's about: The book explores the mindset of successful entrepreneurs, including how they overcome challenges, make strategy, and keep innovating.
• What stood out to me: Through real cases, it shows how to develop the mentality needed to succeed in entrepreneurship.

7. Rich Dad Poor Dad — Robert Kiyosaki. Trump.

• About the author: Robert Kiyosaki is an American entrepreneur and investor, well known for his contributions to financial education. I read this book very early on, but somehow never knew its second author was actually Trump. Adding that here on purpose.
• What it's about: The book offers unconventional views on money and investing, and encourages entrepreneurship and financial freedom.
• What stood out to me: Kiyosaki's ideas changed how a lot of people think about money and investing, and pushed them toward financial independence.

8. The Black Swan — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

• About the author: Nassim Taleb is a well-known risk analyst and researcher of randomness.
• What it's about: The book looks at the impact of extreme uncertainty, and how to deal with unpredictable change in business.
• What stood out to me: Its ideas matter a lot if you want to understand uncertainty in the business world and respond to it well.

9. The Psychology of Entrepreneurship — Kelly Dayton

• About the author: Kelly Dayton is a psychologist focused on entrepreneurial psychology and behavioral patterns among founders.
• What it's about: The book analyzes the psychological traits of entrepreneurs, including motivation, risk tolerance, and resilience under pressure.
• What stood out to me: It helps founders understand themselves more deeply, especially their motives and behavioral patterns.

10. Crushing It!: How Great Entrepreneurs Build Their Business and Influence—and How You Can, Too — Gary Vaynerchuk

• About the author: Gary Vaynerchuk, born on November 14, 1975, is an American businessman, author, speaker, and internet personality. He first became known as a wine critic who expanded his family's wine business.
• What it's about: In this book, Vaynerchuk revisits and updates his advice on embracing your personal mission and expanding your influence. It includes examples and case studies on using social media to grow a business, and stresses how important social media has become in business growth. With his particular mix of empathy and bluntness, he makes the book an important read for aspiring entrepreneurs.
• What stood out to me: It is both an evidence-based look at the world of influence and a practical manual for using that knowledge to build a successful business around a personal brand.

2. Innovation

11. The Innovator's Dilemma — Clayton M. Christensen

• About the author: Clayton Christensen was a professor at Harvard Business School, well known for his research on innovation management.
• What it's about: The book explores why market leaders so often fail in the face of technological innovation, and how to recognize and respond to disruptive technologies.
• What stood out to me: It offers deep insight into how companies deal with technological change, and is essential if you want to understand the nature of business innovation.

12. The Innovator's DNA — Jeff Dyer, Hal Gregersen, and Clayton Christensen

• About the authors: Jeff Dyer and Hal Gregersen are both well-known management thinkers and professors; Clayton Christensen is the author of The Innovator's Dilemma.
• What it's about: The book discusses five skills shared by innovators and how to cultivate them to improve innovation at both the individual and organizational level.
• What stood out to me: Through case studies and research data, it shows how innovators generate and realize breakthrough ideas.

13. Innovation and Entrepreneurship — Peter Drucker

• About the author: Peter Drucker is often called the father of modern management, and his work has had a profound influence on both management theory and practice.
• What it's about: The book takes a deep look at the nature of innovation and entrepreneurship, and how to implement innovation inside organizations.
• What stood out to me: It provides a systematic framework for managing innovation, along with practical guidance that works for organizations of different sizes and types.

14. The Innovator's Method — Nathan Furr and Jeff Dyer

• About the authors: Nathan Furr and Jeff Dyer are both business professors whose research focuses on innovation and entrepreneurship.
• What it's about: The book combines lean startup principles with design thinking, offering an evidence-based method for developing and testing new business models.
• What stood out to me: It gives innovators a systematic way to reduce uncertainty and risk, and move faster.

15. Blue Ocean Strategy

• About the authors: W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne are internationally known management scholars focused on strategy and competition.
• What it's about: The book proposes a new strategic way of thinking, encouraging entrepreneurs and companies to avoid fiercely contested red oceans and instead create and discover new blue oceans.
• What stood out to me: Its ideas and frameworks have been adopted by companies around the world, and offer guidance for opening new markets and creating new demand.

16. The Third Wave

• About the author: Steve Case is the co-founder of AOL, and a well-known entrepreneur and investor.
• What it's about: Case discusses the next stage of internet development, the "third wave," and how it will profoundly reshape business and society.
• What stood out to me: The book forecasts future technology trends and offers strategies and insight for succeeding in this new era.

17. The Innovator's Solution

• Authors: Clayton Christensen and Michael Raynor
• What it's about: As a follow-up to The Innovator's Dilemma, this book offers more practical guidance on how organizations can disrupt themselves. Its focus is on moving from theory to practice and helping organizations carry out disruptive innovation.

18. Crossing the Chasm

• Author: Geoffrey Moore
• What it's about: Based on the diffusion of innovation theory, this book looks at how innovation is first adopted by a small group of early users, and then how it crosses into the mainstream market to achieve real success. It points out the "chasm" between the early market and the mainstream market, and why so many startups and products fail there.

19. Ten Types of Innovation

• Author: Larry Keeley
• What it's about: Innovation is often treated as just another name for new product development. Larry Keeley, co-founder of the innovation consultancy Doblin, argues for a much broader view. The book identifies ten different ways innovation can create competitive advantage.

20. Competing Against Luck

• Author: Clayton Christensen and collaborators
• What it's about: The book explains the Jobs to Be Done theory and shows how it can be used to predict and create new businesses and innovations. Its core point is that customers don't really want to buy products or services; they want to "hire" them to get a specific job done.

3. Leadership

21. Good to Great — Jim Collins

• About the author: Jim Collins is a well-known management thinker and writer, famous for his in-depth studies of companies.
• What it's about: The book explores how companies make the leap from mediocrity to excellence, and what outstanding companies have in common.
• What stood out to me: It digs deeply into the importance of leadership and team building, and gives companies practical strategies for improvement.

22. The Leadership Challenge — James Kouzes and Barry Posner

• About the authors: James Kouzes and Barry Posner are both well-known writers and educators in leadership development.
• What it's about: Through research and case studies, the book proposes five core practices of leadership to help leaders improve their capabilities.
• What stood out to me: It offers a clear framework for leadership development, and has been widely used in leadership training and personal growth.

23. Shark Leadership — Sonia A. Buozis

• What it's about: The book explores how leaders can drive change in complex and challenging situations.
• What stood out to me: For leaders facing major challenges and transformation work, it offers practical strategies and insight.

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