The SaaS Playbook
Rob Walling
A comprehensive guide to building a multimillion-dollar SaaS startup without relying on venture capital. Rob Walling shares his extensive experience and proven strategies for launching and growing a successful SaaS business, covering everything from market selection and pricing to marketing, team building, and mindset.
Insights
Chris LoPresti
This book compiles practical wisdom and candid advice from 101 highly successful Yale entrepreneurs. Through easily digestible reflections, it covers crucial aspects of starting and growing a business, from managing risk and building a team to fostering perseverance and finding passion. It offers invaluable lessons learned the hard way, designed to help aspiring and current entrepreneurs navigate the challenges and opportunities of their ventures.
Business Model Generation
Alexander Osterwalder
A handbook for visionaries, game changers, and challengers striving to defy outmoded business models and design tomorrow’s enterprises. It offers powerful, simple, tested tools for understanding, designing, reworking, and implementing business models. Learn how to systematically understand, design, and implement a new business model — or analyze and renovate an old one.
The Lean Startup
Eric Ries
The Lean Startup provides a scientific approach to creating and managing successful startups in any sector. By focusing on validated learning, rapid experimentation, and iterative product releases, entrepreneurs can learn what customers want and build sustainable businesses. This book offers a new way of looking at the development of innovative new products that emphasizes fast iteration and customer insight, a huge vision, and great ambition, all at the same time.
Shoe Dog
Phil Knight
In this candid and insightful memoir, Phil Knight, the founder of Nike, shares the remarkable story of building one of the world's most iconic and successful brands. From his early travels and "Crazy Idea" to the challenges and triumphs of creating a global empire, Shoe Dog offers a rare glimpse into the mind of a visionary and the relentless pursuit of a dream.
Company of One
Paul Jarvis
"Company of One" is a refreshing antidote to the modern business world’s obsession with "growth at all costs." Written by entrepreneur and designer Paul Jarvis, this book challenges the default assumption that success always equals expansion, more employees, and higher revenue. Instead, Jarvis argues that the most sustainable and rewarding path for many entrepreneurs is to stay small intentionally. Jarvis defines a "Company of One" not just as a solo freelancer, but as a business of any size that questions growth. The core philosophy centers on determining your "enough"—the point where your business supports your lifestyle without consuming it. By resisting the pressure to scale indefinitely, founders can prioritize autonomy, stability, and customer relationships over bureaucracy and overhead. The book provides a practical blueprint for building a resilient business that is agile enough to weather economic storms. It covers strategies for streamlining processes, maintaining high profitability, and leveraging technology to do more with less. "Company of One" is an essential read for freelancers and entrepreneurs who want to build a business that works for them, rather than working for their business, proving that better is often smarter than bigger.
Rework
Jason Fried
"Rework" is a minimalist manifesto for a new kind of business reality. Written by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson, the founders of the software company Basecamp, the book is a direct attack on the traditional wisdom of the corporate world. It rejects the standard advice found in business schools and startup incubators, arguing that most of it is actually counterproductive. The authors challenge the obsession with growth, funding, and workaholism. They assert that workaholics are not heroes but liabilities who create more problems than they solve. The book promotes a philosophy of restraint and simplicity. It argues that you need far less than you think to start a business. You do not need an office, outside investors, or a lengthy business plan. In fact, the authors famously claim that "Planning is Guessing," suggesting that long-term plans are merely fantasies that blind you to immediate opportunities. The book is structured as a series of short, punchy essays that dismantle specific business myths. It attacks the culture of meetings, calling them "Toxic," and argues that interruptions are the enemy of productivity. "Rework" advises entrepreneurs to stop trying to beat the competition at their own game and instead to "Underdo" them by building a simpler product that solves a specific problem perfectly. It is a playbook for anyone who wants to build something on their own terms without selling their soul to venture capitalists.
Secrets of Sand Hill Road
Scott Kupor
"Secrets of Sand Hill Road" is a transparent guide to the opaque world of venture capital written by Scott Kupor, the managing partner at Andreessen Horowitz. While most startup books focus on how to build a product, this book focuses on how to finance it. Kupor pulls back the curtain on the industry to explain exactly how VCs make decisions, how they value companies, and what they actually do with the money they manage. The core of the book is an explanation of the Power Law curve that governs venture capital. Kupor explains that VCs are not looking for reliable, moderate growth. They are looking for outliers. Because the vast majority of startups fail, a VC fund relies entirely on a tiny handful of massive "home runs" to generate returns. This mathematical reality dictates why investors often seem greedy or dismissive of good businesses that lack massive scale potential. The book serves as a practical manual for navigating the fundraising process. It decodes the complex legalese of the Term Sheet, explaining critical concepts like liquidation preferences and anti-dilution provisions. "Secrets of Sand Hill Road" argues that the relationship between a founder and a VC is like a marriage. It is a long-term partnership where alignment of incentives is everything, and understanding the partner's motivations is the only way to survive the inevitable rough patches.