Top Startup books recommended by experts

At MentorCruise, we are all about making the most out of the experience of others. As part of that, we've connected and asked dozens of experts and professionals about their favourite Startup books – and here are the answers.

Table of Contents

Fundamentals of Startup

Understanding the concepts of Startup starts with understanding the fundamentals. On your way to mastery, it's crucial for you to understand how certain concepts were derived, and why things work like they do. Starting with these resources is the best way to do so.

Zero to Sold

It's easy to build software products. The hard part is turning them into viable businesses that stand the test of time. If you want to build a business that survives, you have to know what challenges you will encounter. Zero to Sold tells the story of a sustainable, bootstrapped software business that grew to thousands of customers before it was acquired.

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The Four Steps to the Epiphany: Successful Strategies for Products that Win

"The Four Steps to the Epiphany" by Steve Blank is an entrepreneurial guidebook that outlines a practical approach to launching successful products by emphasizing customer discovery, validation, creation, and development.

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Buy Back Your Time: Get Unstuck, Reclaim Your Freedom, and Build Your Empire

Buy Back Your Time by Dan Martell is a productivity and time management guide that helps entrepreneurs maximize their time by focusing on their strengths and delegating tasks. It provides actionable advice on how to achieve more in less time and ultimately lead a more fulfilling life.

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The $100 Startup

Chris identified 1,500 individuals who have built businesses earning $50,000 or more from a modest investment (in many cases, $100 or less), and focused on the 50 most intriguing case studies. In nearly all cases, people with no special skills discovered aspects of their personal passions that could be monetized, and were able to restructure their lives in ways that gave them greater freedom a…

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Startup CEO: A Field Guide to Scaling Up Your Business (Techstars)

"Startup CEO is the definitive book for any CEO―first time or otherwise―of a high-growth company. While dozens of books have been written about starting businesses, it's time for entrepreneurs to focus on scaling them. Matt shows them how."

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Traction: How Any Startup Can Achieve Explosive Customer Growth

How any Startup can Achieve Explosive Customer Growth, the founder of search engine Duckduckgo, Gabriel Weinberg, shares a fresh way for businesses to think about different phases of growth, with practical tips on how to test and use 19 potential channels to get more customers and achieve massive growth.

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Additional Startup Reading

These books are not required for you to learn Startup, but they are highly recommended for you to deepen your knowledge.

The Startup Owner's Manual: The Step-By-Step Guide for Building a Great Company

More than 100,000 entrepreneurs rely on this book for detailed, step-by-step instructions on building successful, scalable, profitable startups. The National Science Foundation pays hundreds of startup teams each year to follow the process outlined in the book, and it's taught at Stanford, Berkeley, Columbia and more than 100 other leading universities worldwide. Why? The Startup Owner's Man…

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Thrive: The Third Metric to Redefining Success and Creating a Life of Well-Being, Wisdom, and Wonder

That third metric, she writes in Thrive, includes our well-being, our ability to draw on our intuition and inner wisdom, our sense of wonder, and our capacity for compassion and giving. As Arianna points out, our eulogies celebrate our lives very differently from the way society defines success.

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The Mom Test: How to Talk to Customers and Learn If Your Business is a Good Idea when Everyone is Lying to You

The Mom Test' by Rob Fitzpatrick is a guide for entrepreneurs on how to ask questions that actually validate their business ideas without bias or false assumptions. It emphasizes on asking good questions that provide genuine data and prevent the loss of valuable resources.

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BE 2.0 (Beyond Entrepreneurship 2.0): Turning Your Business into an Enduring Great Company

What's the roadmap to create a company that not only survives its infancy but thrives, changing the world for decades to come?
Nine years before the publication of his epochal bestseller Good to Great, Jim Collins and his mentor, Bill Lazier, answered this question in their bestselling book, Beyond Entrepreneurship.
Beyond Entrepreneurship left a definitive mark on the business community…

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Startupland: How Three Guys Risked Everything to Turn an Idea into a Global Business

Conventional wisdom says most startups need to be in Silicon Valley, started by young engineers around a sexy new idea, and backed by VC funding. But as Mikkel Svane reveals in Startupland, the story of founding Zendesk was anything but conventional. Founded in a Copenhagen loft by three thirty-something friends looking to break free from corporate doldrums, Zendesk Inc. is now one of the hott…

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Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap ... and Others Don't

Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't is a management book by Jim C. Collins that describes how companies transition from being good companies to great companies, and how most companies fail to make the transition

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Specializations and Deeper Startup Knowledge

You've got your basics in order – time to move on to some advanced and specialized concepts. Startup is evolving every day, these books can help you master it.

Unlock AI Mastery: Secrets to Accelerate Business Growth and Dominate Competitors with Proven AI Strategies

In today's fast-paced digital landscape, artificial intelligence (AI) is not just a tool—it's a game-changer. Unlock AI Mastery demystifies AI and reveals practical strategies for leveraging its transformative power to revolutionize your business. Whether you're a seasoned entrepreneur or just starting out, this comprehensive guide provides actionable insights into harnessing AI to streamline …

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Mastering the VC Game: A Venture Capital Insider Reveals How to Get from Start-up to IPO on Your Terms

Jeffrey Bussgang is one of a very few people who have played on both sides of this high-stakes game. Now he draws on his unique perspective to offer high-level insights, colorful stories, and practical advice gathered from his own experience as well as from interviews with dozens of the most successful entrepreneurs and VCs. He reveals how to get noticed, perfect a pitch, and negotiate a partn…

Recommended by the experts and mentors at MentorCruise

Mastering the VC Game

Jeffrey Bussgang is one of a very few people who have played on both sides of this high-stakes game. Now he draws on his unique perspective to offer high-level insights, colorful stories, and practical advice gathered from his own experience as well as from interviews with dozens of the most successful entrepreneurs and VCs. He reveals how to get noticed, perfect a pitch, and negotiate a partn…

Recommended by the experts and mentors at MentorCruise

This list is curated by MentorCruise and can include Amazon affiliate links. Have any other suggestions? Add here.

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Hi, I'm Rick! With over 10 years as a Software Engineer at FAANG companies and startups, I specialize in Backend Distributed Systems and have a broad skill set in various technologies. I've also founded two startups. In the past, I mentored many engineers/non-engineers through work, volunteering, and bootcamps, focusing on …

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As a mentor with a background in both research and industry, I have a wealth of experience of 10+ years to draw upon when guiding individuals through the field of machine learning. My focus is on helping experienced software engineers transition into ML/DS, as well as assisting machine learning engineers …

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15+ yrs exp, 10+ as CEO/Exec, leading teams, raising capital, building tech, scaling, investing and advising companies. Hey there! I'm Aly, a Canadian-based entrepreneur, investor and advisor who has spent over a decade building, investing and advising companies. I've had the opportunity to build both bootstrapped and venture-backed companies, learning …

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Who am I? I have 12 years hands-on expertise in building and managing innovative fintech and AI solutions. Currently, at Mastercard I'm a Technical co-founder of a portfolio of six fintech products, driving their end-to-end lifecycle from ideation to global market launch. Currently leading six teams totalling 110 team members. …

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