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.

Who: The A Method for Hiring

The four steps of the WHO method are 1) Scorecard, 2) Source/Search, 3) Interview, and 4) Grade/Select. A hiring scorecard is also called an interview scorecard. By creating a scorecard, the hiring team standardizes the hiring process so that each qualified candidate is given the same treatment.

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Never Enough: From Barista to Billionaire

Once a barista in a small cafe making $6.50 an hour, Andrew Wilkinson built a business valued at over a billion dollars by the time he was 36—and yet, his path to success was anything but a straight line.
In Never Enough, Wilkinson pulls back the curtain on the lives of the ultra-rich, sharing insights into building a successful business that has been called a “Berkshire Hathaway, but for i…

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The Startup Checklist: 25 Steps to a Scalable, High-Growth Business

The Startup Checklist is the entrepreneur's essential companion. While most entrepreneurship books focus on strategy, this invaluable guide provides the concrete steps that will get your new business off to a strong start. You'll learn the ins and outs of startup execution, management, legal issues, and practical processes throughout the launch and growth phases, and how to avoid the critical …

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Running Lean

Running Lean is about testing a vision by measuring how customers behave. Running Lean is about engaging customers throughout the product development cycle. Running Lean tackles both product and market validation in parallel using short iterations. Running Lean is a disciplined and rigorous process.

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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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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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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 ChatGPT Millionaire: Making Money Online has never been this EASY (Updated for OpenAI o1) (The AI Wealth Engine - How to make money using Chat GPT and Generative AI)

We currently live in a world where businesses are paying hundreds of dollars to people for writing engaging articles and blogs, and thousands of dollars per month for social media marketing and SEO. Now using ChatGPT, anyone including you can do this really well - even if you have no experience in this! Most businesses are not aware of or are not using this right now - which is where you can c…

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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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Zero to One: Notes on Startups, Or How to Build the Future

The great secret of our time is that there are still uncharted frontiers to explore and new inventions to create. In Zero to One, legendary entrepreneur and investor Peter Thiel shows how we can find singular ways to create those new things. Thiel begins with the contrarian premise that we live in an age of technological stagnation, even if we’re too distracted by shiny mobile devices to notic…

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Zero to One

Doing what someone else already knows how to do takes the world from 1 to n, adding more of something familiar. But when you do something new, you go from 0 to 1. The next Bill Gates will not build an operating system. The next Larry Page or Sergey Brin won’t make a search engine. Tomorrow’s champions will not win by competing ruthlessly in today’s marketplace. They will escape competition alt…

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The Founder's Dilemmas: Anticipating and Avoiding the Pitfalls That Can Sink a Startup

The Founder's Dilemmas is the first book to examine the early decisions by entrepreneurs that can make or break a startup and its team. Drawing on a decade of research, Noam Wasserman reveals the common pitfalls founders face and how to avoid them.

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The Hard Thing About Hard Things

"The Hard Thing About Hard Things" by Ben Horowitz is a guide for entrepreneurs and leaders that offers practical advice on managing difficult situations in business, including laying off employees, handling investor relationships, and making tough decisions.

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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

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…

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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…

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

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About me - 20+ years of experience in the tech industry - Conducted over 500+ interviews including at top Fortune 100 companies. - Conducted 100+ mock interviews for students just like you. - Experience in system design, behavioral, coding, and management interviews - Hiring manager at current and several of …

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