10 Books Every Entrepreneur Should Read

Entrepreneurs are often so busy with various responsibilities and hectic schedules, that reading a book becomes a leisure activity few can afford. However, books can act as a lifeline to founders who feel like they have nowhere else to turn. Founders can benefit from their predecessors’ wisdom to dodge avoidable mistakes and make informed decisions at every stage of their and their company’s lifecycle. Here are a few books that we think every entrepreneur should read!

Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones, by James Clear

This book is for everyone who is looking to change their habits to succeed. Not only will this book reshape the way you think about progress and success, but it will also give you the tools and strategies you need to transform your habits. Atomic Habits offers a proven system that can take you to new heights and get back on track when you fall off course.

James Clear is well known for being the world’s leading expert on habit formation and his tips and methods in the book can help you develop good habits, break old bad ones, and master the little shifts that can lead to remarkable results.

Mastery by Robert Greene

‘Mastery’ is another brilliant book that offers an organized, well-developed path for everyone in the quest of advancing themselves personally and professionally. In this book, you will not just find the analysis of the lives of past experts such as Charles Darwin, Benjamin Franklin, Albert Einstein, and Leonardo da Vinci, etc, but also nine contemporary masters, including tech guru Paul Graham and animal rights advocate Temple Grandin. Greene dismisses the idea that Einstein-level success is a product of genius or talent. Instead, according to him, it is a product of intense focus and devoting time to a particular field. Pick up this book to go through a series of convincing and powerful arguments debunking the myth that success is reserved for an elite few. Read this one to get an understanding of what it takes to pursue a path to “mastery” and that success is accessible to anyone willing to commit to a proven path to success.

Peak by Anders Ericsson & Robert Peak

Peak’s book discusses how experts in any field become experts. The book gives practical ideas on how you might apply some of the expert learning practices to your own life. The combination of storytelling and hard research on the path-to-mastery of many prodigies helps you understand author’s focus on ‘deliberate practice’ to hone skills outside one’s comfort zone. Take up this book if you are interested in standing out at work, improving your athletic or musical performance, helping your child achieve academic goals or learning any other established skills. Rest assured; Anders Ericsson’s revolutionary methods will teach you how to improve at almost any skill that you would like to master.

Seeking Wisdom: From Darwin to Munger by Peter Bevelin

Peter Bevelin’s book is a result of learning about attaining wisdom. The book is hugely influenced by the philosophy of super-investor and Berkshire Hathaway Vice Chairman Charles Munger who Mr. Bevelin admires, and from the wisdom he achieved because of the mistakes he and others made. If you are an entrepreneur who is in constant search for knowledge, this book is for you. This unmatched multidisciplinary exploration of wisdom which dives into how our thoughts are influenced, why we make misjudgments and tools to improve our thinking may change your thought process and actions in your life and business.

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen R. Covey

This book is an old classic that has captivated readers for years now. The book can help entrepreneurs solve not just professional, but also personal problems with its holistic, integrated, principle-centered approach of problem solving. Covey’s deep insights and specific anecdotes teach you a step-by-step pathway for leading a life of fairness, integrity, service, and human dignity. The author suggests that these principles give you security to adapt to change and the wisdom and power to take advantage of the opportunities that change creates. The book is credited for transforming the lives of many important CEOs, presidents and millions of other people of all ages and occupations.

The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Green

This beguiling book by Robert Green could be used as a guide to life. You could examine your past based on his 48 laws of power. The book is a fascinating read that discusses the pursuit of power and the various strategies that people have been using for ages to gain power and influence over others. Also, you get an understanding of how certain actions almost always increase one’s power, while others decrease power or ultimately ruin it. This book is ideal for entrepreneurs who aim at conquests or self-defense and would like to understand how the pursuit of power could be a game where you do not take things personally or hold grudges.

The Lean Start-up by Eric Ries

This is a terrific book for preparing new entrepreneurs for the realities of managing a business and adjusting expectations while teaching valuable techniques proven to increase the chances of a startup’s survival. Although most startups fail, the failure of most startups is often preventable. Eric Ries describes a sensible approach to founding and running a new company in his book ‘The Lean Startup.’ The book offers some of the best practices for launching a company along with various errors entrepreneurs make and the misconceptions they have. The book is especially helpful because it teaches the practical and factual approach to entrepreneurship with the triumphs and failures of real companies, including the author’s own company.

The Startup Playbook: Founder-to-Founder Advice From Two Startup Veterans, by David Miller

This book is a holy grail for first-time entrepreneurs as it gives you proven and repeatable tactics for refining your startup idea, team building, raising money, developing a product or service, etc. This book fills you in with everything essential to know if you wish to turn your idea into a thriving startup. The book features many winning tips, secrets, advice, and even shortcuts that make other companies successful. The years of combined knowledge gleaned from building and leading companies shared by the authors in this book shall help you take the right steps to create a successful startup.

This is Marketing: You Can’t Be Seen Until You Learn to See, by Seth Godin

This book teaches you how to do the work you are proud of irrespective of what your job title is. Seth Godin’s advice has helped countless CEOs, marketers, lecturers, etc. in the past but this book is the absolute core of his marketing wisdom. The central idea behind the book is that the best marketers do not use consumers to solve their company’s problems; they use marketing to solve other people’s problems. This book teaches you the truest way of marketing, which is not based on spam, lies, and stolen attention by wasting loads of your company’s money. Instead, it is based on empathy, generosity, and emotional labor. If you are an entrepreneur looking to learn marketing that withstands the test of time irrespective of the ever-evolving marketing tactics, this is the book you should go for.

Zero to One by Peter Thiel

This book has won the praise of visionaries like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg and is an exceptional pick for understanding what makes a company worth betting on. ‘Zero to One’ focuses on the fact that true innovators do not just improve upon an existing product, instead, they create something entirely new and unique. The book discusses how real market disruptors change the landscape by introducing novel concepts that are still unheard of while simultaneously maintaining momentum by creating an insider culture that inspires loyalty. The author, Peter Thiel is a highly regarded Silicon Valley investor and the founder of PayPal.