Startups 101: A Reading List for Founders
Dec 2022
The best startups (or even large tech companies) I’ve been in or seen are led by people who have the “Silicon Valley mindset.” This is basically a way to think about problems (customer problems and pain points), products (solutions to those pains), people (who to have on your team), PMF fit (product, market, founder/org fit), and execution plans (how to flexibly get stuff done yesterday, pivot to something new, or massively scale, using as few resources as possible). I believe this can be learned and taught and that there are faster, more efficient ways to do it than people realize. If you just read the short list of materials here, you will know as much as the top 5% of founders in Silicon Valley. The other materials will also help and inspire you.
No reading is as good as working at a tech startup, or starting your own (building your first product, getting your first sales, etc). Get your hands dirty early: fail early and fail often. Reading to avoid mistakes is most valuable when you are building.
At its core, a tech startup is 2-3 engineers and 1-2 business and salespeople. There is also the modern development of the 1 person Saas company, which Saas and AI tools will help make more common.
The Short List of Startup Resources
Top Ten
1. YC Startup School - watch as many of the prior year videos as you can and learn from founders - literally the best place to learn. Here are their top companies (Google them to learn more), and their startup library. If you only have one source, this is it.
2. Paul Graham, Various Essays. The single best essay on startups and one of the best things ever written about business and wealth: “How to Make Wealth”. Graham is the Yoda of has written a few other excellent essays on startups:
3. Eric Reis, The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses. Doing startups means setting up a series of controlled experiments where failure is normal. Read Reis along with Olsen’s “The Lean Product Playbook: How to Innovate with Minimum Viable Products and Rapid Customer Feedback.” and Tony Fadell’s “Build.”
4. Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People. The best book on dealing with people, selling, and managing. Carnegie is a must-read.
5. John Wooden, Wooden on Leadership. The best book I’ve ever read on leading teams. It pairs really well with Schmidt’s book “Trillion Dollar Coach” about the Bill Campbell, who advised many of the top SV companies.
6. Walter Isaacson, Steve Jobs. Not a good example to learn startups from (Steve was better at running a big company), but inspiring in many ways. Worth reading alongside is the “Becoming Steve Jobs” book that goes into the details of how Jobs made products, and all his mistakes. Vance’s “Elon Musk” is worth it too.
7. Steve Blank, The Startup Owner's Manual: The Step-By-Step Guide for Building a Great Company. Four Steps to the Epiphany. Two great books: one is an overview, the other offers a great process/way to talk to customers and develop a product that they want iteratively – geared toward tech.
8. Clayton Christenson, The Innovators Dilemma. High-tech startups are about disruption. Learn from the best thinker on the subject.
9. Techstars, Do More Faster. More detailed basics for tech startups, from the venture incubator TechStars in CO/NY – most important tips are on how to create a good initial team and how to iterate quickly from bad ideas to products that sell soon – I think a committed team of people who trust and complement each other matters more than an initial idea for most startups.
10. Podcasts like “How I Built This” and “Masters of Scale”, along with practical websites like the “First Round Review.”