Coming up with great product or brand names is hard. Alexandra Watkins shows you the SMILE and SCRATCH methodology to create memorable and effective brand names, even if you're a noncreative.
A step-by-step, encyclopedic reference manual by Steve Blank and Bob Dorf on how to build and scale a successful startup. Best to read this book in parts and reference it whenever you need help with a particular section.
Perhaps the best book on positioning to come out in recent times, learn from April Dunford on how you can understand your customers and use it to position your product to success. Learn her five components of positioning, how to instantly connect your offering's value proposition to an audience, choosing the best markets for your product, and more.
The definitive story of Amazon.com, one of the most successful companies in the world, and of its driven, brilliant founder, Jeff Bezos. Learn about how his vision for the internet back in 1997, how he found an opportunity to create an online bookstore, and grow from there to the everything store.
Rob Fitzpatrick has written the most essential book on validating your business ideas correctly and in a way that is practical and will save you time, money, and heartbreak. It's a short book that basically says that you shouldn't ask anyone if your business is a good idea, because it's a bad question and everyone is bound to lie in varying degrees. It's not their responsibility to tell you the truth, but yours to extract it correctly. And this book can teach you how.
Great marketers don't use consumers to solve their company's problem; they use marketing to solve other people's problems. Seth Godin's book is a culmination of decades of experience to help people understand marketing and apply its core ideas to their own businesses. A must read book on marketing.
