Ben Horowitz knows how hard it is to run a business, and he is brutally honest about it. The cofounder of Andreessen Horowitz draws on his experiences in founding, running, selling, and investing in companies. The book offers essential advice and practical wisdom for navigating the toughest problems in running your venture that business schools don't cover.
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.
Robert Cialdini's critically acclaimed book on persuasion is a must-read for any marketer or business owner selling to consumers. The book explains the psychology of why people say "yes"—and how to apply these understandings in your life, work, marketing, and more in six actionable principles.
Learn the framework that successful companies have implemented to gain traction for their product and scale successfully. Identify the marketing channels that make sense for your company, given its unique properties, in this book by Gabriel Weinberg (Founder, DuckDuckGo) and Justin Mares (Founder, Kettle & Fire).
Ed Catmull, co-founder of Pixar Animation Studios, describes the challenges he had to overcome to keeping creativity alive as Pixar grew and integrated within Disney. Read this book to learn about the approach and processes to maintain and foster creativity in corporate cultures.
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.
