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.
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.
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).
Learn the path Tony Hsieh took at Zappos, which he joined and became CEO after selling LinkExchange to Microsoft, to grow the company to over $1 billion in gross merchandise sales in less than ten years. A great book on creating the a strong and customer-oriented company culture.
Read the candid and riveting memoir of Nike founder Phil Knight where he shares the story of the company's early days which he started with borrowing $50 from his father, and its journey to becoming one of the world's most iconic consumer brands doing over $30 billion in annual sales.
You can have the greatest product or service, but if nobody knows about it, you will fail. That was where Allan Dib, who started as an IT geek, came from where he earlier thought that honing his tech skills is a sure way to success. Except, it's not. The book provides a simple framework for small businesses to get started with marketing their product and reaching their audience.
