Ask HN: What's the best books for startup enterpreneurs?

Most startup books are riding the coattails of The Four Steps to the Epiphany, one of the first books about how startups need a different strategy than established companies, they have to be lean, customer development first, mvp and all that.

I like Just Enough Research by Erika Hall.

Beyond that I think behavioral science is where it's at. The rest is cruft, business stuff that might become important, but what a startup needs is empathy, if not curiosity for human behavior. I recommend Designing for Behavior Change: Applying Psychology and Behavioral Economics. Nir Eyal's weekly newsletter is great, don't take his stuff seriously, just read the things he links to broaden your horizon. Never forget to think for yourself though, nobody has the entire picture, so be sceptical, take the good parts, leave the rest. Experiment. Be a little scientist yourself. A responsible one though. We have enough baddies out there already.

"Zero to One" by Peter Thiel and Blake Masters (https://www.amazon.com/Zero-One-Paperback-Peter-Thiel/dp/B00...) and "The Unfair Advantage" by Ash Ali and Hasan Kubba (https://www.amazon.com/The-Unfair-Advantage/dp/1788167546/re...) are pretty interesting reads

I liked reading The Business Model Navigator. It helped me to better understand business strategies. My crticism is that it didn't go in depth with some patterns, but it was a good starting point to continue researching. Will need to look into the newer edition from 2020.

As a founder of a fast-growing venture-backed company, I have found that there is no better resource to read than Paul Graham’s essays (paulgraham.com). He has seen more startups succeed and fail than any other individual in the history of startups. As such he has come closest to having a statistically representative sample to distill insights from. He is an excellent writer too.

I have also found Peter Thiel’s book Zero To One to be full of actionable insights and recommendations.

Finally, Eric Ries’s The Lean Startup is the bible of iterating fast and finding product-market fit before you invest in a product no one wants (#1 most common way to fail).

Just my 2 cents.

(Disclaimer: we are not funded by YC)

It was good to me: The Kinfolk Entrepreneur and Winners Never Cheat: Even in Difficult Times.

What stage are you in? What’s your background? It depends. There is not one book that covers everything you need to know.

1) Paul Graham essays 2) Start your own startup 3) Fail miserably and learn 4) Start again

Buy my course: Learn entrepreneurship by doing

:)