I don’t mean to be rude, but there is nothing special there, no secret sauce, no guaranteed path etc to write books about. It is mostly a common sense knowledge + a bit of inspiration.
But it’s the same inspiration you get from your favorite film heros or real books, like literature.
On the other hand, if you're reading an hour or two a day when you could be building, showing or talking to someone then you're mismanaging your time.
The problem is that most people asking this question are already developers and what they really need is exposure to the things they haven't had to deal with before. Stuff like Marketing, making sales, customer support, staying profitable and general "business sense." A general introduction to small business book is probably enough to cover the basics there.
These are complicated things. People who succeed without learning from others do so mostly via timing and luck.
To those with knowledge, it's nothing special. To the rest, it's a daunting black box of pain and frustration.
All who succeeded did that by being persistent and trying 100s of different “common sense” things until it worked.
With that said I do recommend a large bias towards action and focusing on just-in-time information instead of just-in-case unless you have abundant amounts of free time.
If you’re trying to be an indie hacker, I honestly just recommend trying a ton of businesses with <3 month validation. No book will tell you what to build, you just have to talk to people and try charging.
Drew Houston said: “Your job as CEO changes every six months, every year, every couple of years. Just nobody tells you that… Nobody is born a CEO. You learn it. And the challenge is you just don’t know what your blind spots are. The chessboard is a lot bigger than just building a good product.”
As CEO, everything from strategy to building and managing a team is your responsibility.
When asked how he scaled from coding the first version of Dropbox himself to managing an organization with thousands of employees, Drew responds:
“Reading was probably the single most valuable thing that I did.”
Here is the full clip: https://drive.google.com/file/d/12ZAGFtDX8FLUtyFO_AP8UtlCcSA...
Also it is a very general and banal point - obviously reading is a good thing. You don't have to become a CEO to realize that :)
Start Small, Stay Small has some good ideas but is out of date.
X is where I find the most helpful and relevant SaaS tips.
- Validating early ideas: The Mom Test by Rob Fitzpatrick
- Very early sales (not a book, but): https://stripe.com/en-us/guides/atlas/starting-sales
- Interviewing potential and current customers: Deploy Empathy by Michele Hansen
- Marketing ideas: Traction by Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares
- Deeper marketing ideas: Forget the funnel by Claire Suellentrop and Georgiana Laudi