17 Must-Read Entrepreneur Books to Inspire You to Start a Successful Business
Starting a business is an uphill battle. No one starts the journey with every piece of the puzzle in place. While the term ‘overnight success’ often appears in the media, no such thing actually exists.
Behind every ‘overnight success’ headline are months – and years – of work. Getting into the mindset of an entrepreneur is the first challenge. Your best source of advice? The stories of the world’s most successful entrepreneurs and the habits that helped them take their start-ups to the big time.
We’re sharing 17 books that every entrepreneur should read to start their journey to success. These books will teach you the lessons you won’t learn in a business class.
1. Overnight or Over Time? By Sina Moeendarbari
Most entrepreneur books can read like textbooks with hundreds of pages and complex concepts. That’s not where you want to start.
Overnight or Over Time? is an introduction to the most influential entrepreneurs of this generation. The 40 chapters clock in at under 250 pages, making it an easy read for your next travel day or night-time reading.
This book takes a concise but comprehensive approach to the lives of the world’s most famous entrepreneurs, giving an educational but entertaining take on how their companies came to be.
It compares the journeys of Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, and Elon Musk with the down-to-earth stories of the multimillionaire entrepreneurs behind Groupon and Venmo.
Moeendarbari tracks the personal and professional lives of these founders, sharing the problems they encountered along the way and the traits that made them the world’s most successful entrepreneurs.
This comprehensive guide will help you find a role model for your business journey.You’ll learn how companies like Netflix, Facebook and Tesla raised their initial capital, found their first customers, and came to dominate their industries.
Overnight or Over Time? is the book we’d give anyone taking the first steps to start a successful business. It’ll give you the inspiration and guiding points for taking the plunge into entrepreneurship.
2. The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz
Ben Horowitz is one of Silicon Valley’s most notorious entrepreneurs and cofounder of Andreessen Horowitz. His book is an entrepreneur’s guide to building a start-up and navigating your way through the problems that no business class can prepare you for.
What makes The Hard Thing About Hard Things unique is Horowitz’s honesty as he shares the humbling experiences of how difficult it is to grow a successful business. You’ll go behind the Silicon Valley curtain to find out how he built a CEO persona, the experience of firing friends, and how to poach competitors.
Horowitz’s book is essential reading for those interested in technology as he shares his experience of developing, managing, and investing in technology companies.
While there are no easy answers to building a business, Horowitz will give you an insider’s perspective into how it’s done.
3. Awaken the Giant Within by Tony Robbins
You need to get into the right mindset before starting your business journey. Some entrepreneurs choose to work with a business coach to get them ready for the challenge of launching a start-up. Not everyone has this luxury.
Awaken the Giant Within teaches lessons from one of the world’s most sought-after business coaches. Robbins has coached Fortune 500 CEOs, athletes, entertainers, and four US presidents while being an investor, partner, or founder in over 100 private businesses.
The goal of this book is to help you take control of your mental, emotional, physical, and financial journey. Learning the lessons of this book will prepare you for the personal challenges that every entrepreneur faces.
Tony Robbins’ goal is to enable you to take immediate action towards your goals in life.
This book has dominated the business coaching industry for over twenty years, starting a trend of the importance of personal values amongst entrepreneurs.
4. The Lean Startup by Eric Ries
Taking a startup from a concept to a successful business isn’t easy. The Lean Startup calls on entrepreneurs to continue to innovate to create ‘radically successful businesses’. Eric Ries’ thesis in this book is that a startup is “an organization dedicated to creating something new under conditions of extreme uncertainty”.
His agreement is that this concept remains true for start-ups built at a kitchen table and those developed by Fortune 500 professionals. Ries takes lessons from lean manufacturing and its ‘validated learning’ to teach companies how to leverage human creativity and shift direction at any moment.
This entrepreneur book is essential reading for those at the concept stage of their business. It proposes a way to test your business vision and learn how to adapt and adjust as you grow.Business doesn’t just happen. It’s scientific according to Eric Ries. Jeffery Immelt, the CEO of General Electric, praised the book as one that he makes all his managers read.
5. Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance
Whatever you think of Elon Musk, he’s this generation’s Steve Jobs. Musk even inspired the film version of the Marvel character, Iron Man. While most people know Musk for Tesla and SpaceX, he was also an innovator behind PayPal. Everyone has something they could learn from Elon Musk, whether from his personal story or his technological empire.
This biography is written by Ashlee Vance, a tech reporter who shadowed Musk for a year to create a personal account of the man on a mission to create a colony on Mars. Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future by Ashlee Vance takes you from Musk’s childhood in South Africa before he came to the United States and made a name with dot-com success.
After being forced out as CEO at PayPal after eBay’s acquisition in 2002, Musk lost his way before his technological obsession took him on a path to SpaceX and Tesla.
He’s a man shaping our future and who looks set to expand his business empire by acquiring Twitter.
Learn what makes a billionaire businessman tick with this personal account of the real-life Tony Stark.
6. Zero to One by Peter Thiel
When Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg recommend a book, you know it’s worth reading. Zero to One is a book that will teach you how to build a valuable company that nobody is building.
It starts by acknowledging that the next Bill Gates isn’t someone who makes another search engine or product that already exists. Instead of copying entrepreneurs like Musk, Zuckerberg, and Jobs, learn from them instead.
Generation-defying entrepreneurs are those who make something new with a breakthrough company. Peter Thiel knows how it’s done. The technology entrepreneur co-founded PayPal with Elon Musk and has gone on to launch and invest in a portfolio of technology companies.
After being forced out as CEO at PayPal after eBay’s acquisition in 2002, Musk lost his way before his technological obsession took him on a path to SpaceX and Tesla.
Whether you’re launching a tech company or creating something industry-defining, this book is essential reading. It’s the pre-launch motivator every entrepreneur should read
7. The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey
Your daily routine defines you as an entrepreneur. Its why people are so fascinated by the habits of business leaders, from their 5 am starts to daily reading habits.
The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People is a New York Times bestseller that has sold over 40 million copies worldwide. It was named the number one most influential business book of the 20th century and re-released for its 30th anniversary.
This book has been a go-to guide for CEOs, presidents, parents, and educators. It’s a step-by-step book on how to live a life of fairness, honesty, and integrity to change the world.
The 7 Habits in Stephen Covey’s best-selling book include:
- Being proactive
- Beginning with the end in mind
- Putting first things first
- Thinking win/win
- Seeking first to understand, then to be understood
- Synergizing
- Sharpening the saw
Set yourself up to become the best version of yourself with Stephen Covey’s 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.
8. The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber
If you tell people you’re starting your own business, you’ll get a lot of unsolicited advice. There are certain myths about starting your business and general assumptions about how it should be run. You don’t want to fall for these.
The E-Myth Revisited walks you through the lifecycle of a business, taking you from its infancy through its growing pains and right up to deciding whether you can franchise your company.
The biggest lesson to learn from The E-Myth Revisited is the difference between working on your business and working in your business.
Once you master this, you’ll know how to grow your business in a sustainable, productive, and predictable way.
9. How to Win Friends & Influence People by Dale Carnegie
Entrepreneurs need friends. Your network is what will make or break your business. How to Win Friends & Influence People by Dale Carnegie is one of the oldest in the genre, originally published in 1936. It’s a classic that almost business leader has read at least once.
Explore the time-tested advice on how to make people like you, how to convince people to think the way you do, and how to change people without causing resentment.
It’s one of the original self-help books and remains a best-seller today with over 80,000 reviews on Amazon.
Learn how to build your team and create a network with the advice business leaders have been relying on for over 80 years.
10. Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson
The chances are that you’re probably reading this on an iPhone. If you’re not, there’s a MacBook, iPad, or Apple Watch somewhere near you.
Few business leaders have left their mark as strongly as Steve Jobs. Walter Isaacson conducted over 40 interviews with Jobs over two years, as well as getting access to those within his inner circle. Isaacson’s biography captures the intense personality of an entrepreneur who revolutionized not one but six industries.
While Isaacson worked with Jobs on the book, there was “nothing off limits”. This Steve Jobs biography is a must-read for every entrepreneur in this technology generation.
You don’t need to be an Apple diehard to appreciate the wisdom of an era-defining entrepreneur.
11. The Millionaire Next Door by Thomas Stanley and William Danko
Have you ever driven through an exclusive zip code and thought “How did they become so rich?”. The Millionaire Next Door is the best-selling book by Thomas Stanley and William Danko that deep dives into the lives of America’s wealthiest individuals.
This book claims to share the surprising secrets of America’s wealthy, from how they got rich to how they invest. These lessons aren’t the ones taught to you in school. Stanley and Danko will set you on the path to prosperity by teaching you how the rich stay rich.
You’ll pick up the habits that will make investing second nature and help you become the millionaire next door.
12. Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman.
Uncover a lifetime’s worth of wisdom with Thinking, Fast and Slow. This best-selling book has sold over 2 million copies worldwide and will help you change the way you make decisions.
It’s been described as a ‘masterpiece’ by the Financial Times as it sets out the two ways that we make choices: either with slow, rational thinking or fast, intuitive thinking. Examining how we make decisions helps us avoid the error and prejudice that can happen even when we think we’re being rational.
Kahneman promotes the idea of slower, smarter thinking that will enable us to make better decisions in every aspect of life.
Take on board the wisdom of this book and you’ll be ready to make the tough decisions that come with laughing a business.
13. Think and Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill
Think and Grow Rich is one of the most influential best-selling books of all time. This book is the product of 25 years of research into how the rich became rich. Hill interviewed over 500 of the most influential individuals of his generation to unlock the secrets of how to become rich.
The book has a simple principle – think like the rich and you’ll become one of them. Hill presents a 13-step formula for achieving your goals, changing your life, and becoming rich.
Look out for updated versions of this best-seller for contemporary examples of those who emulate Hill’s formula, including Steven Spielberg and Bill Gates.
14. Inspired: How to Create Tech Products Customers Love by Marty Cagan
Want to dive into the world of the technology industry? You need to learn the most important lesson. How to make a product that your customers will love. This book examines how companies like Netflix, Tesla, Facebook, and Google have built communities of customers who have engrained the product into their lifestyles.
Inspired looks at the product management behind these success stories. It’ll make you rethink the value you deliver to your customers, whether you’re a start-up or a company at its growth stage. Inspired looks at how you can create technology products loved by your customers through the lens of Apple, Google, and Netflix.
This book deserves a spot on your bookshelf to inspire you to start a successful technology business.
15. Good to Great by Jim Collins
Good to Great looks at why some companies make the leaf, while others don’t. This book is the first in a six-part series by Jim Collins. It uncovers how companies can make the leap from being ‘good’ to being great and what holds other companies back from making the transition.
Are you struggling to read traditional business books? Give ‘Good to Great’ a try. This management book reads more like a fast-paced novel than a textbook for an MBA student. It has almost 5,000 reviews on Amazon and was named the “most influential management book of the new millennium” by the Financial Times.
16. The Start Up of You by Reid Hoffman and Ben Casnocha
Do you ever think of your career as being a start-up in itself? LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman switches the tables around by showing how to apply entrepreneurship strategies to your career. If you’re building your business as a side hustle, The Start Up of You by Reid Hoffman and Ben Casnocha will inspire you to become more innovative, self-reliant, and stand out from the crowd.
Explore the insight of two of Silicone Valley’s leading entrepreneurs to set you up for business success.
17. Atomic Habits by James Clear
If this list of the best entrepreneur books has shown anything, it’s that habits are important to becoming a business leader.
Atomic Habits shows how small changes in your everyday routine can lead to remarkable results. James Clear shows that you don’t have to think big to change your life. Whether it’s waking up five minutes early or getting in 5 extra minutes in the gym, these so-called “atomic habits” will transform who you are.
Clear introduces these atomic habits by looking at the stories of CEOs, scientists, and Olympic gold medalists. It takes a scientific approach without leaving you feeling like you’re reading a textbook.
Every entrepreneur knows the importance of lifelong learning. It’s why you’ll find business leaders constantly continuing their education by reading and learning from others. These 17 entrepreneur books are must-reads for anyone aspiring to run their own business.
