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By Farid, founder of StoryShots ·
I run a company, so this list is biased toward books that changed a decision rather than books that sounded smart. Ten of them, ranked, with the stage of the business each one is for. Every one has a free 5-minute summary on StoryShots.
If you only read one: The Lean Startup. Read it before you build anything.
Build the smallest thing that tests your riskiest assumption, measure whether the assumption held, then decide whether to persevere or pivot. The vocabulary has been abused into meaninglessness, but the method is still the cheapest way to find out you're wrong. Read it before you spend money.
Full book: roughly 8.5 hours. Summary: 5 minutes, free
The opposite argument: don't iterate toward a slightly better version of what exists, find the thing nobody is doing and own it. Contrarian by design and wrong in places, but it's the book that makes you ask whether your idea is a real business or a feature.
Full book: roughly 5 hours. Summary: 5 minutes, free
How to build an offer so good the price stops being the objection, with Hormozi's value equation doing most of the work. It's brash and it repeats itself. For anyone who sells anything, it's also the most directly usable book on this list.
Full book: roughly 4 hours. Summary: 5 minutes, free
What it's actually like to run a company when it's going badly: layoffs, firing friends, the CEO's own psychology. No frameworks, just a founder telling the truth. Read it before you need it.
Full book: roughly 8 hours. Summary: 5 minutes, free
A short, opinionated book that argues with most of what the startup industry tells you: don't raise money, don't plan far ahead, don't hire until it hurts, ship. The best book for a bootstrapped founder and a useful irritant for everyone else.
Full book: roughly 2.5 hours. Summary: 5 minutes, free
The Nike memoir, and the most honest account of how close a now-enormous company came to dying, repeatedly, for a decade. You won't find a playbook in it. Read it for the reminder that survival is most of the game.
Full book: roughly 13 hours. Summary: 5 minutes, free
Most strategy is goals dressed up as plans. Real strategy is a diagnosis, a guiding policy, and coherent action. Rumelt is merciless about the difference, and once you've read it you'll spot bad strategy in every deck you see.
Full book: roughly 9.5 hours. Summary: 5 minutes, free
An operating system for a company past the founder-does-everything stage: quarterly rocks, weekly scorecards, an accountability chart. Unglamorous and effective. For the moment you realize the problem is no longer the product, it's the company.
Full book: roughly 7 hours. Summary: 5 minutes, free
The iPod and Nest designer on building products, teams and a career, in that order. Long and occasionally self-satisfied, but the sections on managing and on when to leave a job are the best on the subject.
Full book: roughly 11 hours. Summary: 5 minutes, free
The sequel: once the offer works, how to get people to see it. Warm outreach, cold outreach, content, paid ads, in that order of difficulty. Same style as Offers. Read Offers first.
Full book: roughly 6 hours. Summary: 5 minutes, free
Idea stage: The Lean Startup, then Zero to One to check the idea is worth building. First sales: $100M Offers. Bootstrapping: Rework. Things going wrong: The Hard Thing About Hard Things. Growing past ten people: Traction. Need to feel less alone: Shoe Dog.
The Lean Startup. It teaches you to test before you build, which is the mistake most first companies make.
By influence on how people actually run companies: The Lean Startup, Good Strategy/Bad Strategy, and The Hard Thing About Hard Things. Zero to One is the one people argue about most.
If you sell anything, yes. It's four hours and one idea, and the idea works. Read it with the volume turned down.
Related lists: The 10 Best Leadership Books, The 10 Best Biographies and Memoirs, The 10 Best Finance Books
