A Startup Founder’s Reading Plan

Several years ago I made this startup reading plan for The CEO Library’s newsletter.

The setup was that every month you need to read a book (or two, if you have the time) and by the end of the year you would have a general idea of what starting a startup means.

Here are the books, along with the links to the reviews I wrote for all of them. I recommend one main book and a secondary one, in case you read it already or you’re a faster reader.

1. The Hard Thing about Hard Things by Ben Horowitz (secondary: Hackers and Painters by Paul Graham)
2. The Lean Startup by Eric Ries (secondary: Start Small, Stay Small: A Developer’s Guide to Launching a Startup by Rob Walling)
3. Joel Spolsky’s Concise Guide to Finding the Best Technical Talent (sec: Remote, Office Not Required, by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson)
4. Pitch Anything by Oren Klaff (sec: Once You’re Lucky, Twice You’re Good, by Sarah Lacy)
5. Chaos Monkeys: Inside the Silicon Valley Money Machine by Antonio Garcia Martinez (sec: Smartcuts: How Hackers, Innovators, and Icons Accelerate Success by Shane Snow)
6. CA$HVERTISING: How to Use More than 100 Secrets of Ad-Agency Psychology to Make Big Money Selling Anything to Anyone by Drew Eric Whitman (sec: Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap…And Others Don’t, by Jim Collins)
7. Lost and Founder: A Painfully Honest Field Guide to the Startup World, by Rand Fishkin (sec: Business Stripped Bare, by Richard Branson)
8. Startup Boards: Getting the Most Out of Your Board of Directors by Brad Feld and Mahendra Ramsinghani (sec: Shoe Dog, a Memoir by the Creator of Nike, by Phil Knight)