What's the best book or blog you recommend to founders who are looking to scale their startups?
Sharath Kuruganty
37 replies
Replies
Richard Reis@richardreeze
Most Recommended Books
"Hacking Growth" by Sean Ellis.
His hacking growth cycle is still used at our company and helped us get to 50k monthly visitors.
It's one of the many books on our "Best Marketing Books" list: https://mostrecommendedbooks.com...
Share
The World's first MVP marketplace
I think this book https://www.amazon.com/What-You-... must be in the recommended books. Corporate culture is one of the most important things every founder should pay attention to.
Hi Sharath, for me the best two books about scaling are the following:
- Blitzscaling by Reid Hoffman
https://www.amazon.com/Blitzscal...
This book talks about the mindset and strategy that some of the most successful startups have applied to grow and win the market. (Facebook, Airbnb, Uber, etc.) it’s not very practical unless you are on a position to deploy these strategies, but it gets you in the right aggressive mindset and it helps you develop an eye for levers that you can use to scale quickly.
- Traction by Gabriel Weinberg
https://www.amazon.com/Traction-...
This one is about the tactics that Gabriel and his team followed to get traction around Duck-duck Go. This book is super practical because he breaks Down how they approached different acquisition channels and how they assessed their success long term, not only quick wins. Extremely valuable.
Hope that helps!
Lucky Orange
Check out Product-Led Growth by Wes Bush. There's also a Slack community called PLG.
Product Hunt Launch Checklist
1. First Round
https://review.firstround.com/
2. Paul Graham
http://www.paulgraham.com/articl...
3. Tom Tunguz
https://tomtunguz.com/
4. YCombinator
https://blog.ycombinator.com/
5. SaaStr
https://www.saastr.com/
Positioning by Al Ries was my recent favorite, originally written in 1980s and so much is still relevant today
Product Management/Growth
The most accurate portrayal of the startup journey.
The highs and the lows of the journey.
The hard decisions to be made along the way.
If you are going to read one book before starting or if starting up. Read this !!
The hard thing about hard things!
Must have Startup Book for Founders !!
List of all possible growth channels.
Which ones to use and which ones not?
Lots of case studies and examples.
Must have if still figuring out how to grow?
Traction: How Any Startup Can Achieve Explosive Customer Growth by [Gabriel Weinberg, Justin Mares]
Breakcold
Not a book or a blog but I recommend it
Yesterday beta
Elad Gil's blog and his book "High Growth Handbook" primarily for later stage but there's good insights for early stage startups too.
http://blog.eladgil.com/
https://growth.eladgil.com/
I'd recommend Rework from the guys at Basecamp: https://basecamp.com/books/rework
The Science of Scaling by Mark Roberge: https://blog.stage2.capital/scie...
The Growth Handbook by Julian Shapiro.
https://www.julian.com/guide/growth
Reader's Paradise
Books
The Ceo Within by Matt Mochary
Blitzscaling by Reid Hoffman
Zero to One by Peter Theil
Traction by Gabriel Weinberg
Articles
Paul Graham's Essays
First Round Blogs
Hiten Shah's Email Newsletter Product
Elad Gil's High Growth Handbook
Secrets of Sand Hill Road by Scott Kupor (a16z).
https://www.goodreads.com/en/boo...
I'm a first-time founder. The book was not only easy to read, but it was so insightful. It helped me understand venture capital from from a macro and micro level. Definitely recommend it to anyone who's thinking of raising.
ReviewReply
I love First 1000 which gives case studies of successful startups and how they acquired their first 1000 users/customers. Give it a read sometime!
https://www.first1000.co
It's not a book but I highly recommend following Chris Do: https://www.instagram.com/thechr...
I completely agree with you, a very detailed tutorial word counter
"Good to great" - Jim Collins
Profile
There are a lot of great books, but I really enjoyed: "The Customer Comes Second"
I know this might sound weird, but I like old-school books like "Antifragile" by Nassim Nicholas Taleb and "Great by Choice" by Jim Collins. They are not specifically for "startups", but I learned more about building an actual business with these books
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