20 Books that prospective Founders should read
Knowledge, also on the subject of founding, can be obtained not only through professional advice, but also independently. But how are you supposed to find your way through a sea of “specialist” literature? Which books can give you the necessary start-up know-how? What better way than to read dozens of books in full – when the relevant knowledge only fills a fraction of them? How do you recognize recipes for success – and protect yourself from risks? In this article we have summarized the most important 20 books on the subject of reasons.
Read our summaries to get a good overview of the book. If you are interested in the topic, you can order it and go deeper.
Bryan Mattimore, 21 Days to a Big Idea !: Creating Breakthrough Business Concepts
With the help of this book, you will learn how to combine the creative and the rational side of your brain in such a way that you generate more ideas faster. It also teaches strategies to build long-term sustainable businesses in less than 21 days. The book is characterized, among other things, by the fact that it makes these processes very easy to implement, especially for teams.
The three most important learnings are:
- Try to think like a child, or to orient yourself to children’s wishes. (What does that mean?)
- Generate ideas within 30 seconds using the “and” technique. (How does it work?)
- Find suitable business ideas with the help of billboarding. (What is billboarding and how does it work?)
Daniel Goleman, Focus: The Hidden Driver of Excellence
This book shows how important attention is to be successful in every area of life and helps to sharpen it.
The three most important learnings are:
- If you’re feeling overwhelmed, let your mind wander for a while. Concentrated focus is exhausting and a break is necessary to concentrate again. A walk without a smartphone works wonders.
- Enough sleep, exercise and a healthy diet are important to focus. But there is nothing better you can do for your motivation and willpower than to work on something you love.
- Thinking about future challenges as early as possible makes it easier to make the future predictable and plan. This takes practice because you have to learn to assess the impact and risk of problems and then prioritize them – but it’s worth it.
Jay Abraham, Getting Everything You Can Out of All You’ve Got: 21 Ways You Can Out-Think, Out-Perform, and Out-Earn the Competition
This book shows you how to beat the competition in 21 different ways by working with the benefits you already have. It helps you identify opportunities and opportunities where others see obstacles.
The three most important learnings are:
- Purchases happen when customers’ doubts and risks are reduced. Reduce the risk of your customers with a “better-than-risk-free guarantee”. Instead of just refunding the money for the purchase, the expenses (time, money) accompanying the purchase should also be reimbursed.
- Build symbiotic relationships with related companies that are not direct competitors. Landscape gardeners and real estate agents are a good example of such relationships.
- Rewards and loyalty programs help to systematize the loyalty of customers and regular customers. Cash payments for purchases, special offers or discounts are easy ways to keep captured market shares.
Ryan Holiday, Growth Hacker Marketing: A Primer on the future of PR, Marketing, and Advertising
This book uses a 4-step framework to convey how modern start-ups overcome the hurdle between marketing and product development in order to use the product itself as a means to attract new customers.
The three most important learnings are:
- Marketing for startups is different today than it was 20 years ago – this is mainly due to the internet. Old tactics no longer work – but the strategies do.
- Design products so that usage by the user automatically attracts new users. Start with a small, specific group of your ideal customers to test your designs quickly and cheaply using experiments. Once you’ve found a working design, figure out how to optimize it further.
- Offer your users strong incentives to recommend your offers. These can be attractive additional benefits or discounts.
John C. Maxwell, How Sucessful People think
This book sets out eleven specific mindsets you can learn to lead better, happier, and more successful lives.
The three most important learnings are:
- Check your calendar at the beginning of your day and find out which of your appointments contain the greatest learning opportunities for you. With this preparation, you are always aware of how your big plans are related to your day.
- You can become more creative by always listing several decision options and only then deciding. Creativity is not a gift, but an ability that can be trained.
- If someone wrote your obituary for tomorrow’s newspaper, what would they say about your contribution to society? Ask yourself this question to focus on solving important problems.
Alistair Croll & Benjamin Yoskovitz, Lean Analytics: Use Data to build a better Start-up faster
Lean Analytics opens the world of data collection and analysis to new entrepreneurs by teaching how you can use data as a powerful tool. You don’t have to focus too much on starting your business faster because you use the right metrics.
The three most important learnings are:
- Be data informed, not data driven. Data always shows an incomplete picture of reality. If you are aware of this, combining the data with your own experience can help you make better decisions.
- All successful startups go through five different phases. First, the (expensive) problems facing customers are understood. Then a solution is sought for which these customers would pay. The solution will be announced. The next step is to ensure that the start-up is profitable. If this is achieved, scaling takes place.
- Determine which metric is important for each level so you don’t get tangled up in a flood of data.
Oren Klaff, Pitch Anything: An Innovative Method for Presenting, Persuading, and Winning the Deal
With this book you can learn to pitch in a completely new way with the help of neuroeconomics and thereby convince other people more easily.
The three most important learnings are:
- Your pitch has to appeal to the audience’s Neanderthal brains. Tell a story to take away the emotional half of your listener’s brain.
- Make yourself a price. Instead of mentally “applying” to the customer, you should also let them qualify.
- Become aware of the difference in status vis-à-vis your conversation partner. A conversation at eye level is ideal – use humor and empathy to overcome status gaps.
Chris Guillebeau, The $100 Startup: Reinvent the Way You Make a Living, Do What You Love, and Create a New Future
This book shows you how to free yourself from the shackles of a nine-to-five job by combining your passion and skills with your own microbusiness that you can start online for $ 100 or less.
The three most important learnings are:
- Passion makes up only a third of success. You also need the skills to solve certain problems and customers willing to pay for them.
- If you want your passion to be more than a hobby, focus on profit and low cost. Especially in the early stages of companies, sales often correlate linearly with the number of potential customers you speak to.
- Plans should be simple because “doing” is more important than planning. Test real-world hypotheses instead of long research.
John C. Maxwell, The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership: Follow Them and People Will Follow You
Through this book, you can learn that leadership can be learned and that you can become a leader if you internalize some of the universal principles that apply to every leader-follower relationship.
The three most important learnings are:
- Make sure that you stay down to earth and stick to your own rules. Do not reveal your values.
- Earn respect by building trust. Trust your co-workers, be authentic, and admit mistakes when they happen.
- You will not learn good leadership in one day. You have to work on it every day. Find out how you can improve and then work on it bit by bit.
Steve Blank und Bob Dorf, The Startup Owner’s Manual: The Step-By-Step Guide for Building a Great Company
The two authors of this book put forward the thesis that start-ups are not small versions of large companies and therefore work fundamentally differently. The goal of a start-up is to find a sustainable business model. This means that a repetitive process has to be used in order to understand the (expensive) problems of customers better and better and thus to approach a suitable product solution piece by piece.
The three most important learnings are:
- You should never think that “you already know what the customer wants”. Instead, you should work closely with customers to test initial hypotheses and understand their problems.
- Instead of quickly developing a prototype from a “good idea”, one should prefer to take a scientific approach: make hypotheses, test them through experiments, learn from the results and start the cycle all over again.
- Traditional business plans are not suitable for startups who are still looking for a business model. Business plans are not based on an iterative approach. The use of the Business Model Canvas is more suitable.
Eric Ries, The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses
Der Autor übertrug die Erkenntnisse der Lean Production auf die Gründerszene und hat so ein Modell entwickelt, mit dem Start-ups ihre Geschäftsmodelle finden können. Damit legte er den Grundstein für eine neue, schlanke Bewegung in der Start-up-Szene und inspirierte damit auch Bob Dorf und Steve Blank (The Startup Owner’s Manual). Das Buch beschreibt die Bauen-Testen-Lernen-Schleife im Detail und zeigt warum es so wichtig ist, schneller als der Wettbewerb zu lernen.
Die drei wichtigsten Learnings sind:
- Benutze einen halb-wissenschaftlichen Ansatz, um Hypothesen und Ideen auf Korrektheit zu überprüfen. Halb-wissenschaftlich heißt hier, dass man sich nicht mit Recherche, Umfragen und Statistiken aufhalten soll, sondern schnell kleine (geldbringende) Experimente in der realen Welt startet.
- Teste Varianten, um Auswirkungen festzustellen. Wer weine App entwickelt, kann zum Beispiel erst an die Hälfte der User ein Design-Update ausrollen und messen, wie sich die Kennzahlen – zum Beispiel Interaktion oder Umsatz – ändern.
- Erkenne Fassadenmetriken und mache einen großen Bogen um sie herum. Wichtige Metriken sind die Metriken, die zeigen ob Du dich deinem Ziel näherst oder deine Rechnungen bezahlen kannst – Umsatz, Kunden, Bestellungen zum Beispiel. Likes auf Instagram oder Seitenaufrufe sind dagegen Fassadenmetriken.
Alexander Osterwalder, Business Model Generation: A Handbook for Visionaries, Game Changers, and Challengers
The author introduces the “Business Model Canvas”, which is used to generate ideas on paper and to visualize roles, processes and dependencies. These ideas can then be tested later on and the business model developed further.
The three most important learnings are:
- The nine elements of a business model are customer types, value (value proposition), marketing channels, customer relationships, sales flows, key resources, key tasks and key partnerships, and the cost structure.
- Innovative companies continuously review their business models. They try to be their own disruptors and attack their core business with their own but outsourced start-ups.
- There are four catalysts that make new business models possible: The decision to utilize an underutilized asset (rent out the downtime of machinery), a new offer to customers (smartphone instead of key phone), a change in customer service (same-day delivery instead of three working days) or an innovation in financing (leasing instead of buying copiers).
Alexander Osterwalder, Value Proposition Design: How to Create Products and Services Customers Want
Active engagement with the desired value proposition for the customer leads to the development of products and services that customers want to buy. The book is more of a collection of templates and exercises than a classic business guide.
The three most important learnings are:
- Successful innovations create value for the customer by helping them to achieve their professional and / or private goals. That is why founders have to understand the problems and goals of their potential customers in order to achieve the product market fit.
- The value of a service is measured in two different ways: on the one hand, the advantages someone gains from using it, and on the other hand, through the disadvantages avoided. Avoiding challenges, stress, or pain is a powerful driver.
- Good value propositions focus on a very narrow range of pain, desires, and solutions. In this way, ideal customers quickly recognize themselves, build trust and take advantage of the offer faster and more intensively.
Verne Harnish, Scaling Up Skalieren auch Sie! Weshalb es einige Unternehmen packen… und warum andere stranden
In his book, the author shows the key elements from which actionable corporate strategies emerge. With clearly understandable metrics and close communication within the company, the business model can be optimized through rapid learning and rapid growth made possible.
The three most important learnings are:
- Top employees work best when the expectations of you and the goals are clear, measurable and achievable. Every employee in the team should know what contribution they are making to the achievement of the common goal and thus be able to identify potential for improvement themselves.
- Corporate strategy should be developed in accordance with the values of the organization. The values and strategy should be felt in the daily operational work that makes up the culture.
- Set big, difficult goals (Big Hairy Audacious Goals, BHAGs) for the company and give yourself 90 days to achieve them. To achieve this, the overall goal must be broken down into departments and employees and remain measurable. The progress is discussed in weekly meetings and the achievement of goals is supported.
Clayton M. Christensen, The Innovator’s Dilemma: The Revolutionary Book That Will Change the Way You Do Business
This book tip within the start-up scene explains how disruption works, why market leaders fail when framework conditions change and how founders can take advantage of this.
The three most important learnings are:
- There are two types of technology: disruptive and sustained technology. Innovation works differently for both types. Disruptive technology changes the rules of the game in industries because problems are solved in a new way or for a new customer group. Maintaining technology is optimized – mostly through new functions or greater capacities.
- The resources, processes and values of a company must match the customers. Market leaders have many resources, but can only change their values and processes very slowly. Start-ups are faster here and can gain market share in niche markets and expand from there.
- Market leaders remain innovative by founding start-ups outside the group and letting them attack their own business areas. The start-ups can find the right values and processes and are provided with the necessary resources by the mother.
Simon Sinek, Find Your Why: A Practical Guide for Discovering Purpose for You and Your Team
This practical guide takes prospective founders by the hand so that they can find out why they are doing what they are doing. This will give you a strong motivation for your daily work and a story to share with the world.
The three most important learnings are:
- In order to find out what your motivation is, you should carefully study the stories from your own past. In conversation with friends, you can quickly find out what patterns there are in the motivation for these actions.
- If your own motivation is clear, you should ask yourself what attitude and actions you are using to achieve your goals. In this way, you can proceed correctly with important decisions and develop privately and professionally in a direction that supports your own motivation.
- If your own motivation is clear, you can share it with others. Good stories have the power to inspire others, to fill conversations with depth and to constantly question your own motivation and sharpen it more and more.
Our Advice at the End
Theoretical knowledge is only half the battle. In the Tech Startup School you will meet professionals, university graduates and students – and one of many business ideas. In 8 weeks, with our support, you will develop a business model that can be financed from this business idea and then start with your own start-up if you want.
In this way, you gain practical experience in a short time, get to know potential co-founders and investors and have already validated your business model.