Starting a successful tech startup is ridiculously hard and there’s a very low chance of success.
The media tends to glamorize the unicorn companies out there, like AirBnB, Uber, and Snapchat, but the reality is that those are few and far in-between.
There are two major ways that you can improve the chances that you’ll succeed, and not become another failure statistic.
- Learn as much as you can about your customers and keep iterating on your product.
- Learn from the successes and failures of other entrepreneurs.
I can help give you some direction when it comes to point #2. Here are a few books from tech startup founders that you absolutely must read to get an idea of how these different companies were founded.
The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses
This is the number one book that you need to read if you want to launch a successful technology venture.
Eric Ries is the cofounder of IMVU, a wildly successful virtual reality app. He has also experienced failures as an entrepreneur.
This book is the repeatable framework that he used to make IMVU a success. It challenges a lot of commonly hold assumptions in the traditional startup community and gives you a step-by-step blueprint that you can follow when building your company.
Personally, this book helped me leap forward as an entrepreneur. It helped me make 10x smarter business decisions and is directly responsible for my success today.
Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future
Some of you who have been following this blog might know that I’ve written a review about this book in the past.
This book is somewhat contentious. That’s expected. Peter Thiel is often labeled as a contrarian. Here’s a quote that will give an ideas as to why.
“It’s must better to be the last mover- that is, to make the last great development in a specific market and enjoy years or even decades of monopoly profits.”
We’ve all been taught that monopolies are bad for an economy, but Thiel goes so far as to put it in writing that your goal as an entrepreneur should be to build a monopoly.
You’ll come away thinking differently about entrepreneurship after reading through this book.
The Innovator’s Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail
Written by Clayton Christensen, The Innovator’s Dilemma is famous in tech startup circles, and with good reason.
There are SO many examples of large firms and industries being disrupted by startups.
Naturally, it’s in the interest of big companies to figure out why and how to keep some of that innovation within their own company (so they don’t have to buy or compete with the growing startups).
This book shows exactly how new technologies are adopted and how you, as an entrepreneur, can take advantage of the sluggish and dogmatic thinking of bigger companies.
“His work is cited by the world’s best-known thought leaders, from Steve Jobs to Malcolm Gladwell.”
Elon Musk: Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future
The best source of information for how to launch a successful tech startup is to read the backgrounds of proven entrepreneurs who have persevered, dealt with a myriad of challenges, and left great legacies.
I think that great innovators have a different operating system than the rest of us. They think and behave differently. They might be running Windows XP while we’re still on 95, or they’re using an iPhone and we’re stuck seeing the world in the frame of a PC operating system.
This biography of Elon Musk gave me a lot of insight into how he thinks and I had many takeaways that I can apply to my own business life. You can see my review here.
Aside from the Elon Musk biography, written by Ashlee Vance, I would also read the Steve Jobs biography and some of the biographies of older entrepreneurs, like Rockefeller and Carnegie.
Rework
This book, written by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson, the founders of 37Signals, is an awesome guide to building a successful tech company by two entrepreneurs who have done it!
I like how 37Signals is more of a lifestyle tech company and didn’t buy into the dream that you have to get VC funding and scale big if you’re doing a tech startup.
Rework has a bunch of hard-won lessons, strategies, tips, and unique ways to approach the entrepreneurial journey. I particularly liked the team’s thoughts on productivity.
More than anything else, I think this book encourages readers to actually stop reading it, put it down, and get to work.
The Art of the Start 2.0: The Time-Tested, Battle-Hardened Guide for Anyone Starting Anything
Finally, no list would be complete without Guy Kawasaki’s book, The Art of the Start 2.0. I’d also check out his original, The Art of the Start.
Guy combines his experience working for Steve Jobs along with his years as a VC to deliver actionable tips, insights, and the right mental framework that you need to adopt if you want to succeed in your entrepreneurial endeavors.
He has also started three companies and shares lessons that you can learn from.
I’ve learned a tremendous amount just from watching youtube talks that feature Guy Kawasaki. He’s systemized his knowledge very well.