7 Best Business Startup Books For Entrepreneurs To Read In 2024

Guidance and inspiration are two important things in a successful entrepreneur's life. And while mentors and peers in the ecosystem both can provide plenty, there is nothing like exploring wisdom between the pages of a well written book.

When the going gets tough and ideas run dry, read the stories of successful founders who have been there, gone through all of that and done that, fought all the wars similar to which you faced or are going to face at the moment, and have found success.

Best Business Startup Books for Entrepreneurs:

1. Zero to One

Authors: Peter Thiel and Blake Masters

Available on: Amazon

Rating: 4.5/5 (9524 global ratings)

• The next Bill Gates will not build an operating system. The next Larry Page or Sergey Brin won’t make a search engine. If you are copying these guys, you aren’t learning from them.
• It’s easier to copy a model than to make something new: doing what we already know how to do takes the world from 1 to n, adding more of something familiar.
• Every new creation goes from 0 to 1. This book is about how to get there.

2. The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers

Author: Ben Horowitz

Available on: Amazon

Rating: 4.6/5 (3616 global ratings)

• Ben Horowitz, cofounder of Andreessen Horowitz and one of Silicon Valley's most respected and experienced entrepreneurs, offers essential advice on building and running a startup—practical wisdom for managing the toughest problems business school doesn’t cover, based on his popular ben’s blog.
• While many people talk about how great it is to start a business, very few are honest about how difficult it is to run one. Ben Horowitz analyzes the problems that confront leaders every day, sharing the insights he’s gained developing, managing, selling, buying, investing in, and supervising technology companies.
• Filled with his trademark humor and straight talk, The Hard Thing About Hard Things is invaluable for veteran entrepreneurs as well as those aspiring to their own new ventures, drawing from Horowitz's personal and often humbling experiences.

3. Founders at Work

Author: Jessica Livingston

Available on: Amazon

Rating: 4.4/5

• Founders at Work: Stories of Startups' Early Days is a collection of interviews with founders of famous technology companies about what happened in the very earliest days. These people are celebrities now. 
• What was it like when they were just a couple friends with an idea? Founders like Steve Wozniak (Apple), Caterina Fake (Flickr), Mitch Kapor (Lotus), Max Levchin (PayPal), and Sabeer Bhatia (Hotmail) tell you in their own words about their surprising and often very funny discoveries as they learned how to build a company.
• But ultimately these interviews are required reading for anyone who wants to understand business, because startups are business reduced to its essence.

4. The Lean Startup

Author: Eric Ries

Available on: Amazon

Rating: 4.6/5

• Most startups fail. But many of those failures are preventable. The Lean Startup is a new approach being adopted across the globe, changing the way companies are built and new products are launched.
• Eric Ries defines a startup as an organization dedicated to creating something new under conditions of extreme uncertainty.
• Rather than wasting time creating elaborate business plans, The Lean Startup offers entrepreneurs in companies of all sizes, a way to test their vision continuously, to adapt and adjust before it’s too late.

5. The $100 Startup

Author: Chris Guillebeau

Available on: Amazon

Rating: 4.2/5

• The $100 Startup: Chris identified 1,500 individuals who have built businesses earning $50,000 or more from a modest investment (in many cases, $100 or less), and focused on the 50 most intriguing case studies.
• In nearly all cases, people with no special skills discovered aspects of their personal passions that could be monetized, and were able to restructure their lives in ways that gave them greater freedom and fulfillment.
• Here, finally, distilled into one easy-to-use guide, are the most valuable lessons from those who’ve learned how to turn what they do into a gateway to self-fulfillment. It’s all about finding the intersection between your “expertise” even if you don’t consider it such, and what other people will pay for.

6. Never Too Late to Startup

Author: Rob Kornblum

Available on: Amazon

Rating: 4.5/5

• Start Your New Company, Get the Freedom You Have Always Dreamed Of.
• What if you could break free of the corporate rat race? How would your life be different if you owned your own business? Entrepreneurship is the ultimate mid-life career change.
• Startup founder and former venture capitalist Rob Kornblum shows how starting a company in mid-life is not only achievable, but more likely to succeed. Through dozens of interviews with mid-life founders.

7. Start with Why

Author: Simon Sinek

Available on: Amazon

Rating: 4.6/5

• Discover the book that is captivating millions on TikTok and that served as the basis for one of the most popular TED Talks of all time, with more than 56 million views and counting.
• Over a decade ago, Simon Sinek started a movement that inspired millions to demand purpose at work, to ask what was the WHY of their organization. Since then, millions have been touched by the power of his ideas, and these ideas remain as relevant and timely as ever.
• People like Martin Luther King Jr., Steve Jobs, and the Wright Brothers had little in common, but they all started with WHY. They realized that people won't truly buy into a product, service, movement, or idea until they understand the WHY behind it.