The Founder Bookshelf
Books founders recommend to each other. Browse by topic or by where you are as you grow, mark what you've read, and add what's next.
13 books on Startups & Entrepreneurship for finding pmf
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Practical startup wisdom distilled from Techstars mentors and founders.
Built from the Techstars accelerator experience, the book collects short, punchy lessons from mentors, founders, and investors. It is organized into themes like idea,...
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A plain-language crash course in valuing your early-stage startup.
This concise pocket guide walks first-time founders through the core concepts behind early-stage startup valuation. It explains how investors think about pre-money and...
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What really happened in the earliest days of famous tech startups.
A collection of candid interviews with founders of companies like Apple, PayPal, Hotmail, Flickr, and Adobe about the chaotic beginnings of their startups. Rather than...
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Find the one metric that matters at each stage of your startup.
Part of the Lean Series, this book gives founders a framework for choosing and tracking the metrics that actually move a startup forward. Croll and Yoskovitz introduce...
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A practical playbook for validating B2B products fast.
Lean B2B adapts lean startup and customer development specifically to the business-to-business context, where buyers and users differ and sales cycles are long....
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A dynamic, fair way to split startup equity among founders.
Slicing Pie introduces a dynamic equity-split model for early-stage startups that have no cash to pay people. Contributions of time, money, and resources are converted...
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The chaotic origin story of PayPal and the people it launched.
The Founders chronicles the turbulent early years of PayPal, drawing on extensive interviews and internal material. It traces how a fractious group including Peter...
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Get out of the building and validate before you scale.
Blank argues that startups fail not from product flaws but from a lack of customers, and proposes Customer Development as a parallel process to product development. He...
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Treat your startup as an experiment, not a leap of faith.
Eric Ries argues that startups are organizations built to find a sustainable business model under extreme uncertainty, not just to execute a plan. He introduces...
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Ask about their life, not your idea, to get honest answers.
Fitzpatrick teaches founders how to interview potential customers without biasing the answers, even when people are inclined to be polite and lie to you. The core idea...
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The exhaustive playbook for finding customers before building the product.
A dense, step-by-step manual that lays out the Customer Development process for taking a startup from idea to scalable business. It walks founders through customer...
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Most startups fail from lack of customers, not lack of product.
Weinberg and Mares lay out nineteen traction channels, from SEO and content marketing to community building and unconventional PR, that startups can use to grow. They...
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Build what customers actually want using the value proposition canvas.
A companion to Business Model Generation that zooms into the value proposition and customer segment blocks of the canvas. It introduces the Value Proposition Canvas,...
eChai Partner Brands
eChai Ventures partners with select brands as their growth partner. Together we explore new ideas, open doors, and build momentum across the startup ecosystem.
