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.
21 books for fundraising
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The wildest corporate takeover battle of the 1980s, told in full.
Barbarians at the Gate is a detailed account of the 1988 leveraged buyout of RJR Nabisco, the largest of its era. It follows the egos, bankers, and executives who...
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Hard-won advice on building products, teams, and a career worth having.
Build is part memoir, part mentorship manual from one of the people behind the iPod, iPhone, and Nest. Fadell shares blunt advice on careers, product design, startups,...
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A profane, insider tell-all of building, selling, and surviving Silicon Valley.
A first-person account of the author's path from Goldman Sachs to founding the adtech startup AdGrok, raising money through Y Combinator, selling to Twitter, and then...
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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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Read your own financials and understand what the numbers really mean.
A practical guide that teaches entrepreneurs how to read and use the three core financial statements: income statement, balance sheet, and cash flow. It demystifies...
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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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Build the relationships and the deck that get you funded.
Get Backed is a hands-on handbook for raising money, built around the pitch deck and the relationships behind it. The authors share real decks that raised millions, a...
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Six universal principles quietly drive people to say yes.
Cialdini distills years of research into six principles of persuasion: reciprocity, commitment and consistency, social proof, liking, authority, and scarcity. He shows...
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A two-sided guide to playing the venture game and winning.
Jeffrey Bussgang draws on his experience as both founder and VC, plus interviews with entrepreneurs like Jack Dorsey and Reid Hoffman, to explain how the venture game...
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Win the deal by controlling the frame, not just the facts.
Klaff presents his STRONG method for pitching, built on the idea that every interaction is a collision of psychological frames and the stronger frame wins. He draws on...
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How values and culture scaled Starbucks one cup at a time.
Howard Schultz tells the story of how he transformed Starbucks from a small Seattle bean roaster into a worldwide brand built on the Italian espresso bar experience....
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A toolkit for how VCs value, structure, and fund a company.
Berkery lays out the mechanics of how venture capitalists finance companies: what they look for in a business plan, how they value an early-stage venture, and how they...
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A century-old trader's tale on greed, fear, and timing.
Told as the memoir of speculator Larry Livingston, the book traces a trader's rise, ruin, and recovery across early twentieth century markets. It captures the...
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An insider's field guide to how venture capital really works.
Scott Kupor of Andreessen Horowitz pulls back the curtain on how venture capital firms raise money, choose startups, and structure deals. He walks founders through...
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The craft of designing slides that actually communicate.
Duarte presents a practical methodology for designing presentation slides, covering everything from data visualization and typography to building a coherent visual...
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People don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it.
Sinek introduces the Golden Circle (why, how, what) to explain why some leaders and companies inspire while others merely transact. He argues that starting with a...
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A clause-by-clause walkthrough of a real VC term sheet.
This short, practical guide breaks down a venture capital term sheet section by section, explaining what each clause means and what can be negotiated. It includes an...
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A modern, step-by-step playbook for raising startup capital.
Cremades offers a practical guide to startup fundraising in the post-JOBS Act era, covering everything from crafting a pitch and building a deck to identifying...
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Inside secrets on venture capital from the people who run it.
Romans compiles advice and insider perspectives from leading venture capitalists, angel investors, and entrepreneurs on how startup funding really works. The book...
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Decode the term sheet so you can negotiate as an equal.
Two experienced venture capitalists walk founders through exactly how a venture deal works, from term sheets and valuations to the economics and control provisions...
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Everything is negotiable if you know how power and time work.
Cohen argues that negotiation is a pervasive part of daily life and that almost everything is negotiable. He frames every negotiation around three variables: power,...
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