Best 9 Must Read Entrepreneur Books [Updated 2025]
We have come up with a list of Entrepreneurship Books that should be a must-read for any entrepreneur to achieve valuable insights into the world of entrepreneurial success. Below is the list of books on entrepreneurs –
- The Startup Playbook: Secrets of the Fastest-Growing Startups from Their Founding Entrepreneurs ( Get this book )
- The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses ( Get this book )
- The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere and Join the New Rich ( Get this book )
- The $100 Startup ( Get this book )
- Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think ( Get this book )
- Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future ( Get this book )
- True North ( Get this book )
- Click Millionaires ( Get this book )
- How to Win Friends and Influence People ( Get this book )
Let us discuss the entrepreneur books in detail and their key takeaways and reviews.
#1 – The Startup Playbook
Secrets of the Fastest-Growing Startups from Their Founding Entrepreneurs
by David Kidder (Author), Reid Hoffman (Foreword)
Book Review
They created all startup businesses to strike gold. So, Kidder has decided to turn the arch lights towards them and help them achieve success through his invaluable insights into the industry from the grueling experiences of the world’s most influential entrepreneurs and CEOs, revealing their closely kept secret success formula. Kidder has interviewed 41 founders who have made their businesses household names to discover the key ingredients to enjoy a successful journey in the business world.
Kidder has managed to bring his passion into the writing of this entrepreneur book, propelling the interest of small and big entrepreneurs to succeed in their businesses or industry. Moreover, the book abounds with wisdom, which is sure to benefit each individual in knowing themself, keeping their focus on the big ideas to eventually become a better businessman than the competition ahead and be a monopolist at the end of the day.
This entrepreneur book is written in a casual coffee table manner. However, the book is filled with pearls of wisdom from Steve Case of AOL, Robin Chase of Zipcar, Scott Harrison of Charity: Water, Jay Walker of Priceline, and Sara Blakely of Spanx, inspiring people to stay ahead of their game. The book is a great read for entrepreneurs in the startup phase and top management officials in companies.
#2 – The Lean Startup
How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses
by Eric Ries (Author)
Book Review
There is no shortcut to success and no guarantee that any business will not fail or suffer any losses. However, failures and losses are preventable with the timely invention of good strategies and approaches that will allow you to enjoy a stellar performance in your business. The Lean Startup is the right step in that direction, as the book inundated the idea that companies can enjoy being more capital efficient and leveraging human creativity more effectively.
Inspired by lessons from lean manufacturing, Eric, in his entrepreneur book, relies on “validated learning,” rapid scientific experimentation, and several counter-intuitive practices that shorten product development cycles, measure actual progress without resorting to vanity metrics and learn what customers want. According to Ries, this approach is the ideal shift directions with agility, altering plans inch by inch, minute by minute in a company.
Ries’s advice is crucial for all who aspire to become corporate bigwigs; test your idea before you bet on them. Evaluate your vision and continue to reap benefits before you run into the path of losses.
#3 – The 4-Hour Workweek
Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere and Join the New Rich
by Timothy Ferriss (Author)
Book Review
Our lives, our rut, and we have accepted this fact. However, Timothy Ferriss is sure to jolt you up and ask you to wake up to become a part of the ambitious, organized group that is here to achieve their dreams of escaping the monotony and achieving a luxurious life that you see only in your dreams. The 4-Hour Workweek is a step-by-step blueprint for achieving professional fulfillment even in today’s volatile financial times. Recommended must-read entrepreneur book to get all fired up to go for the action.
#4 – The $100 Startup
Reinvent the Way You Make a Living, Do What You Love, and Create a New Future Hardcover – May 8, 2012
by Chris Guillebeau (Author)
Book Review
Everyone is in love with the idea of achieving that perfect blend of passion and income into their work-life that will reap the profits without shelving on things they currently do. However, the author proposes a very unconventional idea to do the following, which at the onset seems a little weird but once given a thought. It falls into place with the scheme of things.
The author initially wants the reader to start with a small venture, committing little time or money, and wait to take the real plunge when you’re sure it’s successful. Instead, Chris concentrates on the fact that one can use personal passions to the benefit of achieving monetary gains to enjoy greater freedom and fulfillment in life.
This entrepreneur book will rouse the man in you to follow your dream to the hilt. The ideas in the book are a great mix of figuring out and developing your expertise to achieve and sell a product that is in demand and will get you paid. Chris Guillebeau has the knack of enfolding you in his words and making things like starting businesses sound very easy.
#5 – Abundance
The Future Is Better Than You Think
by Peter H. Diamandis (Author), Steven Kotler (Author)
Book Review
You have the world that’s hobnobbing about the idea of protecting the environment. But unfortunately, the storm has reached the corporate world to the extent that companies today feel the pressure to participate in bringing about societal change concerning the environment. Abundance is a book that exactly addresses the problem that plagues our society. The author provides practical solutions to overcoming age-old difficulties of overpopulation, food, water, energy, education, health care, and freedom.
Peter, an innovator, provides a positive note that perhaps abundance for all is within our grasp. All this is possible through the pioneering technology of today’s age, whether artificial intelligence, robotics, digital manufacturing, synthetic biology, or other exponentially growing technologies. According to Peter, this progress will be initiated by inventors, who will eventually become entrepreneurs to see their dream of reaching out to all people.
This book is to be read not with the notion of achieving entrepreneurial advice but with the open mind that every business person has to broaden their horizon regarding the philanthropist work they should indulge in to benefit society.
#6 – Zero to One
Notes Startups, or How to Build the Future
by Peter Thiel
Book Review
magine someone urging you to think beyond the idea of doing business in Silicon Valley. Possible! When Peter Thiel presents a crisply written book with the conviction that there is more to innovation than just restricting ourselves to computers and technology. One can achieve innovation in any industry or area of business. It comes from the most important skill every leader must master: learning to think for yourself.
So the next big thing for you to create as an entrepreneur is not a search engine or a social networking website but ruthlessly competing with your brain to create a unique idea that will make your business unique. Thiel urges budding entrepreneurs to give up on their obsession with market size and look for a small niche market when they start their businesses and try to dominate them.
Businesses flourish because it presents a novelty of service and product that compels the user or customer to use it. The book leads you to learn to ask questions to yourself that will ultimately allow you to find value in unexpected places.
This book is sure to provide aspiring entrepreneurs with the motivation to build a business that is beyond expectations. The transparency with which the counter-intuitive ideas are explained is simply marvelous and makes it compelling for the reader to finish the book by the end. The sheer genius and academic rigor, coupled with the firsthand experience of the executive turned entrepreneur Thiel at the top of the pyramid, make this entrepreneur book an excellent read.
#7 – True North
by Bill George and Peter Sims
Book Review
Businesses require great leaders to run them efficiently. Thus, betting on the idea is just the first phase. As an entrepreneur, you need to learn vital leadership skills to control the other factors employed in your business. True North, in this regard, is a guide to learning to follow the internal compass to successfully overcome the trials and tribulations of life and become an authentic leader.
This entrepreneur book shares the wisdom of 125 top leaders, presenting a concrete and comprehensive program for leadership success, showing how to create your leadership development plan centered on five key areas:
- Knowing your authentic self
- Defining your values and leadership principles
- Understanding your motivations
- Building your support team
- Staying grounded by integrating all aspects of your life
The book is a complex giveaway of tools to become leaders. However, in retrospect, entrepreneurship books provide a platform for readers to figure out how to become a leader.
#8 – Click Millionaires
by Scott Fox
Book Review
Earning millions required a lot of qualities, qualities that would mean a normal human being on a pedestal to be worshipped as a hero or a businessman since he made so much wealth. However, this logic is applied no more because the American Dream is not just about relegating to shining beacons of human characteristics. Still, it applies to anyone sadly following the monotony of the boring work life and dreams of making millions by launching a startup. Today, a successful business is no more dependent on an office; businesses today are run from the home, beach, from any place you are willing to work.
You can redesign your life and career according to your interests and skills. The author uses simple, plain language to explain how to combine automated online marketing, expert positioning, and outsourcing to build a lucrative and ethical Internet business, all while working less and setting your hours. This entrepreneur book makes it easy to choose an online business model and start. Learn how to do the work you were born to do instead of working a job you don’t enjoy to pay your bills.
#9 – How to Win Friends and Influence People
by Dale Carnegie
Book Review
An all-time favorite and best seller to end this list because this entrepreneur book is for everyone, irrespective of their field of interest. The book is an absolute gem and a masterpiece in guiding people through to being great influencers and communicators to succeed in their lives. The book brings out the very best in you by providing the following:
- Three fundamental techniques in handling people
- The six ways to make people like you
- The twelve ways to win people to your way of thinking
- The nine ways to change people without arousing resentment
Carnegie illustrates his points with anecdotes of historical figures, leaders of the business world, and everyday folks making you more sensitive to the people around you.
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