Top recommended books by Bill Aulet, outside of his own:

Zero to IPO
By Frederic Kerrest
An extremely well-done guide to key topics beyond Product-Market Fit presented in an entertaining, accessible, and actionable manner. Great reference book to have around as you go thru the trials and tribulations of first getting your new venture off the ground and then growing it. Best entrepreneurship book of 2022 so far.

That Will Never Work
By Marc Randolph
A great book describing how no matter what you try, your original idea will be flawed and wrong in so many ways—but that is always the case! A detailed review of the book is here on this site. Lots and lots of wisdom here told in a wonderfully entertaining narrative style.

Startup Boards: A Field Guide to Building and Leading an Effective Board of Directors 2nd Edition
By Brad Feld, Matt Blumberg, Mahendra Ramsinghani
Finally a guidebook on how to deal (at all stages) with that delicate topic for entrepreneurs—the board of directors. There has been not enough thoughtful, concise, and actionable literature on how to design, implement and manage boards for entrepreneurs to get the benefits of good boards and avoid the traps. This book changes that.

Crossing the Chasm and Inside the Tornado
By Geoffrey Moore
First one is a classic and the second builds upon it and actually summarizes it better than the original book.

Blue Ocean Strategy
By W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne
Another classic must read.

Fast Forward: Accelerating B2B Sales for Startups
By Martin Giese and Matthias Hilpert
Martin & Matthias’ systematic approach on B2B sales builds so well off the foundations in Disciplined Entrepreneurship but takes it so much further for those who want to be or simply understand B2B sales professionals. Their book is an incredibly practical hands-on approach to improving your new or existing ventures’ ability to drive sales in a profitable and sustainable way.

Lean Startup
By Eric Ries
While really about software, this is really at its essence about how to effectively use experimentation to more efficiently and effectively build a product and/or new venture. Well communicated and easy to understand and if you are interested in more depth, the concepts are more rigorously defined and proven by Professor Stefan Thomke, formerly of MIT Sloan and now Harvard Business School.

Inbound Marketing
By Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah
A bit dated now but shows how to use digital tools to improve marketing and sales effectiveness and efficiency. A bit dated now but the general concept is an incredibly important data driven-approach today and going forward.

David and Goliath
By Malcolm Gladwell
While this is not the most rigorous work either (he is a journalist storyteller), it is worth watching the Ted Talk video. Likewise, for his book Outliers. These are good concepts that people know and reference often – and you will end up doing it too.

Antifragile
By Nassim Nicholas Taleb
While the author can be a bit tough to read at times due to his ego and the book can be repetitive, it is still at least reading the first quarter of the book. Really gets you to understand what entrepreneurial skill set should be about. You can also go out and see shorter talks on youtube.

The Hard Thing About Hard Things
By Ben Horowitz
Gives a good on the ground insight into what entrepreneurial success requires without the clichés and glamor. Very practical but episodic rather than an integrated approach because it is a compilation of a VC’s blog posts.

Predictably Irrational
By Daniel Ariely
This is a great introduction to the world of behavioral economics by a respected academic, but it is at the same time easy to read. This way of thinking is especially important for entrepreneurs to understand.

The Power of Habit
By Charles Duhigg
Building off the theme and importance of behavioral economics, this goes into more important and practical areas of the field. Entrepreneurs very often have to change behavior and this book helps you understand how hard that is and how to do it.

The Founder’s Dilemmas: Anticipating and Avoiding the Pitfalls That Can Sink a Startup
By Noam Wasserman.
A classic.

Venture Deals
By Brad Feld and Jason Mendelson
If you are going to be serious about entrepreneurship.

The Talking to Humans and Testing with Humans
By Giff Constable. Edited by Frank Rimalovski
Both are invaluable reference books to help you get started doing good PMR (primary market research) and then keep sharpening your skills in this critically important area.

Coach Wooden’s Pyramid of Success
By John Wooden and Jay Carty
I realized when I looked at my list, I had left off one of, if not the, most influential books. I have learned so much from basketball that has transferred to entrepreneurship (they are so similar) and nothing summarizes those lessons better than “Coach Wooden’s Pyramid of Success”. It is a book for the ages and gives great advice not just relating to entrepreneurship but also on life. I should have included it as book #1 on my list. What I do not have time for is sports people talking about how to be better at business. I like sports, especially team sports, people explaining how they have learned to excel at their sports and let us, the readers, extrapolate this to our worlds. This is called “lateral learning” and it is one of the most powerful ways to gain insights and knowledge that I know.

Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World
By Adam Grant
This is a book by a University of Pennsylvania Wharton School psychology professor that I found especially helpful for thinking about how to be more creative. I especially like the part about working on a problem up to a point and then stepping away from it and then coming back latter. Don’t agree with everything else in the book but that one insight was worth it weight in gold and helped me become more confident, effective and efficient in creative tasks. Thanks to Scottish entrepreneur Jo Chidley of Beauty Kitchen for reminding me of this.

Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die
By Chip and Dan Heath
Entrepreneurs need to learn how to effectively communicate. To do this they have to be story tellers, utilizing the power of the narrative. This book is the best to help teach specifics of how to do this. Great place to start to learn this skill and a great reference book to go back to.

Trust Me, I’m Lying: Confessions of a Media Manipulator
By Ryan Holiday
This book is authored by the former Marketing Director of American Apparel and exposes how media manipulation works. Like how DE24 creates a structure for entrepreneurship, Ryan Holiday details step by step how fake news travels up the media pyrimad through a live experiment. Viral memes, political rumors, and the likes are so incredibly effective because we think they are organic.We would all benefit from the knowledge in this book to combat today’s disinformation, but especially entrepreneurs, who often need to make agile judgements in response to market info. This book also effectively breaks down media marketing. Plus, it’s an entertaining read, which always helps! (via Jenny Wang).

Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know
By Adam Grant
Even though we’re only two months into 2021, the bar is already incredibly high. From my standpoint, the book to beat is “Think Again” by Adam Grant. I really enjoyed his book “Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World,” which had already been on my recommended book list, but this new title is even better. Adam is a Wharton Professor with a Ph.D. in Psychology; not your traditional path for someone to comment so powerfully on entrepreneurship, but don’t be fooled.

The Biggest Bluff: How I Learned to Pay Attention, Master Myself, and Win
By Maria Konnikova
Maria does a brilliant job of framing this duality and then, incredibly appropriately and fearlessly, ventures into the world of professional poker playing to find out. When I say she jumps in, she jumps in! She does not just observe, she becomes a professional poker player. While the self-reflection can be meandering at times, don’t give up. There are incandescently brilliant parts where Maria comes to grip with this dichotomy and learns how to tame it.