30+ Best Books on Entrepreneurship for Start-Ups

Last updated on September 13th, 2023 at 02:52 pm

Every person dreams of a better life having a business, and generating continual profit from it. Basically, people want to do what they love and generate profit from it. The ultimate goal is to do something that makes you happy and solves a problem which can lead to a great business. For this, we have listed some of the best books on entrepreneurship that young entrepreneurs will love to read and can learn new strategies to implement in their businesses.

Whether you are a new-age entrepreneur or have already started your entrepreneurial journey, you can come across many challenges on your way, which can make you feel like you are losing the game. This is where books can help and guide you on the right path to building a successful business.

Go through this collection of the best books on entrepreneurship and pick the right book that will help you achieve your business goals. We have books on success stories, entrepreneurship principles, lessons on entrepreneurship, life stories of entrepreneurs, and many more. So, every person will find something to read from this post.  (Featured Image Credit – Amazon)

30+ Best books on entrepreneurship for startups and small businesses

  1. Start With Why: The Inspiring Million-Copy Bestseller That Will Help You Find Your Purpose
  2. Doglapan: The Hard Truth about Life and Start-Ups
  3. The Lean Startup: How Constant Innovation Creates Radically Successful Businesses
  4. Trillion Dollar Coach: The Leadership Playbook of Silicon Valley’s Bill Campbell
  5. The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It
  6. The Millionaire Fastlane: Crack the Code to Wealth and Live Rich for a Lifetime
  7. The Unusual Billionaires
  8. Range: How Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World
  9. Elon Musk: How the Billionaire CEO of SpaceX and Tesla is Shaping our Future
  10. Show Your Work!
  11. Big Billion Startup – The Untold Flipkart Story
  12. The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers
  13. Anything You Want: 40 Lessons for a New Kind of Entrepreneur
  14. How to Get Rich: One of the World’s Greatest Entrepreneurs Shares His Secrets
  15. Entrepreneurship Simplified: From Idea to IPO
  16. The Mom Test: How to talk to customers & learn if your business is a good idea when everyone is lying to you
  17. Secrets of the Millionaire Mind: Mastering the Inner Game of Wealth
  18. YOUR NEXT FIVE MOVES
  19. This is Marketing: You Can’t Be Seen Until You Learn To See
  20. 48-Hour Start-Up: From Idea to Launch in 1 Weekend
  21. Winning Middle India: The Story of India’s New-age Entrepreneurs
  22. The Wealthy Way: Don’t Go Broke Trying To Get Rich
  23. THE TAO OF ALIBABA: INSIDE THE CHINESE DIGITAL GIANT THAT IS CHANGING THE WORLD
  24. Modern Leadership Lessons From the World’s Greatest
  25. How Big Things Get Done
  26. The Upstarts: How Uber, Airbnb and the Killer Companies of the New Silicon Valley are Changing the World
  27. Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business
  28. The Best Story Wins: How to Leverage Hollywood Storytelling in Business and Beyond
  29. I CAME UPON A LIGHTHOUSE: A Short Memoir of Life with Ratan Tata
  30. GOOD FAIL: ENTREPRENEURIAL LESSONS FROM THE RISE AND FALL OF MICROWORKZ


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These are the best books on entrepreneurship

1. Start With Why: The Inspiring Million-Copy Bestseller That Will Help You Find Your Purpose

Start With Why
Start With Why

Start With Why is a life-changing book for entrepreneurs and businesses that want to make something worthy. The book highlights that you should ask yourself why before starting anything in your life.

According to the book, most successful leaders in the world think this way and get the answer of why before starting their work. Actually, it is very important to ask yourself why before starting a business so that you will have better clarity and can perform your work efficiently.

2. Doglapan: The Hard Truth about Life and Start-Ups

Doglapan: The Hard Truth about Life and Start-Ups
Doglapan: The Hard Truth about Life and Start-Ups

In the Shark Tank India season one TV show, Mr. Ashneer Grover becomes very popular because of his attitude and bold statements. But eventually, his life turns upside down and becomes a controversy and a topic of social media chatter.

With all this chaos, the real truth of his life went unknown to many. Well, this book Doglapan (the controversial word he used in Shark Tank India TV Show) is a great source to know about his life and how he struggled to make two unicorns – Grofers and BharatPe.

3. The Lean Startup: How Constant Innovation Creates Radically Successful Businesses

The Lean Startup: How Constant Innovation Creates Radically Successful Businesses
The Lean Startup

If you are looking for an ultimate book on entrepreneurship and start-ups to learn how businesses operate, launch new products, etc., The Lean Startup book will meet your requirements.

You can broaden your business vision and understand your customers’ needs once you read this book. So before starting a business or taking a big step in your business, read this book once to learn what strategy most businesses follow to be successful.

4. Trillion Dollar Coach: The Leadership Playbook of Silicon Valley’s Bill Campbell

Trillion Dollar Coach: The Leadership Playbook of Silicon Valley's Bill Campbell
Trillion Dollar Coach

The trillion-dollar coach is a unique book to learn about leadership and how to build businesses. It is about Bill Campbell, who helped to build many companies like Google, Apple, and Intuit, making their market value over trillion dollars.

He was a football player and coach and mentored many leaders like Steve Jobs, Larry Page, and Eric Schmidt. So, you will learn many things about businesses and these great leaders from this book. All the learnings from this book will help you build your own business and make it successful.

5. The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It

The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It
Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It

When starting a business, a person comes across several myths about entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship. Actually, people assume several things and think that it will work that way.

If you are at this stage of your life and can’t figure out what to do next, this book is for you. The book clarifies several entrepreneurship myths and shows a genuine way to run a successful business. So, forget your wrong beliefs about entrepreneurship and learn the fact from this entrepreneurial myth book.

6. The Millionaire Fastlane: Crack the Code to Wealth and Live Rich for a Lifetime

The Millionaire Fastlane: Crack the Code to Wealth and Live Rich for a Lifetime
Crack the Code to Wealth and Live Rich for a Lifetime

As the name suggests, this book teaches how to become wealthy at a young age instead of living poor at a young age and getting wealthy at old age. Also, it says one thing that doesn’t live poor to die rich.

Basically, it is an excellent book for anyone who wants to break the code of wealth and earn money. This book will guide you to become a millionaire faster.

7. The Unusual Billionaires

The Unusual Billionaires
The Unusual Billionaires

The Unusual Billionaires is a great book for learning the business from top companies in India, such as HDFC, Asian Paints, Hindustan Unilever, Axis Bank, Marico, and more. This book includes the business stories of eight companies that delivered a continual return of 10% per year over the last ten years.

In simple words, this book will provide learning from the top businesses in the Indian market. It tells you how to focus on your business and take business decisions that will help you grow your business.

8. Range: How Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World

Range: How Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World
How Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World

Range is an awesome book that discusses how general people can succeed in life by doing what they are doing. In simple words, the book is about how one can be successful in any field.

Actually, most people think that people who specialize in a certain field can only succeed. And generalists can’t do the task the same way specialists do. However, once you read this book, you will see the world differently.

This is a book for you if you want to achieve success in life in the same field you are working in now.

9. Elon Musk: How the Billionaire CEO of SpaceX and Tesla is Shaping our Future

Elon Musk: How the Billionaire CEO of SpaceX and Tesla is Shaping our Future
How the Billionaire CEO of SpaceX and Tesla is Shaping our Future

If you want to know about the life of billionaire CEO Elon Musk, this book can be a great source. The book highlights how Elon Musk built businesses like PayPal, Tesla, SpaceX, and SolarCity. It will provide you with a lot of learnings on business and help you in your business journey.

10. Show Your Work!

Show Your Work!
Show Your Work!

Show Your Work is a book for people who want to live a creative life. The author explains different parts of one person’s life, such as humility, honesty, & humour, and how one can get known by others through his work. The book shows a way to help you create unique things that people want to copy instead of creating something by copying others.

11. Big Billion Startup – The Untold Flipkart Story

Big Billion Startup - The Untold Flipkart Story
Big Billion Startup

Flipkart is one of the most successful startups in India, which has redefined entrepreneurship and the way we shop in India. The e-commerce giant was founded in October 2007 as an online bookstore, and soon it became popular in many categories.

This book will provide you with great learning about entrepreneurship and how to build a business and run it. It includes the story of Flipkart – how the company was started and how the founders sold it. So, this book is for you if you want to understand the Flipkart story and how this internet company was sold.

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

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

If you want to learn how businesses are built and managed, this book is for you. The Hard Thing About Hard Things book includes the experience of entrepreneurs that will provide you with learning and wisdom to manage the toughest problems in your business effectively.

It contains insights into top leaders in different fields of business, which will be helpful for any startup business.

13. Anything You Want: 40 Lessons for a New Kind of Entrepreneur

Best Books on Entrepreneurship
40 Lessons for entrepreneurs

This book has 40 lessons on entrepreneurship and will help you build your own business from scratch. Whether you have a business plan or not, the book will show you a path to make a successful business. The author tells how you can start a business with what you have and make it successful.

14. How to Get Rich: One of the World’s Greatest Entrepreneurs Shares His Secrets

Best Books on Entrepreneurship
How to get rich

How to Get Rich is a book to inspire you on how to start a business from scratch and run it successfully. This book includes the experience of Felix Dennis – how he started his early life and founded a publishing company named Maxim Magazine. So, you will come to know many things about entrepreneurship and business from this book.

15. Entrepreneurship Simplified: From Idea to IPO

Entrepreneurship Simplified: From Idea to IPO
Entrepreneurship Simplified: From Idea to IPO

Normally, people don’t choose the entrepreneurial journey because they don’t have clarity about this path. And for those who choose this path, it is not easier for them. It is exciting and overwhelming at the same time. Many entrepreneurs usually have many questions regarding entrepreneurship before starting their journeys. Even several of their questions remain unanswered.

However, Entrepreneurship Simplified is a great book for entrepreneurs who want to succeed in their journeys. The authors have answered many questions about entrepreneurship and shared their decades of entrepreneurial experience in this book.

This book will help you with idea generation, fund-raising, building your company, working on your vision and values, and taking your business public through an IPO. Therefore, it is an all-around book for anyone who is looking to start his own business from scratch.

16. The Mom Test: How to talk to customers & learn if your business is a good idea when everyone is lying to you

Best Books on Entrepreneurship
Talk to customers with confidence

Do you have a business idea but don’t know if it will work out or not? It is a bad idea to ask anyone about it because the person might not see it the way you saw it or lie to you. It is your responsibility to find out whether the idea is worth it or not.

Once you have started your own business, the first thing you need to do is make your customers happy. You need to know how to talk to customers, understand their needs, and deliver to them what they want. In this entire process, this book will help you out.

The mom test is a book for entrepreneurs who have just started their businesses but don’t know how to take it a step further. It teaches how one can know whether a business idea is good or not and how to talk to customers and make them happy.

17. Secrets of the Millionaire Mind: Mastering the Inner Game of Wealth

Best Books on Entrepreneurship
secrets of millionaire mind

Have you ever wondered how some people get rich quicker and others keep struggling to make money for their entire life? Do you ever find the difference between these two kinds of people? The Secrets of The Millionaire Mind book answers this question.

This book reveals how the mind of a millionaire thinks and shows a money blueprint to help you achieve success naturally. It is a book for people who want to know how millionaires think and grow their wealth.  

18. YOUR NEXT FIVE MOVES

YOUR NEXT FIVE MOVES
YOUR NEXT FIVE MOVES

Beginning a start-up is an exciting experience, but running it effectively and achieving success is not the easiest thing. Sometimes entrepreneurs don’t know what step they need to take next and get stuck in their problems.

According to the author of the book your next five steps, a successful entrepreneur and chess player should always know their next five moves. This book will help you when you don’t understand what to do next in your entrepreneurial journey.

Get this book to know excellent strategies, new skills, powerful insights, and growth tactics and apply them in your business to achieve success. It is one of the best books on entrepreneurship on this list and will help you when you feel like you are lost in your business.

19. This is Marketing: You Can’t Be Seen Until You Learn To See

Best Books on Entrepreneurship
Learn Marketing skills

If you are looking for a book on marketing, advertising, and sales, this book is great for you. This is Marketing book is authored by Seth Godin and Joao Bosco Medeiros. It is one of the bestsellers and is a great source for start-ups, small businesses, corporations, and anyone who wants to learn core marketing skills.

Irrespective of your product or service, this book will help you in marketing. It will help you represent your product to the world in a unique way so that you can connect with people who need that particular product or service. So, get this book to learn new marketing strategies and market your products efficiently.

20. 48-Hour Start-Up: From Idea to Launch in 1 Weekend

48-Hour Start-Up: From Idea to Launch in 1 Weekend
From Idea to Launch in 1 Weekend

The next book on this list is 48-Hour Startup which is basically a book to guide you from idea generation to starting your business in 48 hours. If you have a business idea and want to give it a chance, this book can guide you on that path.

The author shares his experience in building a multi-billion-dollar company that will help you in building your own business. It is suitable for students, young entrepreneurs, and people who have started their businesses and don’t have an idea what to do next.

21. Winning Middle India: The Story of India’s New-age Entrepreneurs

Best Books on Entrepreneurship
Story of India’s New- age entrepreneurs

The next book on this list of the best books on entrepreneurship is Winning Middle India, which discusses the stories of new entrepreneurs and how they do their job. This book focuses on how new-age entrepreneurs in India use smartphones & technology, and digitize their business operations.

If you want to learn how to adopt new technology in your business to grow your business faster, this book will help you.

22. The Wealthy Way: Don’t Go Broke Trying To Get Rich

The Wealthy Way: Don't Go Broke Trying To Get Rich
Don’t Go Broke Trying To Get Rich

Who doesn’t want to build wealth and live a happy life? But this is not easy for everyone. Usually, people think being materialistic is true wealth and follow that path. Even people don’t enjoy their weekends, take care of their health, and give time to their family in the way of being wealthy in a materialistic way.

But this book will help you build true wealth without risking your health, family happiness, and weekends. The book basically tells that don’t waste your best years in some work that you don’t like just to become rich. This book will help you achieve freedom and build true wealth for your lifetime.

23. THE TAO OF ALIBABA: INSIDE THE CHINESE DIGITAL GIANT THAT IS CHANGING THE WORLD

Best Books on Entrepreneurship
The Alibaba Story

Alibaba is one of the top businesses in the world, which was built by Jack Ma. This book has the story of Alibaba, which will provide you with enough learning to grow your business. In this book, you will learn the management principles and the business model of Alibaba.

24. Modern Leadership Lessons From the World’s Greatest

Modern Leadership Lessons From the World's Greatest
Modern Leadership Lessons

Do you want to learn advanced and game-changing business skills from the top leaders of the world? This book will provide you with modern leadership lessons from the eight greatest leaders of the world.

In this book, you will learn eight qualities of a leader and how you can implement them in your leadership journey. Apart from that, you will come to know about various other factors of leadership from the experience of the greatest leaders. If you want to be a successful leader and run your business effectively, this book is perfect for you.

25. How Big Things Get Done

How Big Things Get Done
How Big Things Get Done

How Big Things Get Done is a book that will give you an idea of how big projects get completed successfully. Have you ever worked on a project, product, or business that got failed? Have you ever tried to find out the errors that lead your project to fail? Do you want to know how large companies do big projects successfully, whereas your small projects get failed?

In this book, you will learn the surprising factors that lead a project or business to achieve success. It will help you identify the errors in your project and correct them to make it a success. Also, there are research-based principles in this book that you can follow to achieve success.

26. The Upstarts: How Uber, Airbnb and the Killer Companies of the New Silicon Valley are Changing the World

Best Books on Entrepreneurship
The Success Story of Top companies

On this list of the best books on entrepreneurship, The Upstarts book will give you insights into how former entrepreneurs have started their entrepreneurial journey and how the new age entrepreneurs are taking it forward with the help of technology.

How companies like Uber and Airbnb have changed the way we travel is discussed in this book. Also, the book discusses how new-age entrepreneurs are rewriting traditional rules of business and changing the world. You can consider reading this book if you want to know how businesses work and move forward.

27. Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business

Traction: Get a Grip on Your Business
How to get grip on your business

The best aspect of starting and running a business is having a grip on it. If you don’t have a grip on your business, you are not running your business; your business is running you. In simple words, insufficient growth, personnel conflict, profit woes, late decision-making, and incorrect execution of plans lead a business to fail.

However, you can manage your business properly by looking for solutions to these problems. In this book, you will learn surprising factors to strengthen your business’s key components, which will unlock powerful ways to run your business.

You and your leadership team will get a new vision, focus, and growth potential after reading this book. It will help you run your business efficiently and successfully.

28. The Best Story Wins: How to Leverage Hollywood Storytelling in Business and Beyond

The Best Story Wins: How to Leverage Hollywood Storytelling in Business and Beyond
The skill of story Telling

Do you know that storytelling is one of the great skills for businesses? This is a book to help you learn this skill. The Best Story Wins provides insights into Pixar-style storytelling which is popular among top entrepreneurs, marketers, creatives, CEOs, and advertisers.

In this book, you will learn methods of story-building that will help you improve your storytelling skills and eventually achieve success for your business. You will learn Hollywood-style storytelling strategies so that you can express your story in an impactful way to the audience.

29. I CAME UPON A LIGHTHOUSE: A Short Memoir of Life with Ratan Tata

Best Books on Entrepreneurship
The story of Ratan Tata Ji

I Came Upon a Lighthouse is a book by Shantanu Naidu explaining his experience and story when he met the legend, Ratan Tata Ji. The book discusses how Tata Ji helped the author start his venture, and slowly, he became a friend of his.

So, this book is the story of the bond between Ratan Tata Ji and Shantanu Naidu. You might know many things about Ratan Tata and his professional life. But this book gives insights into his life from a different sight that is not known to the world. If you want to know about Ratan Tata Ji and his lifestyle, this book is a good source.

30. GOOD FAIL: ENTREPRENEURIAL LESSONS FROM THE RISE AND FALL OF MICROWORKZ

Best Books on Entrepreneurship
How to handle failure and work for success

Have you ever heard that failures or mistakes are good as they provide great lessons for life? Whether yes or not, this book is a perfect example of how failures or mistakes can help a person in his life.

The founder of Micorworkz, Richard Keith Latman, authored this book sharing his experience as an entrepreneur and how he used his failures to achieve success. In this book, you will learn 19 practical lessons on entrepreneurship that will help you achieve success in life.

30+ Best books on entrepreneurship for startups and small businesses

Books are a great source of learning for anyone who is ready to learn. So we believe these best books on entrepreneurship will be helpful for you with your problems. You can start with any book that you feel is relevant to your current circumstances.

Many people dream of building a successful business, but only a few get successful in their journey and dare to take risks and responsibility for unplanned situations. As an entrepreneur, you need to be ready for anything that can go wrong throughout your journey.

If you think that anything is missing in your entrepreneurial journey and want to learn it and explore that field, you can read books for that. So, give a path to your dreams by learning from entrepreneurship books authored by the greatest leaders and entrepreneurs.  

Entrepreneurship books for high School students

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