Reading List

The books for what you are building.

Tell us your business model, industry and stage, or how you invest, and get the books worth your time, picked from 30,000 on building and backing companies. Chosen by ratings and what they are about.

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Atomic HabitsJames Clear · 4.31★FreakonomicsSteven D. Levitt · 4.01★The Tipping PointMalcolm Gladwell · 4.01★Rich Dad Poor DadRobert T. Kiyosaki · 4.08★BlinkMalcolm Gladwell · 3.96★Thinking, Fast and SlowDaniel Kahneman · 4.16★The Art of WarSun Tzu · 3.94★
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The best matches for everything you told us, ranked.

  • 1

    80/20 Sales and Marketing

    The Definitive Guide to Working Less and Making More

    Perry Marshall · 2013

    4.191,904 ratings · Goodreads

    Finance and numbersFirst salesMarketing and growth

    About the book

    Stop "Just Getting By" ... Master The 80/20 Principle And Make More Money Without More Work. When you know how to walk into any situation and see the 80/20's, you can solve almost ANY marketing problem. 80/20 can demolish any sales and advertising problem.…

    On AmazonAudible

  • 2

    The Art of Startup Fundraising

    Alejandro Cremades · 2016

    4.02819 ratings · Goodreads

    Finance and numbersCompany buildingRaising money

    About the book

    The Art of Startup Fundraising takes a fresh look at raising money for startups, with a focus on the changing face of startup finance. New regulations are making the old go-to advice less relevant, as startup money is increasingly moving online. These new…

    On AmazonAudible

  • 3

    Undercover User Experience Design

    Learn How to Do Great UX Work with Tiny Budgets, No Time, and Limited Support

    Cennydd Bowles · 2010

    4.02505 ratings · Goodreads

    Finance and numbersFinding product-market fitCompany building

    About the book

    Once you catch the user experience bug, the world changes. Doors open the wrong way, websites don't work, and companies don't seem to care. And while anyone can learn the UX remedies usability testing, personas, prototyping and so on unless your organization…

    On AmazonAudible

  • 4

    Venture Deals

    Be Smarter Than Your Lawyer and Venture Capitalist

    Brad Feld · 2011

    4.1117,486 ratings · Goodreads

    Finance and numbersRaising moneyCompany building

    About the book

    Praise for Venture Deals"My biggest nightmare is taking advantage of an entrepreneur without even realizing it. It happens because VCs are experts in financings and most entrepreneurs are not. Brad and Jason are out to fix that problem with Venture Deals.…

    On AmazonAudibleAuthor's Podcasts

  • 5

    The 1-Page Marketing Plan

    Get New Customers, Make More Money, And Stand out From The Crowd

    Allan Dib · 2016

    4.3211,134 ratings · Goodreads

    Finance and numbersMarketing and growthCompany building

    About the book

    Do Not Read This Book If You Hate Money To build a successful business, you need to stop doing random acts of marketing and start following a reliable plan for rapid business growth. Traditionally, creating a marketing plan has been a difficult and…

    On AmazonAudible

  • 6

    Copywriting Secrets

    Jim Edwards · 2019

    4.311,193 ratings · Goodreads

    Finance and numbersMarketing and growthCompany building

    About the book

    What if you could sell anything to anyone? Nobody is born knowing how to sell. But the truth is, you can learn how to sell more . . . a LOT more . . . when you discover the right words that make people buy. Copywriting is selling. Whether online,…

    On AmazonAudible

  • 7

    How to Master the Art of Selling

    Tom Hopkins · 1981

    4.091,865 ratings · Goodreads

    Finance and numbersFirst salesCompany building

    About the book

    After he learned the world's best sales techniques, Tom Hopkins applied his new skills and earned more than one million dollars in just three years. Now, in this fully updated and revised edition of the million copy seller, Hopkins shows how you can succeed…

    On AmazonAudible

  • 8

    Principles of Managerial Finance, Brief

    Lawrence J. Gitman · 1976

    34 Open Library reading lists

    Finance and numbers

    On AmazonAudibleOpen Library

The books most about finance and numbers.

  • 1

    Clever Girl Finance

    Bola Sokunbi · 2019

    29 Open Library reading lists

    Finance and numbers

    About the book

    "Clever Girl Finance is an intro-level personal finance book for women, written by self-made finance guru Bola Sokunbi. Written in an accessible and entertaining tone, Clever Girl Finance teaches women how to budget, save, invest, and pay off loans. Bola…

    On AmazonAudibleOpen Library

  • 2

    A Practical Guide to Quantitative Finance Interviews

    Xinfeng Zhou · 2008

    4.43201 ratings · Goodreads

    Finance and numbers

    About the book

    This book will prepare you for quantitative finance interviews by helping you zero in on the key concepts that are frequently tested in such interviews. In this book we analyze solutions to more than 200 real interview problems and provide valuable insights…

    On AmazonAudible

  • 3

    On My Own Two Feet

    A Modern Girl's Guide to Personal Finance

    Manisha Thakor · 2007

    3.94771 ratings · Goodreads

    Finance and numbers

    About the book

    Most young women would love to live a carefree lifestyle filled with lunches, Louis Vuitton, and lattes, but what you might not know is that doing so can lead to future financial breakdown.Whether you've been living paycheck-to-paycheck, are trying to save…

    On AmazonAudible

  • 4

    My Life as a Quant

    Reflections on Physics and Finance

    Emanuel Derman · 2004

    3.802,806 ratings · Goodreads

    Finance and numbers

    About the book

    In My Life as a Quant, Emanuel Derman relives his exciting journey as one of the first high-energy particle physicists to migrate to Wall Street. Page by page, Derman details his adventures in this field, analyzing the incompatible personas of traders and…

    On AmazonAudible

  • 5

    The Book on Estimating Rehab Costs

    The Investor's Guide to Defining Your Renovation Plan, Building Your Budget, and Knowing Exactly How Much It All Costs

    J. Scott · 2013

    4.201,003 ratings · Goodreads

    Finance and numbers

    About the book

    Entirely revised and updated! How much does it really cost to flip a house? Learn detailed tips, tricks, and tactics to accurately budget all house flipping projects from expert real estate investor and fix-and-flipper J Scott. Discover the…

    On AmazonAudible

  • 6

    Valuation + DCF Model Download

    Measuring and Managing the Value of Companies

    McKinsey & Company, Inc. · 2000

    4.291,815 ratings · Goodreads

    Finance and numbers

    About the book

    McKinsey & Company's #1 best-selling guide to corporate valuation, now in its sixth edition Valuation is the single best guide of its kind, helping financial professionals worldwide excel at measuring, managing, and maximizing shareholder and company value.…

    On AmazonAudible

Published in the last three years, newest first, for what you told us.

  • 1

    Future Rich Person

    The New Rules for Building Wealth

    Haley Sacks · 2026

    4.08420 ratings · Goodreads

    Finance and numbers

    About the book

    From Zillennial Finance Expert Mrs. Dow Jones comes a groundbreaking, judgment-free personal finance guidebook about how to grow wealth on your own terms.You’re not bad with money. It’s just no one ever taught you how to win a game rigged against…

    On AmazonAudible

  • 2

    Our Dollar, Your Problem

    An Insider's View of Seven Turbulent Decades of Global Finance, and the Road Ahead

    Kenneth Rogoff · 2025

    4.161,111 ratings · Goodreads

    Finance and numbersCompany building

    About the book

    A leading economist explores the global rise of the U.S. dollar and shows why its future stability is far from assured. Our Dollar, Your Problem argues that America’s currency might not have reached today’s lofty pinnacle without a certain amount of good…

    On AmazonAudible

  • 3

    Simple Marketing For Smart People

    The One Question You Need to Win Customers without Gimmicks, Hype, or Hard Selling

    Billy Broas · 2024

    4.35305 ratings · Goodreads

    Marketing and growthFirst salesCompany building

    About the book

    Why do so many smart people struggle with marketing? The answer is smart people love complexity, and complexity brews problems. Does your marketing feel like it has way too many moving parts? If so, Simple Marketing for Smart People is the solution you’ve…

    On AmazonAudible

  • 4

    The Wealth Ladder

    Proven Strategies for Every Step of Your Financial Life

    Nick Maggiulli · 2025

    3.982,715 ratings · Goodreads

    Finance and numbersCompany building

    About the book

    From the author of Just Keep Buying, a groundbreaking new framework for building wealthDo you feel stuck financially? Are you working more, trying to spend less, yet still not seeing results? If so, the issue isn’t your effort, it’s your approach. This is…

    On AmazonAudible

  • 5

    Lean Marketing

    More Leads. More Profit. Less Marketing.

    Allan Dib · 2024

    4.31452 ratings · Goodreads

    Finance and numbersMarketing and growthCompany building

    About the book

    Bigger Results with Less Marketing You keep being told to do more marketing―more complex, more aggressive, and more expensive marketing. Chasing the latest bright, shiny object is exhausting. Increased efforts keep leading to disappointment. The overwhelm…

    On AmazonAudible

  • 6

    The Woke Salaryman Crash Course on Capitalism & Money

    Lessons from the World's Most Expensive City

    The Woke Salaryman · 2024

    3.97607 ratings · Goodreads

    Finance and numbers

    About the book

    Learn the rules of the game of capitalism so you can play to win and build wealth Crash Course on Capitalism and Lessons from the World's Most Expensive City is not your typical personal finance guide. Written by the founders of the top personal finance blog…

    On AmazonAudible

How companies like yours were actually built, from the people who built them.

  • 1

    Heartland

    A Memoir of Working Hard and Being Broke in the Richest Country on Earth

    Sarah Smarsh · 2018

    3.7616,921 ratings · Goodreads

    Founder stories

    About the book

    During Sarah Smarsh’s turbulent childhood in Kansas in the 1980s and 1990s, the forces of cyclical poverty and the country’s changing economic policies solidified her family’s place among the working poor. By telling the story of her life and the lives of the…

    On AmazonAudible

  • 2

    The Jordan Rules

    The Inside Story of One Turbulent Season with Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls

    Sam Smith · 1992

    4.2519,445 ratings · Goodreads

    Founder stories

    About the book

    Sam Smith’s seminal, New York Times bestselling “eye-opener” ( The San Diego Union-Tribune ) on Michael Jordan and the 1990-1991 Chicago Bulls team, perfect for fans of ESPN’s hit documentary series The Last Dance. This is the book that changed the way the…

    On AmazonAudible

  • 3

    Shoe Dog

    A Memoir by the Creator of Nike

    Phil Knight · 2016

    4.45389,310 ratings · Goodreads

    Founder storiesCompany building

    About the book

    In this candid and riveting memoir, for the first time ever, Nike founder and CEO Phil Knight shares the inside story of the company’s early days as an intrepid start-up and its evolution into one of the world’s most iconic, game-changing, and profitable…

    On AmazonAudible

  • 4

    Careless People

    A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism

    Sarah Wynn-Williams · 2025

    4.12150,174 ratings · Goodreads

    Founder storiesCompany building

    About the book

    Sarah Wynn-Williams joined Facebook believing the company could change things for the better. Instead, what she encountered over seven years was so shocking that Meta obtained a legal order to silence her. Now you can read her award-winning story. Candid…

    On AmazonAudible

  • 5

    Sam Walton, Made in America

    My Story

    Sam Walton · 1992

    4.1628,881 ratings · Goodreads

    Founder storiesCompany building

    About the book

    As Sam Walton himself said, this is "...a story about entrepreneurship, and risk, and hard work, and knowing where you want to go and being willing to do what it takes to get there. And it's a story about believing in your idea even when maybe some other…

    On AmazonAudible

  • 6

    Going Infinite

    The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon

    Michael Lewis · 2023

    3.8437,422 ratings · Goodreads

    Founder storiesCompany buildingFinance and numbers

    About the book

    From the #1 best-selling author of The Big Short and Flash Boys, the story of FTX’s spectacular collapse and the enigmatic founder at its center. When Michael Lewis first met him, Sam Bankman-Fried was the world’s youngest billionaire and crypto’s Gatsby.…

    On AmazonAudible

What founders at seed keep coming back to, if you have not read them yet.

  • 1

    Crossing the Chasm

    Marketing and Selling High-Tech Products to Mainstream Customers

    Geoffrey A. Moore · 2002

    4.0332,109 ratings · Goodreads

    Marketing and growthCompany buildingFirst sales

    About the book

    Here is the bestselling guide that created a new game plan for marketing in high-tech industries. Crossing the Chasm has become the bible for bringing cutting-edge products to progressively larger markets. This edition provides new insights into the realities…

    On AmazonAudible

  • 2

    The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing

    Violate Them at Your Own Risk

    Al Ries · 1993

    4.0522,738 ratings · Goodreads

    Marketing and growthCompany building

    About the book

    There are laws of nature, so why shouldn't there be laws of marketing? As Al Ries and Jack Trout, the world-renowned marketing consultants and bestselling authors of Positioning, note, you can build an impressive airplane, but it will never leave the ground if…

    On AmazonAudible

  • 3

    Building A Story Brand

    Donald Miller · 2017

    4.2726,500 ratings · Goodreads

    Marketing and growthCompany building

    About the book

    New York Times bestselling author Donald Miller uses the seven universal elements of powerful stories to teach readers how to dramatically improve how they connect with customers and grow their businesses. Donald Miller’s StoryBrand process is a proven…

    On AmazonAudible

  • 4

    Inspired

    How to Create Tech Products Customers Love

    Marty Cagan · 2008

    4.2226,350 ratings · Goodreads

    Company buildingFinding product-market fit

    About the book

    Learn to design, build, and scale products consumers can't get enough of How do today's most successful tech companies–Amazon, Google, Facebook, Netflix, Tesla–design, develop, and deploy the products that have earned the love of literally billions of…

    On AmazonAudible

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From the record

Written by the people who write the cheques

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Read what the people you are pitching read.

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