Reading List
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.
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★The best matches for everything you told us, ranked.

Go Pro - 7 Steps to Becoming a Network Marketing Professional
Eric Worre · 2013
4.258,886 ratings · Goodreads
Marketing and growthCompany building
Over twenty years ago at a company convention, Eric Worre had an aha moment that changed his life forever. At that event he made the decision to Go Pro and become a Network Marketing expert. Since that time, he has focused on developing the skills to do just…
Strategic marketing for educational institutions
Philip Kotler · 1985
81 Open Library reading lists
Marketing and growth
Here is the handbook for academics and practitioners who want to understand what marketing is, how it can contribute to their institutions' greater effectiveness, and how to do it. This revised edition, like its predecessor, provides a solid background in…

Go for No! for Network Marketing
Richard Fenton · 2017
4.44312 ratings · Goodreads
Marketing and growthCompany buildingFirst sales
The perfect companion book for anyone in direct sales or network marketingFenton and Waltz, authors of the best-selling book, Go for No! and Ray Higdon, founder of one of the fastest growing network marketing training companies today, have teamed up to create…

Selling the Invisible
A Field Guide to Modern Marketing
Harry Beckwith · 1997
3.9410,059 ratings · Goodreads
Marketing and growthFirst salesCompany building
You can't touch, hear, or see your company's most important products... So how do you sell, develop, make them grow? That's the problem with services. This "phenomenal" book, as one reviewer called it, answers that question with insights on how markets work…

80/20 Sales and Marketing
The Definitive Guide to Working Less and Making More
Perry Marshall · 2013
4.191,904 ratings · Goodreads
Marketing and growthFirst salesCompany building
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.…

The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing
Violate Them at Your Own Risk
Al Ries · 1993
4.0522,738 ratings · Goodreads
Marketing and growthCompany building
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…

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
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…

Book Marketing is Dead
Book Promotion Secrets You MUST Know BEFORE You Publish Your Book
Derek Murphy · 2013
3.95422 ratings · Goodreads
Marketing and growthCompany buildingFirst sales
Librarian Note: Alternate Cover Edition for B00HC6HQ70. How to sell a ton of books (even if you're starting with no platform).If you've found this book I'm assuming you have or will soon have a bookout on the market, and are exploring ways to turn it into…
The books most about marketing and growth.

Permission Marketing
Turning Strangers into Friends and Friends into Customers
Seth Godin · 2014
3.9114,851 ratings · Goodreads
Marketing and growth
The man Business Week calls "the ultimate entrepreneur for the Information Age" explains "Permission Marketing", the groundbreaking concept that enables marketers to shape their message so that consumers will willingly accept it. Whether it is the TV…

Basic marketing research
Naresh K. Malhotra, Naresh Malhotra · 2001
29 Open Library reading lists
Marketing and growth

Guerilla Marketing.
Jay Conrad Levinson · 1984
3.926,641 ratings · Goodreads
Marketing and growth
When Guerrilla Marketing was first published in 1983, Jay Levinson revolutionized marketing strategies for the small-business owner with his take-no-prisoners approach to finding clients. Based on hundreds of solid ideas that really work, Levinson’s…

The Art of SEO
Mastering Search Engine Optimization
Eric Enge · 2009
4.09927 ratings · Goodreads
Marketing and growth
Four acknowledged experts in search engine optimization share guidelines and innovative techniques that will help you plan and execute a comprehensive SEO strategy. This second edition brings you up to date on recent changes in search engine behavior, such as…

Tested Advertising Methods
John Caples · 1980
4.231,208 ratings · Goodreads
Marketing and growth
A legend in advertising for more than 60 years, John Caples still serves as a guide to generations of creative marketing people. Now his classic work on how to create successful advertising has been updated by respected advertising consultant Fred Hahn. It…

Basic Marketing Case Book
E. Jerome McCarthy, Stanley J. Shapiro · 1960
30 Open Library reading lists
Marketing and growth
Published in the last three years, newest first, for what you told us.

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
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…

Personal Branding for Introverts
Goldie Chan · 2025
4.41211 ratings · Goodreads
Marketing and growthCompany building
A top expert in personal branding shows introverts how to leverage their unique strengths to get ahead To build a career, you need a personal brand to showcase your distinct skills, experience, and expertise. Building that brand can feel…

Lean Marketing
More Leads. More Profit. Less Marketing.
Allan Dib · 2024
4.31452 ratings · Goodreads
Marketing and growthCompany building
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…

Brand It Like Serhant
Stand Out From the Crowd, Build Your Following, and Earn More Money
Ryan Serhant · 2024
3.95275 ratings · Goodreads
Marketing and growthCompany building
Bestselling author and real estate, television, and media icon Ryan Serhant shares his proven, three-step strategy to build your brand from scratch Brand is everything. Whether you’re a real estate broker, a hair stylist, or a freelance contractor, your end…

Little Bosses Everywhere
How the Pyramid Scheme Shaped America
Bridget Read · 2025
3.965,793 ratings · Goodreads
Marketing and growthCompany building
A groundbreaking work of history and reportage that unveils the stranger-than-fiction world of multilevel marketing, from the shadowy cabals at the top to the strivers at the bottom, whose deferred dreams churn a massive money-making scam that has remade…

The First-Time Manager
Sales
Mike Weinberg · 2023
4.43282 ratings · Goodreads
First salesCompany building
The First Time Manager Series has sold over 500,000 copies and is a go-to guide for new and aspiring sales managers on what to expect and how to succeed. The jump from sales superstar to sales manager has made or broken many a sales career. As a…
How companies like yours were actually built, from the people who built them.

Sam Walton
Made in America
Sam Walton · 1992
4.1527,178 ratings · Goodreads
Founder storiesCompany building
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…
Shoe Dog
A Memoir by the Creator of Nike
Phil Knight · 2016
4.45389,310 ratings · Goodreads
Founder storiesCompany building
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…

Personal History
A Memoir
Katharine Graham · 1997
4.0925,181 ratings · Goodreads
Founder stories
Madrid. 22 cm. 557 p. Encuadernación en tapa blanda de editorial ilustrada. Graham, Katharine 1917-2001. Traducción de María Luisa Rodríguez Tapia y José Manuel Calvo Roy. Título Personal history .. Este libro es de segunda mano y tiene o puede tener marcas…

Bitter Brew
The Rise and Fall of Anheuser-Busch and America's Kings of Beer
William Knoedelseder · 2012
4.056,011 ratings · Goodreads
Founder storiesCompany building
“Bitter Brew deftly chronicles the contentious succession of kings in a uniquely American dynasty. You’ll never crack open a six again without thinking of this book.”, John Sayles, Director of Eight Men Out and author of A Moment in the Sun The creators of…
Elon Musk
Tesla, SpaceX, and the Quest for a Fantastic Future
Ashlee Vance · 2015
4.12456,221 ratings · Goodreads
Founder storiesCompany building
Elon Musk, the entrepreneur and innovator behind SpaceX, Tesla, and SolarCity, sold one of his internet companies, PayPal, for $1.5 billion. Ashlee Vance captures the full spectacle and arc of the genius's life and work, from his tumultuous upbringing in…
The Power Broker
Robert Moses and the Fall of New York
Robert A. Caro · 1974
4.5329,550 ratings · Goodreads
Founder stories
PULITZER PRIZE WINNER • A modern American classic, this huge and galvanizing biography of Robert Moses reveals not only the saga of one man’s incredible accumulation of power but the story of his shaping (and mis-shaping) of twentieth-century New York. One of…
What founders at seed keep coming back to, if you have not read them yet.

Inspired
How to Create Tech Products Customers Love
Marty Cagan · 2008
4.2226,350 ratings · Goodreads
Company buildingFinding product-market fit
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…

Building A Story Brand
Donald Miller · 2017
4.2726,500 ratings · Goodreads
Marketing and growthCompany building
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…

Empire of Pain
The Secret History of the Sackler Dynasty
Patrick Radden Keefe · 2021
4.53151,147 ratings · Goodreads
Company building
The highly anticipated portrait of three generations of the Sackler family, by the prize-winning, bestselling author of Say Nothing .The Sackler name adorns the walls of many storied Harvard, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Oxford, the Louvre. They are one of…

The Psychology of Money
Timeless Lessons on Wealth, Greed, and Happiness
Morgan Housel · 2020
4.27363,975 ratings · Goodreads
Company building
Alternate cover edition of ISBN 9780857197689. Doing well with money isn’t necessarily about what you know. It’s about how you behave. And behavior is hard to teach, even to really smart people. Money―investing, personal finance, and business…
As an Amazon Associate we earn from qualifying purchases. Which books we recommend never depends on it: they are chosen from their ratings and what they are about.
From the record
Books by investors and founders we hold records for. The author links to what they have done, not just what they wrote.
Every investor and founder on our records links to their books and the podcasts they are on.