4 Best Books for Startups

They say you’re the average of the five people that you spend the most time with.

Launching a startup, either a tech startup or another kind of startup, can be incredibly challenging. Not for the faint of heart!

One of the best ways to stack the odds of startup success in your favor: surrounding yourself with some of the most brilliant authors of our generation.

Along those lines, here are the four of the best books for tech startup founders to read:

Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance (Angela Duckworth)

Owning a small business is like riding a roller coaster. Grit helps you understand the power of passion and perseverance in a handful of contexts that cut across demographics. Regardless of whether you're a sports fan, athlete, musician, teacher, student, or member of the military, you'll find fascinating anecdotes and advice to help you build up one of the most important muscles for small business ownership: grit.

Purple Cow (Seth Godin)

So many small businesses fail to get traction or the pricing power they need because their products or services look just like everyone else. But what if your grocery store, restaurant, or consulting firm was truly differentiated? Like a purple cow?

The Lean Startup (Eric Ries)

Too many startups go way too long without getting meaningful feedback on new products or services. But what if you could get exactly the kind of interim feedback that would dramatically improve your startup's chances for success. Learn how to get better and faster at building, learning, and measuring -- and how to apply the concepts of smaller batches and minimum viable products (MVPs) to build a better, more profitable and sustainable launch.

The Sales Acceleration Formula (Mark Roberge)

Whether they realize it or not, every small business owner is in sales. Regardless of whether you sell B2B, B2B, a product, or a service, every company needs a scalable, repeatable sales process. Get extremely actionable advice on hiring, training, management, demand generation, and experimentation for one of the original five HubSpotters that now teaches sales at Harvard Business School.

What's your favorite book for startups? Let me know in the comments.