Startup founders love books. The best startup founders I know are perpetual learners and so it seems like we just can’t get enough knowledge.
There’s a reason I have 240 titles. No joke. In my audible account, I’m asked all the time for recommendations for books that apply to SaaS founders because there are so many business books or entrepreneurship books that use examples that just don’t apply to what we’re doing.
So in this post, I have 11 books for you that I think you should read this year. This would allow you to read one book per month for the year.
So I’ve curated a list of probably 50 or 60 books that I think every SaaS founder should read, down to these eleven . So of the eleven books I’m about to run through, the first six came from me and my memory banks going through my audible account, my bookshelf, or few physical books I have left. And then the second six are from Twitter and I will call out the username of the person who suggested it when I do that. Now, I got a lot of suggestions when I asked for book suggestions, so some were proposed by many people. I heavily vetted all of these books. These are all books that have had an impact on my career and for the most part, I’ve read every word of every book on this list.
In This Article:
Book #1. Traction by Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Maris
Book number one is Traction by Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Maris.
I actually almost wrote a book just like this, but I’m glad I didn’t have to and that Gabriel came along and wrote this book instead. Basically, each chapter focuses on a b two b marketing approach. There are a few b two c thrown in there, but they interviewed a different expert for each marketing approach, such as email marketing or in person events or pay per click advertising.
And it’s almost like a buffet of options for you to look at when you’re thinking about marketing your projects. You might have heard me talk about my big five marketing approaches, and I talk about knowing of 20 B2B SaaS marketing approaches. And frankly, that list that I have started probably a decade ago when this book came out, I pulled a few from traction.
Now, not all of them apply to B2B SaaS, but it is a nice overview of how to think about leveraging marketing approaches with some tactics and strategies mixed in. I’ll admit the book is a tiny bit dated.
Now, I say this as someone who has a 13 year old book that still holds up, but has, you know, certainly rough around the edges, but traction is still a good read to get your head around marketing approaches.
It’s one of the books I recommend most often to founders who are struggling to really get their head around what marketing looks like.
Book #2. Founding Sales by Pete Kazanjy
Book number two is Founding Sales by Pete Kazanjy. And I’m gonna be honest, I think this might be the best book I’ve read for founders who who don’t know how to sell, who want to learn to sell.
I came across Pete maybe four or five months ago, and I was shocked at the depth of founding sales covers everything from just the basic fundamentals of how to think about selling, to creating a demo, to creating a slide deck, to hiring salespeople, to managing salespeople, to scaling a sales team. It’s a 450 page book, but you only need to read the pieces that you need.
It’s like an amazing reference from a founder’s perspective, because Pete was a founder who didn’t know how to sell. And as he went through his process, he documented it in this book. I think it’s one of the best books for founders of B2B SaaS companies.
Book #3. The Mom Test by Rob Fitzpatrick
Book number three is The Mom Test by Rob Fitzpatrick. And while it’s got kind of a funky title, the idea is that it teaches you how to ask questions of potential customers as you’re trying to figure out what to build in order to do customer development and build something people want. And it teaches you how to ask questions such that even your mom couldn’t like to you.
That’s where the title comes from, because what a lot of founders do is they’ll go out and they’ll say, would you pay for this? How much would you pay for this? And unfortunately, people accidentally lie to you. They don’t do it on purpose, but they say things that aren’t true. And the mom test focuses instead of asking questions like that, on asking questions like, do you have this problem? How much of a pain is it? What have you done in the past to solve this pain? Right? And if they say, I haven’t really done anything, haven’t even gone to Google to look for a solution that tells you that this isn’t a huge pain point.
The Mom Test is a staple in the bootstrapped and mostly bootstrapped SaaS ecosystem. Highly recommended.
Book #4. Hello Web Design by Tracy Osborne
Book number four is Hello Web Design by Tracy Osborne.
Tracy Osborne happens to be the program manager of tiny seed. She’s written several books and Hello Web Design is chef’s kiss good for entrepreneurs who wanna learn just enough design that they can either do simple designs themselves or better yet, and the reason I read it is to better evaluate designs and give better feedback, more helpful feedback to designers that you hire instead of giving them feedback like, I really want this to pop?, can you make this better? Right? Designers hate that kind of feedback.
But if you read this compact and relatively quick read, you will fill your head with kind of the bare minimum that you should know about design if you want to be a web entrepreneur.
Book #5. Who by Geoff Smart
Book number five is called Who the a method for hiring and this book comes recommended to me and frankly, to all tiny seed and microcontroller founders by a friend of the channel, Ruben Gomez. This is another one of those best in class books.
I think this is the best book I’ve ever read on the subject of how to hire, including deep dives into job interviews and what questions to ask and just how to conduct an interview process. I’ll admit I do not follow this book to the letter and I have a slightly modified system that I think is a little more efficient, yet still works.
But I have borrowed heavily from this book and if you haven’t read it and you’re struggling even a bit with your hiring process, can’t recommend it enough.
Book #6. The Art of Selling Your Company by John Warrillow
Book number six is The Art of Selling Your Company, written by the great John Warrillow. John has written three books on maximizing the value of a sale should you decide to sell your company.
In my opinion, this one is far more applicable and is the one that I would focus on if you’re a bootstrapped or mostly bootstrapped software founder John has incredible knowledge on this topic of exiting. He’s been through exits himself. He has helped people through many exits.
And this is about real businesses selling for real cash or real stock with real earnouts. Not the TechCrunch headlines where someone sells a company for a billion dollars to Mark Zuckerberg in a weekend. It’s about real companies that are doing a million, $5 million, $10 million, whether they’re software companies, some are manufacturing, some are record storage, brick and mortars, all kinds of things.
And he dives into the tactics and the strategies and really the thought process you should be going through if you ever decide that you’re going to sell your company. And frankly, as you know what I say, everyone sells eventually. So being prepared for that inevitability is always a good idea.
Book #7. The 1-Page Marketing Plan by Allan Dib
Our 7th book comes recommended on Twitter from Nick Swan. It’s The 1-Page Marketing Plan. This book is really good for small businesses and good for small budgets, so it applies to the kind of company you’re going to be growing.
Basically, it helps you put together a nine quadrant, one page marketing plan. This is actually similar to what I did for my SaaS apps, where I would keep it super simple in a Google Doc. I would use bullets instead of the quadrants.
But you keep it simple and you do the work and you execute on it. And I like that. It’s not your traditional MBA Harvard Business Review thing about marketing. It’s such an astronaut view. It’s high level of business.
Let’s define what marketing is.
It’s like no help me figure out what I should try first. Help me figure out how I should go about organizing my thoughts around marketing. In addition, talks about one of my favorite topics, of course, raising prices.
You can obviously get similar info from a lot of books, even at this scale, but one page marketing plan is a nice, compact version that can help you get your head around marketing and how it should work. I found parts of it to be a bit heavy on the Markety Speak, but if you can get through that, it’s great content.
Book #8. Buy Back Your Time by Dan Martell
Book number eight also comes from Nick Swan on Twitter, and it’s Dan Martell’s Buy Back Your Time.
Buy Back Your Time just came out. I was pleasantly surprised by the depth that this book goes into teaching entrepreneurs and executives how to have more time in your day by finding people who can do things delegating, but not just delegating in a, I’d say a superficial way. He really dives into what you should think about delegating, how you should think about it, who you should hire first, and how you should hire more people to have more time in a day to do the things that only you can do.
He goes into great detail about organizing your inbox and how a virtual assistant or an executive assistant can use specific tags. His process that he uses, it’s just really one of the better books I’ve seen in a long time about figuring out how to make more time in your day.
Book #9. Obviously Awesome
Book number nine comes to us from Graham Lipsman on Twitter, and it is April Dunford’s Obviously Awesome. This has become the staple in our circles for getting your head around positioning what it is how to think about it and how to apply it to your company. And it’s a quick read and I say that with all positivity. I love books that say what they came to say and then move on.
And they don’t pad pages such that the binding of the book is wider on the shelf at Barnes and Noble. It’s a waste of time, right? Obviously awesome does not do that. April comes to teach, she drops her knowledge and she gets out.
You can read this on an airplane three or 4 hours. Highly recommended.
Book #10. Deploy Empathy by Michelle Hanson
Book number ten is suggested by Dean Layton James on Twitter. The book is Deploy Empathy by Michelle Hanson. This is a very well written book about jobs to be done and really it’s about talking to your customers, to be honest. But it’s about which questions to ask, how to have conversations with customers, whether you are just getting started, trying to figure out what to build, trying to find product market fit, whether you are trying to make your support processes better, your customer success processes better, whether you’re doing sales, whether you’re trying to just make your product better to grow your company.
It’s written by a bootstrap SaaS founder with Bootstrap SaaS founders in mind. So it’s not a bunch of high level theoretical jobs to be done, stuff she throws in exact questions that you should think about, exact templates for emails.
It really is a book I can’t recommend enough.
Book #11. Zero to Sold by Arvid Kahl
Book number eleven was recommended by Ironbrands on Twitter and it’s Arvid calls Zero to Sold. Arvid bootstrapped the company and sold it a few years ago and now you probably seen him on Twitter, or maybe you’ve seen his books. But zero to sold is a well written tome that covers his journey and pulls out lessons for folks who want to bootstrap SaaS companies.
He comes at it from a lifestyle bootstrapper who’s looking to build a great business and quit their job and really give themselves a better life. And at 450 pages, it covers a lot of ground.
Conclusion
The dynamic world of SaaS entrepreneurship demands continuous learning and adaptation. The 11 books we’ve explored offer invaluable insights, strategies, and inspiration to help you navigate the challenges of building and scaling a successful SaaS business.
Remember, knowledge is power, but applied knowledge is true strength. As you read these books, consider how you can implement their teachings in your own SaaS venture. Take notes, discuss ideas with your team, and create action plans based on the most relevant insights. Ultimately, the goal isn’t just to read these books, but to use them as catalysts for growth and innovation in your business. So, carve out time in your busy schedule to immerse yourself in these valuable resources. Your future self – and your SaaS company – will thank you for the investment.
Happy reading, and here’s to your continued success in the exciting world of SaaS!