The startup playbook. All the basics: https://playbook.samaltman.com/

The Startup Owner's Manual: https://www.amazon.com/Startup-Owners-Manual-Step-Step/dp/09...

Nobody seems to recommend this because nobody has finished reading it, but it's meant to be acted on, not finished. There are literally checklists. It's also hard to get a soft copy, but th soft copies are useful for printing out the checklists. Paul Graham has changed the definition of a startup, but I still love the one from here - the goal of a startup is to have a scalable and repeatable business model.

Startup=Growth, by Paul Graham https://paulgraham.com/growth.html

I'd recommend the whole site, and many do. But start here. Many don't understand that startups are about growing assets, not revenue. And exponential is a funny word for "very slow". If you wanted to grow to a million dollars, do anything but a startup and don't raise VC money. But this shows how the math works.

High Growth Handbook: https://growth.eladgil.com/

And this is what you read after you get past 10 employees. Who to hire next, how to manage. There are tons of people who talk about how to get Product Market Fit, but few who talk about how to build an engine to turn PMF to money. There's tons of podcasts but consider this book a collection of the best ones.

IMO the theory is what gives you the confidence. You know it works, that the actions taken are repeatable.

The basics of how to start a startup: https://playbook.samaltman.com/

Growth. Or figuring out when your startup is doing well or poorly, runway, why it takes so long: http://www.paulgraham.com/growth.html

I think when people criticize a startup's profitability, they don't really understand that the goal of a startup is to grow assets, not earn money, and then then sell those assets to someone who can make more money from it.

A very different book to the usual, Startup Owner's Manual: https://www.amazon.com/Startup-Owners-Manual-Step-Step/dp/09...

It's a good book on validating what works and how ambitious to be. Much of it is in the form of checklists, which help you decide the next step. It's not a boring book, though. I haven't read through the whole thing as we got off the ground before finishing the book. It's the book that got my ex-co-founder away from more traditional businesses and into startups.

This is a good, quick highlight on how to do it: https://playbook.samaltman.com/

If you want a full book, I recommend The Startup Owner's Manual: https://www.amazon.com/Startup-Owners-Manual-Step-Step/dp/09...

The latter is actually a step by step process, and it's worked very well for me. It answers what you should do before getting funding. Once you've built something people want, apply to Y Combinator (or some other good accelerator) and they'll show you the next steps on how to build a team, raise funds, expand, and so on.

I highly recommend reading about the business model canvas (definitely get this book [1]) and the "double diamond" framework [2] in design thinking. I'd also recommending reading some Steve Blank [3] for the "mainstream" understanding of "startup business".

The Lean Startup [4] is often recommended, but I've been told it's extremely beginner-level (though I haven't read it, so my analysis might be unfair)

If you want to get really in-depth, there's a lot of really great interplay between the design discipline and entrepreneurship that is often overlooked. "Design Thinking" is much more than a buzzword, check it out.

[1] https://www.amazon.com.au/Business-Model-Generation-Visionar...

[2] https://www.designcouncil.org.uk/news-opinion/what-framework...

[3] https://www.amazon.com/Startup-Owners-Manual-Step-Step/dp/09...

[4] https://www.amazon.com/Lean-Startup-Entrepreneurs-Continuous...

Superseded by The Startup Owner's Manual: The Step-By-Step Guide for Building a Great Company, also by Steve Blank.

https://www.amazon.com/Startup-Owners-Manual-Step-Step/dp/09...