#tag
Communication & Feedback
Saying hard things clearly and kindly.
4 guides · 0 tools · 36 books
Simple guides
Customer discovery
Go and talk to real potential customers to check that the problem you want to solve actually exists.
Radical candor
Give feedback that shows you care personally while challenging people directly.
Wartime vs peacetime leadership
Calm times need a different leadership style from crises — know which one you're in.
Deep work & focus
Your most valuable work happens in long, distraction-free blocks of focus.
Essential sources
Books in the library
Crucial Conversations: Tools for Talking When Stakes Are High
by Kerry Patterson & Joseph Grenny & Ron McMillan et al.
Crucial Conversations equips founders with leadership lessons for mastering high-stakes talks essential for team building, conflict resolution, and investor negotiations. Key principles include creating safety through mutual purpose, using the STATE model for candid dialogue, and deciding on clear action items. Vs High Output Management, it prioritizes dialogue skills and emotional control over operational leverage.
The Culture Map: Breaking Through the Invisible Boundaries of Global Business
by Erin Meyer
A groundbreaking guide by INSEAD professor Erin Meyer that decodes how cultural differences impact international business. The book provides a field-tested framework based on eight key dimensions that help improve effectiveness in cross-cultural teams and global markets.
Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In
by Roger Fisher & William Ury & Bruce Patton
The definitive guide to principled negotiation from the Harvard Negotiation Project. This international bestseller with over 15 million copies sold teaches a proven, step-by-step strategy for coming to mutually acceptable agreements in every sort of conflict—from business negotiations to personal disputes.
Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die
by Chip Heath & Dan Heath
Chip and Dan Heath's exploration of what makes ideas memorable and influential, revealing the six principles of sticky ideas through the SUCCESS framework that helps messages resonate and last.
All Marketers Tell Stories
by Seth Godin
Guides startups in using authentic storytelling to create believable narratives that drive customer acquisition and loyalty, outperforming generic messaging. Unlike Traction Channels' distribution focus, it builds emotional connections for organic sharing; use cases show brands like TOMS growing via mission stories. Core for go-to-market narrative strategies.
Building a StoryBrand
by Donald Miller
A framework for clarifying your brand message so customers understand your offering and engage with your brand. Donald Miller uses storytelling principles to position the customer as the hero and your brand as the guide.
Sales Pitch: How to Craft a Story to Stand Out and Win
by April Dunford
A practical guide by April Dunford that shows entrepreneurs, salespeople, and business leaders how to create compelling sales pitches by building a narrative that clearly communicates product differentiation. The book provides an eight-step framework for crafting sales pitches that help you stand out in competitive markets.
Tested Advertising Methods
by John Caples
Timeless guide to copywriting, headlines, curiosity, and testing. Applicable to startup web content and ads.
Harvard Business Essentials: Business Communications
A practical guide to clear business writing and communication, covering principles that help founders craft better emails, memos, investor updates, and presentations—crucial skills for startup fundraising and team alignment.
Steal the Show
by Michael Port
A communication and performance book by Michael Port that teaches high-stakes presentation, pitching, and speaking skills. Highly relevant for startup founders who must pitch investors, sell to customers, and lead teams; it focuses on structuring and delivering persuasive messages under pressure.
How to Win Friends & Influence People
by Dale Carnegie
Dale Carnegie's classic, 'How to Win Friends and Influence People,' offers timeless techniques for improving interpersonal relationships and influencing others positively. The book is essential for entrepreneurs looking to enhance their communication skills and build strong professional networks.
Lean UX
by Jeff Gothelf & Josh Seiden
Lean UX adapts user experience design to the Lean Startup world, helping product teams and founders build, measure, and learn faster by emphasizing collaboration, experimentation, and continuous learning.
Four Steps to the Epiphany
by Steve Blank
Steve Blank's "Four Steps to the Epiphany" is a seminal work that outlines a customer development process for startups. It highlights the importance of understanding customer needs and iterating based on feedback, offering a comprehensive approach to building successful startups.
Pretotype It
by Alberto Savoia
Alberto Savoia's "Pretotype It" is a manifesto that emphasizes the importance of gaining market feedback before fully investing in a product idea. It provides guidance on testing concepts efficiently.
Talking to Humans: Success Starts with Understanding Your Customers
by Giff Constable & Frank Rimalovski
Giff Constable's ultra-practical guide to customer discovery. Short, free, and filled with tactical advice for validating ideas through conversations.
The Mom Test
by Rob Fitzpatrick
A practical guide to customer conversations that teaches founders how to ask the right questions and avoid misleading feedback. The book provides a simple framework to uncover honest customer insights during interviews.
The Mom Test: How to talk to customers & learn if your business is a good idea when everyone is lying to you
by Rob Fitzpatrick
Guide to conducting effective customer interviews without biasing responses or getting false compliments. Shelved 137 times as startup on Goodreads with average rating 4.37 from 14,040 ratings, published 2013.
The Lean Product Playbook
by Dan Olsen
The Lean Product Playbook: How to Innovate with Minimum Viable Products and Rapid Customer Feedback by Dan Olsen is a guide for startup founders on how to apply lean principles to product development, ensuring that products meet customer needs effectively.
The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation
by Jon Gertner
Jon Gertner chronicles the remarkable story of Bell Labs, the research and development wing of AT&T that became the world's greatest innovation lab. This New York Times bestseller reveals how a small group of brilliant minds created the transistor, laser, digital communications, cellular telephony, and countless other innovations that shaped modern life.
Never Wrestle with a Pig
by Mark H. McCormack
A collection of business advice and leadership lessons on dealing with difficult people, politics, and conflict—practical for startup founders navigating stakeholders, partners, and early team dynamics.
Radical Candor
by Kim Scott
"Radical Candor" by Kim Scott is a guide to effective communication in the workplace. It emphasizes the importance of honesty and constructive feedback, making it a valuable resource for startup leaders aiming to foster a positive team environment.
Brand Identity Breakthrough
by Gregory V. Diehl
Gregory V. Diehl's book is a valuable resource for startup founders aiming to establish a strong brand identity. It guides readers through crafting a compelling company story to make their products stand out in the market.
How to Wow
by Frances Cole Jones
How to Wow: Proven Strategies for Selling Your Brilliant Self in Any Situation by Frances Cole Jones is a communication and persuasion book that teaches founders how to present themselves and their ideas effectively in pitches, meetings, and media appearances—key soft skills for startup leaders raising capital and selling vision.
Made to Stick
by Chip Heath & Dan Heath
Chip Heath and Dan Heath explore the principles of effective communication and idea propagation, offering valuable insights for startup founders looking to make their ideas resonate.
PERSUASIÓN Y PODER
Spanish-language book on persuasion and leadership aimed at entrepreneurs and business leaders. It focuses on communication, influence, and leadership skills that are important for startup founders when pitching, selling, and leading teams, though it is not exclusively about startups.
Storybrand 2.0
by Donald Miller
Updated Spanish edition of Donald Miller’s "Building a StoryBrand", this book teaches a clear framework for simplifying and sharpening your company’s messaging so customers quickly understand what you offer and why it matters. For startup founders, it is a practical guide to crafting a compelling narrative for products, landing pages, pitches, and marketing funnels, helping early-stage companies communicate value and convert more users.
I'm OK—You're OK
by Thomas A. Harris
A classic self-help book on transactional analysis that helps readers understand interpersonal dynamics and emotional patterns. While not a startup manual, many founders use it to improve communication, conflict resolution, and leadership within early teams.
Merchants of Doubt
by Naomi Oreskes & Erik M. Conway
A historical investigation by Naomi Oreskes and Erik M. Conway into how a small group of scientists and corporate interests manufactured doubt about scientific consensus in order to delay regulation. For startup founders, it serves as a cautionary case study in corporate ethics, public trust, and the long-term consequences of deceptive communication strategies.
Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most
by Douglas Stone
By Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton, and Sheila Heen of the Harvard Negotiation Project (1999, updated 2023), this book breaks any hard conversation into three underlying layers: what happened, feelings, and identity. It gives founders and managers a framework for raising tough issues without triggering defensiveness.
Crucial Accountability: Tools for Resolving Violated Expectations, Broken Commitments, and Bad Behavior
by Kerry Patterson
By Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, Al Switzler, and David Maxfield (2013, McGraw-Hill), the follow-up to Crucial Conversations focuses specifically on holding people accountable when they break promises or underperform. It gives a step-by-step model for these conversations that keeps relationships intact.
Fanatical Prospecting: The Ultimate Guide to Opening Sales Conversations and Filling the Pipeline
by Jeb Blount
By Jeb Blount (2015, Wiley), this book argues that a full sales pipeline, built through consistent prospecting across phone, email, social, and text, is the single biggest driver of sales success. It gives concrete frameworks for each outreach channel.
Ask a Manager: How to Navigate Clueless Colleagues, Lunch-Stealing Bosses, and the Rest of Your Life at Work
by Alison Green
By Alison Green, creator of the Ask a Manager website (2018, Ballantine Books), this is a practical script-based guide to handling awkward workplace conversations, from giving feedback to negotiating raises to managing difficult coworkers.
Invent and Wander: The Collected Writings of Jeff Bezos
by Jeff Bezos
By Jeff Bezos, with an introduction by Walter Isaacson (2020, Harvard Business Review Press), this is a curated collection of Bezos's annual shareholder letters and talks, revealing the thinking behind Amazon's long-term, customer-obsessed strategy.
What Every BODY Is Saying: An Ex-FBI Agent's Guide to Speed-Reading People
by Joe Navarro
By Joe Navarro, a former FBI counterintelligence agent (2008, HarperCollins), this book teaches how to read body language — comfort and discomfort cues especially — to better understand people in negotiations, interviews, and meetings.