Design & UX

Scaling People: Tactics for Management and Company Building

by Claire Hughes Johnson

Claire Hughes Johnson, former COO of Stripe, delivers a practical and empathetic guide to company building and scaling people. Drawing from her experience helping Stripe grow from 200 to 7,000+ employees, this 2023 bestseller includes over 100 pages of templates and worksheets for founders and leaders.

Empowered

by Marty Cagan & Chris Jones

Empowered provides founders leadership lessons on organizational design to empower product teams for autonomous decision-making and effective team building in scaling companies. Key principles include outcome-focused trios, coaching models, and product operating models for high-velocity innovation. Vs High Output Management, it emphasizes distributed leadership and team empowerment over centralized control.

Tribal Leadership

by Dave Logan & John King & Halee Fischer-Wright

Explores stages of human interaction in scaling companies. Helps set up successful team dynamics.

Anything You Want: 40 Lessons for a New Kind of Entrepreneur

by Derek Sivers

A concise, story-driven book by Derek Sivers that distills 40 lessons from building and selling his company CD Baby. It focuses on unconventional yet highly practical guidance for founders, emphasizing simplicity, customer obsession, and designing a business to serve your life—not the other way around. Widely recommended as a must-read for startup founders who want real-world, no‑nonsense insights rather than abstract theory.

Billion Dollar Lessons: What You Can Learn from the Most Inexcusable Business Failures of the Last 25 Years

by Paul B. Carroll & Chunka Mui

A book that analyzes major corporate and startup failures over 25 years, extracting patterns and lessons founders can use to avoid strategic mistakes in areas such as acquisitions, scalability, and business model design.

Brain Rules

by John Medina

Popular science book by molecular biologist John Medina that distills 12 key principles about how the brain works, covering attention, memory, sleep, and stress. Frequently recommended to founders and product leaders who want to design better work habits, learn faster, and build more productive teams—indirect but valuable support for startup performance and founder effectiveness.

Competitive Advantage: The Value Chain and Your P&L—Applying Michael Porter’s Value Chain Framework to Your Business

A chapter that introduces Michael Porter’s value chain framework and explains how to apply it to a company’s activities and P&L—helpful for startup founders seeking to understand and design competitive advantage into their business model and operations.

Contagioso

by Jonah Berger

Spanish edition of Jonah Berger’s "Contagious", detailing why certain products and ideas spread and how to design offerings and marketing that go viral. Very useful for startup founders working on product adoption, word-of-mouth growth, and scalable marketing.

Creative Selection: Inside Apple's Design Process During the Golden Age of Steve Jobs

by Ken Kocienda

Ken Kocienda recounts his role in crafting iPhone and iPad software at Apple, detailing the demo-driven culture, iterative refinement, and taste-making under Steve Jobs. Key takeaways for founders include prioritizing demos over docs, relentless iteration on details, and cultivating sharp judgment to ship breakthrough products; contrasts with broader biographies like Steve Jobs by focusing on engineering craft. Ideal for product leads seeking inspiration in high-stakes creativity and avoiding mediocre execution.

Designed to Scale: How to Structure Your Business for Exponential Growth

by Lex Sisney

A startup and scaling-focused business book by Lex Sisney that explains how to architect and structure a company for sustainable, exponential growth. It provides founders and leaders with practical frameworks for organizing teams, designing roles, and aligning operations so that the business can smoothly handle each new stage of scale without breaking its culture or systems. Highly relevant for startup founders moving from early traction to growth and needing guidance on organizational design and scaling structures.

HBR’s 10 Must Reads 2016: The Definitive Management Ideas of the Year from Harvard Business Review

A curated collection of the most important Harvard Business Review articles from 2016, featuring ideas and case examples from leading companies like Google and Deloitte. It gives startup founders a concentrated overview of contemporary management thinking across leadership, strategy, and organizational design.

Human Compatible: Artificial Intelligence and the Problem of Control

by Stuart Russell

Stuart Russell’s exploration of AI alignment and how to design AI systems that remain beneficial and controllable. It is valuable for startup founders in AI and frontier tech who need to think beyond product features to long‑term safety, regulation, and societal impact.

La estrategia del océano azul

by W. Chan Kim & Renée Mauborgne

Spanish edition of "Blue Ocean Strategy", this book presents a systematic framework for entrepreneurs and founders to create uncontested market space (‘blue oceans’) instead of competing in saturated markets (‘red oceans’). It’s widely considered a must-read for startup founders who want to differentiate their products, design innovative value propositions, and build defensible business models by shifting focus from competition to value innovation.

One Person, Multiple Careers

by Marci Alboher

A non-fiction book by Marci Alboher that explores how professionals can successfully manage multiple careers or "slashes" (e.g., lawyer/consultant/writer). While not exclusively a startup manual, it is highly relevant for startup founders who often juggle multiple roles and identities, providing frameworks and case studies on designing a flexible, opportunity-rich work life—useful for founders navigating side projects, consulting, and early-stage ventures in parallel.

Poor Charlie’s Almanack: The Essential Wit and Wisdom of Charles T. Munger

by Charles Thomas Munger

A curated collection of speeches, talks, and commentary from investor and Berkshire Hathaway vice chairman Charlie Munger. While not a startup playbook, it is widely considered must-read mental-models and decision-making material for founders—covering multidisciplinary thinking, incentive design, rationality, and long-term value creation that underpin great entrepreneurial judgment.

Prospectos de $100M

by Alex Hormozi

Spanish-language edition of Alex Hormozi’s customer acquisition and lead-generation playbook, focused on creating highly compelling offers and scalable systems to turn strangers into eager buyers. While framed for general businesses, it is widely used by startup founders to learn systematic growth, funnel design, and offer positioning from the early stages through scaling, making it a strong addition to a must-read list for growth-focused startup founders.

StandOut 2.0: Assess Your Strengths, Find Your Edge, Win at Work

by Marcus Buckingham

A strengths-based development book that helps readers assess their advantages and design work around them. For startup founders, it helps clarify personal strengths, delegate effectively, and build complementary founding teams.

The 1-Page Marketing Plan: Get New Customers, Make More Money, And Stand out From The Crowd

by Allan Dib

A concise, highly practical marketing book for small businesses and startups that walks founders through designing an end‑to‑end marketing strategy on a single page—from identifying target customers and crafting messaging to implementing campaigns that reliably acquire and retain customers, grow revenue, and stand out in crowded markets.

The Big Enough Company

by Adelaide Lancaster & Amy Abrams

Book on designing a business that fits the founder’s goals and values rather than chasing growth at all costs—a useful perspective for startup founders on defining success, culture, and sustainable growth.

The Branding Method

A Spanish-language, step-by-step guide to building impactful and profitable brands, offering over 25 practical tools. Useful for startup founders looking to design and position a compelling brand from scratch.

The Entrepreneur’s Paradox

by Curtis Morley

A startup-focused book that outlines 16 common pitfalls founders face and provides practical guidance for navigating the entrepreneurial journey. It is designed as a must‑read resource for startup founders seeking to avoid common mistakes while building and scaling their companies.

The Personal MBA: 10th Anniversary Edition

by Josh Kaufman

Josh Kaufman’s compendium of core business, strategy, marketing, and finance concepts designed as an alternative to a traditional MBA, equipping founders with the mental models and practical frameworks needed to understand and run a business effectively—frequently recommended as foundational reading for entrepreneurs and startup leaders.

The Startup CTO's Handbook

by Zach Goldberg

A practical guidebook for startup founders and technical leaders on how to build, lead, and scale high-performing engineering teams. It covers the CTO role in early-stage startups, organizational design, hiring, culture, and technical decision-making, making it a relevant must-read for founders building tech startups.

Tus próximas cinco jugadas

by Patrick Bet-David & Greg Dinkin

A Spanish-language business strategy book focused on helping entrepreneurs and leaders think several moves ahead, structure long‑term plans, and make better competitive decisions—highly relevant for startup founders designing growth and positioning strategies.

Why Should Anyone Work Here?: What It Takes to Create an Authentic Organization

by Rob Goffee & Gareth Jones

A Harvard Business Review Press book on how leaders can build authentic, attractive workplace cultures that draw in the right people, retain them, and inspire high performance—relevant for startup founders designing strong cultures from the ground up.

Your Next Five Moves: Master the Art of Business Strategy

by Patrick Bet-David & Greg Dinkin

A strategy and decision‑making book by Patrick Bet-David that helps founders think several moves ahead, clarify their vision, and design strategic plans—highly useful for startup leaders who need to make complex, high‑impact decisions under uncertainty.

Designing Your Life

by Bill Burnett & Dave Evans

Design-focused self-help book that applies design thinking principles to intentionally architect one’s career and life. While not startup-specific, many founders use it to explore career transitions, prototype startup ideas, and align entrepreneurial work with personal values and constraints.

How Will You Measure Your Life?

by Clayton M. Christensen & James Allworth & Karen Dillon

Clayton Christensen challenges entrepreneurs to measure success by purpose, integrity, and relationships rather than wealth, fostering mindset shifts from career ambition to balanced life design for personal growth. Key use case: Avoiding marginal costs of compromises that lead to startup ethical failures. Vs Atomic Habits, it probes deep life strategy over daily practices.

Life Re-Scripted: Find Your Purpose and Design Your Dream Life Before The Curtains Close

by Zephan Blaxberg

Zephan Blaxberg empowers entrepreneurs to re-script life for purpose and fulfillment, shifting mindset from default paths to intentional design, building habits of reflection to overcome regret and failure. Use case: Redesigning post-startup life for deeper meaning. Vs Atomic Habits, it focuses on life visioning over incremental changes.

Simple Money, Rich Life

by Bob Lotich

Personal finance and life-design book aimed at helping readers manage money, avoid burnout, and align spending with values—useful context for founders managing variable income and financial risk during startup life.

Play Bigger: How Pirates, Dreamers, and Innovators Create and Dominate Markets

by Al Ramadan & Dave Peterson & Christopher Lochhead et al.

Category design framework urges founders to invent new markets via POV narratives and lightning strikes, dominating as category kings like Salesforce. Pivots from product competition to ecosystem mobilization; bolder market creation vs Porter's existing industry battles.

Good Profit

by Charles G. Koch

Charles G. Koch’s management and business philosophy book detailing market-based management, value creation, and long-term profitable growth—useful for startup founders designing scalable, principled business models.

Ingrain AI

A book focused on how organizations can design and execute an AI-first strategy, covering cultural change, operational playbooks, and practical guidance for scaling AI initiatives from concept to execution. It is relevant for startup founders building AI-native companies who need a structured approach to integrating AI into product, operations, and company culture.

Monetizing Innovation: How Smart Companies Design the Product Around the Price

by Madhavan Ramanujam & Georg Tacke

Madhavan Ramanujam's willingness-to-pay discovery equips founders to price-test before building, preventing feature shock and undead products in pivots. Frameworks like innovation failure types and 9 pricing rules for profitable launches; execution-focused vs Porter's structural analysis.

The Business Model Canvas

The Business Model Canvas is a strategic management tool that allows startups to visualize, design, and innovate their business models. It provides a framework for understanding the key components of a business, including value propositions, customer segments, and revenue streams.

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.

User Story Mapping: Discover the Whole Story, Build the Right Product

by Jeff Patton & Peter Economy

Jeff Patton's definitive guide to user story mapping—a technique for keeping the big picture in view while building products. Essential for product managers and founders who want to build what customers actually need.

UX for Lean Startups

by Laura Klein

UX for Lean Startups shows founders and early-stage teams how to do effective user experience research and design with limited time and resources, aligning UX work with Lean Startup experimentation.

Biodesign: The Process of Innovating Medical Technologies

by Stefanos Zenios & Josh Makower & Paul Yock et al.

Must-have book for starting a medical device company, featuring a great customer discovery process. By Zenios, Makower, Yock et al.

Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products

by Nir Eyal & Ryan Hoover

An international bestseller with over 1 million copies sold in 30+ languages, this book by Nir Eyal reveals the Hook Model—a four-step process used by successful companies to create habit-forming products that bring users back without costly advertising.

Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days

by Jake Knapp & John Zeratsky & Braden Kowitz

A practical guide to the Design Sprint methodology created at Google, offering a unique five-day process for solving tough problems and testing new ideas quickly.

Value Proposition Design: How to Create Products and Services Customers Want

by Alexander Osterwalder & Yves Pigneur & Gregory Bernarda et al.

Alexander Osterwalder's practical guide to designing compelling value propositions using the Value Proposition Canvas.

Badass: Making Users Awesome

by Kathy Sierra

Kathy Sierra shows that sustainable success comes from making users badass at what they do, not just building awesome products. A counterintuitive masterpiece from the creator of Head First books.

Don't Make Me Think, Revisited: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability

by Steve Krug

Steve Krug's classic on web usability. Short, funny, and packed with practical advice for making products intuitive. Essential for product founders.

The Design of Everyday Things

by Donald A. Norman

Don Norman's classic on user-centered design principles. Essential for founders building products people love to use—explains why good design is intuitive and bad design frustrates users.

The Power of Moments: Why Certain Experiences Have Extraordinary Impact

by Chip Heath & Dan Heath

Chip and Dan Heath reveal how to create defining moments that customers and employees remember forever. Essential for founders building memorable brand experiences and company culture.

Hooked

by Nir Eyal & Ryan Hoover

Nir Eyal's book provides insights into building habit-forming products using the 'Hook Model.' It's a valuable resource for startup founders focused on enhancing user engagement and creating products that keep users coming back.

Rocket Surgery Made Easy

by Steve Krug

Tactical usability testing guide companion to Don't Make Me Think. Provides exercises for continuous product improvement.

Loonshots

by Safi Bahcall

Explains how big ideas get killed internally before they change the world. Safi Bahcall merges physics with organizational theory to help founders nurture breakthrough ideas in a science-backed playbook for managing innovation.

The Ten Faces of Innovation

by Tom Kelley & Jonathan Littman

A business and innovation strategy book by Tom Kelley that explores ten distinct personas organizations can adopt to foster creativity, design thinking, and innovative products—highly relevant for startup founders building innovative cultures and teams.

Remote Work Revolution: Succeeding from Anywhere

by Tsedal Neeley

A business and management book by Harvard Business School professor Tsedal Neeley that provides a practical blueprint for thriving in remote and hybrid organizations. It addresses trust-building, virtual leadership, productivity, digital tools, and team cohesion—highly relevant for startup founders building distributed or hybrid teams. The book is structured around eight core questions leaders ask about remote work and offers evidence-based guidance, key takeaways, and an action guide to help founders design effective remote-first cultures and processes from an early stage.

The Great Game of Business

by Jack Stack & Bo Burlingham

A classic on open-book management and engaging employees in financial performance—very relevant for startup founders designing transparent, incentive-aligned operating systems as their companies grow.

The Meaning Revolution

by Fred Kofman

Leadership and organizational culture book arguing that building meaning and higher purpose into work is a powerful driver of performance, highly relevant for startup founders designing mission-driven companies.

The Starfish and the Spider

by Ori Brafman & Rod A. Beckstrom

A book on decentralized versus centralized organizations, explaining how leaderless or distributed structures can be more resilient and scalable—valuable for startup founders designing modern, network-based or platform businesses.

4 bước chinh phục đỉnh cao

by Steve Blank

Vietnamese startup and business book whose title translates roughly to “4 Steps to Conquer the Summit,” recommended by the author as a must-read complement that likely covers step-by-step frameworks for building or scaling a business—useful for startup founders designing and testing their products and growth hypotheses.

Capitalism Without Capital

by Jonathan Haskel & Stian Westlake

This book by Jonathan Haskel and Stian Westlake explores the significance of intangible assets like design and branding in the modern economy. It provides insights into how startups can leverage intangible investments to drive growth and innovation.

Crossing the Chasm Workbook

Companion workbook designed to help readers of "Crossing the Chasm" turn its concepts into action through structured exercises, reflections, and templates tailored to technology startups and disruptive products.

Why Startups Fail

by Tom Eisenmann

A practical startup book by Tom Eisenmann that analyzes common reasons new ventures fail and offers a structured roadmap to avoid typical pitfalls, helping founders design more resilient business models and execution plans.

Product Design for the Web

by Randy Hunt

Frameworks and iterative processes for web product management in startups, emphasizing discovery, MVP building, and user-centered design. Use cases focus on rapid learning cycles for web apps and sites. Web-specific complement to broader PM books like Inspired.

Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days

by Jake Knapp & John Zeratsky & Braden Kowitz

Five-day product management sprint process for startups to build and test MVPs, validate ideas via prototyping and user feedback. Developed at Google Ventures for rapid problem-solving. Faster alternative to extended cycles in PM literature like Inspired.

The Inmates Are Running the Asylum: Why High Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How To Restore The Sanity by Alan Cooper

by Alan Cooper

Pioneering product management processes for tech startups emphasizing user-centered design, personas, and goal-directed methods to build effective MVPs. Critiques programmer-driven development and advocates sanity in high-tech products. Foundational text vs. contemporary views in Inspired.

Phương thức TOYOTA

by Jeffrey K. Liker

Vietnamese edition of a well-known management and operations book about the Toyota Way, focusing on lean thinking, continuous improvement, and systems that can inform how startup founders design processes, culture, and product validation workflows.

The Machine That Changed the World

by James P. Womack & Daniel T. Jones & Daniel Roos

Seminal 1990 book by James P. Womack, Daniel T. Jones, and Daniel Roos that popularized the term “lean” for streamlined production systems, based on an in-depth study of the Toyota Production System and global auto manufacturing. While not a startup book per se, it is a key precursor to lean thinking and later lean startup ideas, offering deep insight into waste reduction, continuous improvement, and customer value—concepts that can inform how startup founders design efficient operations and product development processes.

The Sprint Book

by Jake Knapp & John Zeratsky & Braden Kowitz

Authored by Jake Knapp, "The Sprint Book" is a guide to running design sprints, a method for solving problems and testing ideas quickly. It's particularly beneficial for startups looking to innovate and iterate on product designs efficiently.

Platform Revolution: How Networked Markets Are Transforming the Economy and How to Make Them Work for You

by Geoffrey G. Parker

By Geoffrey G. Parker, Marshall W. Van Alstyne, and Sangeet Paul Choudary (2016, W.W. Norton), this book explains how two-sided platforms like Uber, Airbnb, and Amazon create value by connecting producers and consumers. It covers how to design, launch, and monetize a platform business.

Lean Thinking: Banish Waste and Create Wealth in Your Corporation

by James P. Womack and Daniel T. Jones

By James P. Womack and Daniel T. Jones (1996, Free Press, revised 2003), this book translates Toyota's production principles into a general five-step method — value, value stream, flow, pull, perfection — applicable to any business trying to cut waste.

About Face: The Essentials of Interaction Design

by Alan Cooper

By Alan Cooper, Robert Reimann, David Cronin, and Christopher Noessel (4th edition, 2014, Wiley), this is a comprehensive guide to designing digital product interfaces and interactions, covering goal-directed design methods for apps, websites, and devices.

An Everyone Culture: Becoming a Deliberately Developmental Organization

by Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey

By Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey (2016, Harvard Business Review Press), this book studies companies that build employee growth directly into daily operations rather than treating development as a separate HR program, arguing this unlocks far more potential.