Habits & Retention

🪣 Churn & customer lifetime

How fast are customers leaving, and how long do they stay?

📣 Net Promoter Score (NPS)

How likely are customers to recommend you?

Hooked

by Nir Eyal

Loyal: Listen or You Always Lose: A Leader's Guide to Winning Customer and Employee Loyalty

Guide for leaders on building loyalty among customers and employees through listening. Key for startup growth via retention and culture.

Tribes

by Seth Godin

Seth Godin shows how anyone can become a leader by creating and leading a tribe. Transform a scattering of followers into a loyal movement around shared ideas and passion.

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.

Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook

by Gary Vaynerchuk

Gary Vaynerchuk explains how to tell your story in a noisy social world. Give value (jab) before asking for the sale (right hook).

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.

El arte de hacer dinero

by Phineas Taylor Barnum

Spanish-language personal finance and money mindset book by Mario Borghino that focuses on developing financial intelligence and a strategic approach to wealth creation. While not startup-specific, it helps current and aspiring founders build the financial acumen and money-management habits that are crucial when starting and scaling a business.

Hook Point: How to Stand Out in a 3-Second World

by Brendan Kane

Startup-relevant marketing and positioning book by Brendan Kane focused on crafting “hook points” that grab attention instantly in an overcrowded digital world. It teaches founders how to differentiate their product and message in the first few seconds across social media, ads, and content—critical for early-stage traction and growth.

Roba como un artista / Steal Like an Artist

by Austin Kleon

Spanish edition of Austin Kleon’s bestselling book on creativity, offering 10 practical principles for being more creative by embracing influence, remixing ideas, and cultivating a prolific creative habit—useful for startup founders who need to generate, refine, and communicate innovative ideas consistently.

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.

Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance

by Angela Duckworth

Angela Duckworth's Grit reveals that entrepreneurial success stems from sustained passion and perseverance over talent, building key habits of deliberate practice and purpose to overcome prolonged startup failures. Essential mindset shift for founders enduring the marathon of building companies. Vs Atomic Habits, it emphasizes gritty perseverance over tiny changes.

Mindset: The New Psychology of Success

by Carol Susan Dweck

Carol Dweck's Mindset transforms entrepreneurs from fixed to growth mindset, embracing challenges and failures as growth opportunities for personal development and startup resilience. Key shift: Effort over innate talent to master skills amid pivots and setbacks. Vs Atomic Habits, it rewires beliefs about ability rather than building routines.

Never Eat Alone: And Other Secrets to Success, One Relationship at a Time

by Keith Ferrazzi & Tahl Raz

Keith Ferrazzi's Never Eat Alone equips entrepreneurs with relationship-building habits like generosity and consistent follow-up, shifting mindset from transactional networking to authentic connections for personal growth and business breakthroughs. Key use case: Overcoming isolation by turning contacts into advocates during funding or scaling. Vs Atomic Habits, it builds social capital systems over individual routines.

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change

by Stephen Richards Covey

Stephen Covey's 7 Habits guide entrepreneurs toward personal and professional growth through paradigm shifts from dependence to interdependence, building key habits like proactivity and win-win thinking to overcome failure and scale businesses. Essential for founders seeking continuous improvement and effective leadership. Vs Atomic Habits, it emphasizes character ethics and holistic principles over atomic behavioral tweaks.

12 Rules for Life

by Jordan Bernt Peterson

Jordan Peterson's 12 Rules for Life equips entrepreneurs with principles for personal growth emphasizing responsibility, truthfulness, and strong relationships to overcome failure and chaos in startup life. Key mindset shifts include standing up straight with shoulders back and pursuing meaning over happiness, fostering resilience amid business pressures. Vs Atomic Habits, it focuses on profound philosophical rules rather than incremental behaviors.

Atomic Habits

by James Clear

A bestselling book by James Clear that, while not exclusively about startups, is widely recommended for founders for its practical framework on building systems, compounding small improvements, and creating habits that support long-term entrepreneurial success.

Before I Won

by Tomas Veres

Tomas Veres' Before I Won shares an entrepreneur's raw pre-success struggles and mindset shifts, teaching personal growth through failure, persistence, and self-belief for startup founders facing rejection. Key use case: overcoming repeated failures to achieve breakthroughs. Vs Atomic Habits, it provides narrative-driven inspiration over systematic habit-building.

Big Magic

by Elizabeth Gilbert

Elizabeth Gilbert's Big Magic inspires entrepreneurs to live creatively beyond fear, fostering mindset shifts toward persistence and joy in idea pursuit despite startup failures. Key use case: overcoming creative blocks and self-doubt during product development or pivots. Vs Atomic Habits, it champions inspirational curiosity over structured routines.

Common Sense Business for Kids

by Kathryn Daniels

Kathryn Daniels' book builds entrepreneurial mindset in young minds through basic business principles, promoting personal growth via early habits of value creation and problem-solving. Use case: Instilling resilience against failure from childhood for future founders. Vs Atomic Habits, it focuses on foundational business thinking over personal productivity.

Dedicated: The Case for Commitment in an Age of Infinite Browsing

by Pete Davis

Pete Davis urges entrepreneurs to commit deeply to ventures amid option overload, shifting mindset from browsing to dedication for personal growth and long-term success. Use case: Overcoming startup indecision and building resilience through sustained focus. Vs Atomic Habits, it advocates bold commitments over small daily actions.

Die With Zero: Getting All You Can from Your Money and Your Life

by Bill Perkins

Bill Perkins' Die with Zero shifts entrepreneurs' mindset from endless accumulation to maximizing life experiences, optimizing spending for peak fulfillment and overcoming workaholic regrets. Key use case: Time bucketing adventures before health declines, balancing hustle with joy. Vs Atomic Habits, it prioritizes strategic life allocation over micro-habits.

Ego is the Enemy

by Ryan Holiday

Ryan Holiday's Ego is the Enemy teaches entrepreneurs to conquer ego for sustained success, shifting mindset to humility and lifelong learning to overcome aspiration, success, and failure pitfalls. Key use case: Maintaining clarity during startup highs and lows. Vs Atomic Habits, it addresses psychological barriers over behavioral systems.

Find Your Extraordinary

by Jessica DiLullo Herrin

Entrepreneurship and personal-development book focused on helping aspiring founders cultivate mindset, habits, and strategies to build extraordinary careers and ventures.

From Strength to Strength: Finding Success, Happiness, and Deep Purpose in the Second Half of Life

by Arthur C. Brooks

Arthur Brooks guides aging entrepreneurs from fluid intelligence peaks to wisdom-based fulfillment, mindset shift to service and detachment for personal growth post-peak career. Use case: Overcoming midlife success decline by mentoring and connecting deeply. Vs Atomic Habits, it focuses on life-stage transitions over daily routines.

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.

Linchpin

by Seth Godin

Seth Godin's Linchpin inspires entrepreneurs to become indispensable creators, shifting mindset from compliance to artistic value-creation, overcoming resistance to ship remarkable work amid startup commoditization. Key habit: Emotional labor and generosity. Vs Atomic Habits, it unleashes unique human gifts over systematized routines.

The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People

by Stephen Richards Covey

Stephen Covey's foundational personal development book. Build character, achieve goals, and create lasting success through principle-centered living.

The Creative Curve: How to Develop the Right Idea at the Right Time

by Allen Gannett

Allen Gannett demystifies creativity for entrepreneurs, teaching mindset shifts via consumption, imitation, and iteration to generate breakthrough ideas and overcome innovation failures. Key habits: building pattern recognition through deliberate practice. Vs Atomic Habits, it targets creative ideation processes rather than daily behaviors.

Use Your Perfect Memory

by Tony Buzan

Practical guide to memory improvement techniques that can help founders retain information, learn faster, and manage complex knowledge required in building and scaling a startup.

What Got You Here Won't Get You There: How Successful People Become Even More Successful

by Marshall Goldsmith & Mark Reiter

A leadership and personal effectiveness book that helps high achievers identify and change habits that limit their next stage of growth—useful for startup founders transitioning from early hustle to leading larger teams and companies.

THE BROKEN RULES OF ENGAGEMENT

by Pinky Thompson

Pinky Thompson challenges conventional business engagement norms, offering founders unconventional rules for authentic relationships and deal-making pivots. Use cases in sales strategy shifts; contrarian interpersonal tactics vs Porter's market models.

Exponential Organizations: Why New Organizations Are Ten Times Better, Faster, Cheaper Than Yours

by Salim Ismail & Michael Malone & Yuri van Geest

Salim Ismail presents tactics for founders to build ExOs using SCALE (Staff on demand, Community, Algorithms, Leveraged assets, Engagement) for 10x growth over linear scaling. Key use cases include rapid team scaling via external talent and metrics like MTP alignment for hypergrowth phases. Vs Blitzscaling, it emphasizes tech-leveraged attributes for sustainable exponential expansion.

Scaling Up: How a Few Companies Make It...and Why the Rest Don't

by Verne Harnish

Verne Harnish delivers tactics via People, Strategy, Execution, Cash framework with One-Page Strategic Plan for founders scaling operations and teams. Key metrics include Rockefeller Habits Checklist adherence for growth phases. Vs Blitzscaling, it provides disciplined tools for profitable hypergrowth.

Get Together: How to Build a Community With Your People

by Bailey Richardson & Kevin Huynh & Kai Elmer Sotto

A practical guide to building communities both online and in person. Written by the founders of People & Company, this book provides stories, practical steps, and principles for cultivating thriving communities based on their work with organizations like Instagram, Nike, and Porsche.

Get Together: How to Build a Community With Your People

by Bailey Richardson & Kevin Huynh & Kai Elmer Sotto

Bailey Richardson et al. provide tactics for founders to spark, stoke, and sustain communities driving organic growth and retention. Key use cases include scaling user engagement metrics like participation rates for team-led loyalty vs. founder-led. Compared to Hacking Growth, it emphasizes community-led hypergrowth over tactical experiments.

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.

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.

Unreasonable Hospitality: The Remarkable Power of Giving People More Than They Expect

by Will Guidara

A national bestseller from Will Guidara, former co-owner of Eleven Madison Park, which was named #1 on the World's 50 Best Restaurants list. The book reveals how exceptional service and authentic human connection can become a competitive advantage in any industry.

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.

Peak

by Chip Conley

"Peak" by Chip Conley adapts Maslow's hierarchy of needs to the business world, as described by Fred Destin of Accel Partners. The book offers advice on achieving sustainable outperformance and leveraging crises for better outcomes.

Rocket Surgery Made Easy

by Steve Krug

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

Setting the Table

by Danny Meyer

Danny Meyer's "Setting the Table" explores the importance of creating exceptional customer experiences, a crucial element for any successful startup.

The Customer Rules

by Lee Cockerell

A customer-experience and service excellence book by Lee Cockerell outlining practical rules for delighting customers and building loyalty—directly relevant to startup founders focused on product–market fit and retention.

The Ice Cream Maker

by Subir Chowdhury

A business parable about quality and customer service that illustrates how organizations can innovate and delight customers—relevant for startup founders building product and culture from the ground up.

The One to One Future: Building Relationships One Customer at a Time

by Don Peppers & Martha Rogers

Introduces concepts of lifetime value, most profitable customers, and customer lifecycle.

The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business

by Charles Duhigg

A groundbreaking exploration by New York Times reporter Charles Duhigg of the science behind habit formation and how understanding habits can transform businesses, organizations, and lives.

Habit Stacking: 127 Small Actions That Take Five Minutes or Less

by S. J. Scott

Presents 127 micro-habits to build productivity routines. Useful for busy startup founders to enhance efficiency through small, stackable changes.

Indistractable: How to Control Your Attention and Choose Your Life

by Nir Eyal & Julie Li

A practical guide to controlling attention and overcoming distraction by the author of Hooked. Reveals that external triggers aren't the root cause of distraction—internal psychological triggers are—and provides a comprehensive system for becoming indistractable.

The Fifth Revolution: Reinventing Workplace Happiness, Health, and Engagement Through Compassion

by Immanual Joseph

Explores reinventing workplace culture with compassion for happiness and engagement, by Immanual Joseph. Average rating of 4.75 from 4 ratings on Goodreads. Relevant for startup leaders building company culture.

Start With Why

by Simon Sinek

"Start With Why" by Simon Sinek explores the importance of understanding your core purpose in business. While not exclusively a startup book, it provides valuable insights into building a loyal customer base by focusing on the 'why' behind your business.

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.

Topgrading

by Bradford D. Smart

A hiring and talent management book focused on rigorous methods to identify, recruit, and retain "A players"—highly relevant for startup founders who need to build strong early teams and avoid costly hiring mistakes.

The Referral Engine: Teaching Your Business to Market Itself

by John Jantsch

John Jantsch's "The Referral Engine" provides strategies for businesses to leverage word-of-mouth marketing effectively. It's an essential read for startups aiming to build a loyal customer base through organic growth.

Choose Yourself!

by James Altucher

A personal and entrepreneurial development book by James Altucher that argues founders must stop waiting for external validation—investors, employers, or gatekeepers—and instead build their own opportunities through experimentation, side projects, and resilient habits, making it a motivational read for early-stage startup founders.

Eat That Frog!

by Brian Tracy

Productivity and time-management book by Brian Tracy that offers 21 practical methods to overcome procrastination and focus on high-value tasks. While not startup-specific, it is widely recommended for founders and entrepreneurs who need to prioritize effectively and execute more in less time, making it a useful supporting read for startup founders.

The 4 Disciplines of Execution

by Chris McChesney & Sean Covey & Jim Huling

A framework for turning strategic priorities into consistent execution using four disciplines: focus, leverage, engagement, and accountability. Useful for startup teams that need to align around key goals and deliver reliably under rapid growth.

The Daily Entrepreneur

by Steve Scott & Rebecca Livermore

The Daily Entrepreneur by S.J. Scott and Rebecca Livermore outlines 33 success habits for entrepreneurs. It provides actionable tips for maintaining productivity and motivation, making it a valuable resource for small business owners and freelancers.

Zero Procrastination: A Handbook to Remove Procrastination, Increase Efficiency and Boost Your Productivity

A self-help and productivity book focused on overcoming procrastination, improving personal efficiency, and boosting productivity. While it can be useful for startup founders as a general productivity aid, it is not a core or canonical startup/entrepreneurship book like “Zero to One” or similar must-read founder texts.

The Membership Economy: Find Your Super Users, Master the Forever Transaction, and Build Recurring Revenue

by Robbie Kellman Baxter

By Robbie Kellman Baxter (2015, McGraw-Hill), this book argues that successful modern businesses build ongoing relationships rather than one-off transactions, covering membership and subscription models across software, retail, and media.