Best Books For a Startup?

High Tech Start Up - John L. Nesheim

Crossing the Chasm - Geoffrey Moore

One Minute Manager (but only if you've never had management experience)

A nice compliment to the books is a "startup dot com" documentary. It has a lot of dot-com era specifics, but it is very enlightening nonetheless.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0256408/

Art of the Start - Guy Kawasaki

How to Get Rich - Felix Dennis

Differentiate or Die - Jack Trout

and of course...

Founders at Work - Jessica Livingston

Hackers and Painters - Paul Graham

Bootstrap - Kenneth L. Hess

Founders at Work (of course)

"Best Practices"-type books that cover the tools and technology the startup is using, whether its Textmate, Unix, Subversion, whatever. Becoming more efficient is never a bad thing.

I'd also add books on management and dealing with people:

- The Art of Speedreading People - Tieger

- Behind Closed Doors - Rothman, Derby

- The Mythical Man Month - Brooks

- Most if not all the books on Joel Spolsky's "MBA Curriculum":

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/FogCreekMBACurriculum...

Smarter Ventures - Katharine Cambell

I recommend "The Design of Everyday Things" (formely "The Psychology of Everyday Things") by Donald Norman. It's kind of dated and it's focused on product design, but it has some very good ideas about making products that are easy to use and understand.

I am writing my own ... Survival Guide for Bootstrapping Entrepreneurs

http://www.startupforless.org

1) Tipping Point by Malcom Gladwell (very interesting ideas)

2) Innovator's Dilemma (for understanding what can work well)

3) Inside Intuit (for a great business story)

4) Eric Sink on the Business of Software

For the German readership: "Cash Code" by Tritsch and Kohlhammer. It has a focus on the legal and administrative stuff around a startup. http://www.cashcodeportal.de/

If They Say No Just Say Next by John Fuhrma

The New New Thing

Founders at Work

Hackers and Painters

How To Get Rich

Competitive Strategies

The Intelligent Investor (or Security Analysis)

Liar's Poker

This might be only tangentially related, but I dig "How To Be Rich" by J. Paul Getty. He talks a lot about how he built Getty Oil, and about what's important in business and in life.

I think news.yc needs a search.

Heres some we added 3 days ago :p

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=135185

I have a book left over from my b-school days that I often dip back into. It's called "The Entrepreneurial Venture" and it's sort of like "Founders at Work" if that had been written by Harvard Business School professors.

http://www.amazon.com/Entrepreneurial-Venture-Practice-Manag...

I know that in this group it probably provides an alternative perspective.

Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die

http://www.amazon.com/Made-Stick-Ideas-Survive-Others/dp/140...

Wow, how could I forget this one:

eBoys: The First Inside Account of Venture Capitalists at Work by Randall Stross (San Jose State Professor, Writes for the Times Occasionally, etc.)

Seriously, this is a really open approach to how Benchmark Capital approached investments in eBay, Webvan,etc. I believe it's available on itunes as an audiobook as well.

The New New Thing(http://www.wwnorton.com/catalog/fall99/newnewthing.htm)

I'd also highly recommend The Monk and the Riddle - I don't think I've ever seen it suggested elsewhere, but I recommend it to everyone.

I found PayPal Wars to be a bit dull, and the author a bit smug.

I'm surprised that 'Getting Real' hasn't been suggested yet, perhaps it has something to do with the recent backlash against 37signals. Anyway I'll stand by it. Fantastic book. I might even go as far as to say 'essential'.

http://gettingreal.37signals.com/toc.php

"How to win friends and influence people" by Dale Carnegie.

This book should especially be read by those that aren't good with people.

It looks like nobody else has recommend one book I particularly like: Startups That Work: Surprising Research on What Makes or Breaks a New Company by Joel Kurtzman and Glenn Rifkin.

It combines a large quantitative study on startups with highlights from case interviews. The book's claims are generally backed by empirical evidence, which is something missing in many other entrepreneurship books.

David Sickmiller

Insanely Great - Steven Levy. About the building of the original Macintosh. Extremely inspiring and interesting.

The Adventure of Leadership by Hap Klopp is a great weekend read.