These are the 5 books you should read (in this order) before setting up your startup

In the field of startups and entrepreneurship, we can find a multitude of books, on business management, business ideas, innovation, metrics, marketing, sales, motivation and so on... In the meantime, it may be difficult to know where to start. In this article, we show you the 5 books you should read before setting up a startup and the order of reading them, since previous readings are essential to understand concepts from subsequent books and your vision of how entrepreneurship will evolve along this itinerary.

1. The entrepreneur's black book: Don't say you were never warned (Fernando Trías de Bes)

As the name suggests, “Don't say you were never warned” This book is about telling you the truth to your face, you don't hang out with little girls and talk about the entrepreneurial world as it is. Based on the fact that 95% of companies do not last more than 5 years, this book focuses on failure. In terms of humor, it addresses all the most common mistakes in the entrepreneurial adventure, with chapters such as:

• Entrepreneurs and firefighters.
• Only an unhappy person trusts his happy idea.
• Sales enslave us and profits make us.

It's a must read before you go on thinking about your idea. Surely, you will rethink a lot of things before starting with the next book.(You can get it here)

2. The Art of Starting (Guy Kawasaki)

“The Art of Getting Started”, teaches us to do things right from the start. It's not an ordinary business management book, but rather a guide that helps you focus on what's important and discard the superficial ones. It's a great book to learn where and how to start.(You can get it here)

3. Business model generation (Alexander Osterwalder)

This book has created a whole philosophy and a great community around it. It shows the most innovative techniques and models currently being used by major companies around the world. It offers you tools to begin to unravel your idea and transform it into a business model.(You can get it here)

4. The Entrepreneur's Handbook (Steve Blank)

As the name suggests, this book is a manual, and as such it should not be read like a novel, but should accompany you throughout the process of creating, consolidating and expanding your company. What the author is trying is that, through different methodologies, you take firm steps to validate your idea until it is a success.(You can get it here)

5. From Zero to One (Peter Thiel)

This book encourages entrepreneurship in vertical processes, based on innovative products. It's a great book full of provocative ideas. Reading this introduction, you can imagine how it's focused:“In the business world, every moment is unique. The next Bill Gates will not create an operating system. The next Larry Page or Sergey Brin won't make a search engine. And the next Mark Zuckerberg won't create a social network. If what you do is copy them, it's obvious that you haven't learned anything from them”(You can get it here)Surely there are more books that could go in the fourth or third place on this itinerary. If you know of any, we invite you to leave us a comment.