Three books that really show the good, bad and ugly about building businesses from scratch and scaling them to significance:
1. How to Get Rich (http://bit.ly/xGdV8)
2. Small Giants (http://bit.ly/WpvGa)
3. The Knack (http://bit.ly/OcKa9)
[no affiliate links]
A warning though - many 'start-up to success' books are, in my view, hampered by what I consider exceptional circumstances in the story. So you'll find a sentence/paragraph/page that basically says "so then I managed to raise $350,000 from XYZ to get me started", or "then I got stuck in a lift with Jeff Bezos for 72 hours and managed to convince him to invest". Which is great for their story, but it may or may not reflect your story.
So if you are going to try to learn lessons from the stories of others, and just to be clear let me say I believe this is a good way of learning, make sure you understand the differences between their story and yours and how those differences change the dynamics of starting and scaling a business.
1. How to Get Rich (http://bit.ly/xGdV8)
2. Small Giants (http://bit.ly/WpvGa)
3. The Knack (http://bit.ly/OcKa9)
[no affiliate links]
A warning though - many 'start-up to success' books are, in my view, hampered by what I consider exceptional circumstances in the story. So you'll find a sentence/paragraph/page that basically says "so then I managed to raise $350,000 from XYZ to get me started", or "then I got stuck in a lift with Jeff Bezos for 72 hours and managed to convince him to invest". Which is great for their story, but it may or may not reflect your story.
So if you are going to try to learn lessons from the stories of others, and just to be clear let me say I believe this is a good way of learning, make sure you understand the differences between their story and yours and how those differences change the dynamics of starting and scaling a business.