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Recommended Reading: The Books and Essays Behind This Wiki

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Recommended Reading

The 45 sources behind this wiki, organized by when you should read them. Each wiki source summary gives you the key frameworks; these are the full originals for going deeper.

If You Read 5 Things

The essential canon — covers 80% of what matters:

  1. Paul Graham — “Do Things That Don’t Scale” (2013, essay) The single best piece of startup advice ever written. → pg-do-things-that-dont-scale

  2. Sam Altman — “Startup Playbook” (2015, guide) Everything YC teaches, distilled. Idea, team, product, execution. → altman-startup-playbook

  3. Marc Andreessen — “The Only Thing That Matters” (2007, essay) Product-market fit as the defining startup concept. → andreessen-only-thing-that-matters

  4. Peter Thiel — “Zero to One” (2014, book) Competition, monopoly, secrets, and building the future. → thiel-zero-to-one

  5. Clayton Christensen — “Competing Against Luck” (2016, book) Products are hired to do a job. The foundational product framework. → christensen-jobs-to-be-done

By Topic

Finding Ideas

  • Paul Graham — “How to Get Startup Ideas” (2012, essay) → pg-how-to-get-startup-ideas The Well test, Schlep Blindness, organic vs manufactured ideas
  • Arvid Kahl — “Audience-First Entrepreneurship” (book/blog) → kahl-audience-first Invert the order: audience first, product second, code last

Talking to Customers

  • Steve Blank — “Customer Development” (2005, methodology) → blank-customer-development “There are no facts inside the building”
  • Rob Fitzpatrick — “The Mom Test” (2013, book) → mom-test The 3 rules for customer interviews that actually work
  • Clayton Christensen — “Jobs-to-be-Done” (2016, book) → christensen-jobs-to-be-done The milkshake story, Four Forces, Job Story format, Switch Interviews

Positioning & Narrative

  • April Dunford — “Obviously Awesome + Sales Pitch” (2019/2023, books) → dunford-positioning The 5-component positioning canvas; order matters; positioning is upstream of everything
  • Andy Raskin — “The Greatest Sales Deck I’ve Ever Seen” (2016, essay) → raskin-strategic-narrative The 5-step strategic narrative: big change → winners/losers → promised land → magic gifts → evidence

Measuring Progress

  • Rahul Vohra — “Superhuman’s PMF Engine” (2018, article) → superhuman-pmf-engine The 40% “very disappointed” benchmark and 4-step engine
  • Mark Leslie — “Leslie’s Compass” (article) → leslies-compass-gtm Is your product bought or sold? The 7 GTM dimensions
  • Eric Ries — “The Lean Startup” (2011, book) → lean-startup-principles Build-Measure-Learn and validated learning

Growth & Distribution

  • Brian Balfour + Casey Winters — “Growth Loops” (2018, essays) → balfour-growth-loops Loops beat funnels; Four Fits; Product-Channel Fit; why AARRR is wrong
  • Lenny Rachitsky — “First 1,000 Users” (newsletter) → lenny-first-1000-users 7 strategies from 40+ apps — pick ONE
  • Andrew Chen — “The Cold Start Problem” (2021, book) → chen-cold-start-problem Atomic networks, hard side vs easy side, 5 stages
  • a16z — “The Dynamics of Network Effects” (article) → a16z-network-effects When network effects work, asymptote, and break down
  • Harry Dry — “Marketing Examples” (website) → dry-marketing-examples 3 copywriting rules, content-led growth, newsletter-first distribution
  • Adam Frankl — “The Developer Facing Startup” (book) → frankl-developer-facing-startup “Developers don’t lie to other developers”

Pricing & Business Model

  • Jason Cohen — “Pricing Determines Your Business Model” (essay) → cohen-pricing-business-model $0 to $100K/mo — each price point creates a different business
  • Jason Cohen — “Annual Prepay” (essay) → cohen-annual-prepay The cash-flow hack: reduce CAC payback from 12 months to instant
  • Jason Cohen — “Max MRR” (essay) → cohen-max-mrr Your revenue ceiling = New MRR ÷ Churn. Math doesn’t lie.
  • Rob Walling — “The SaaS Playbook” (book) → walling-saas-playbook 6 critical areas for bootstrapped SaaS

Avoiding Failure

  • Paul Graham — “The 18 Mistakes That Kill Startups” (2006, essay) → pg-18-mistakes The canonical failure checklist
  • Jessica Livingston — “What Goes Wrong” (2012, essay) → livingston-what-goes-wrong The “tunnel of monsters” from 467 YC startups
  • Fractl — “Why Startups Fail” (research report) → startup-failure-study Data from 193 post-mortems
  • Jason Cohen — “The Startup Drake Equation” (essay) → cohen-startup-drake-equation One zero in any variable kills everything

Leading and Operating

  • Ben Horowitz — “Peacetime CEO / Wartime CEO” (article) → horowitz-wartime-peacetime Two fundamentally different leadership modes
  • Paul Graham — “Founder Mode” (2024, essay) → pg-founder-mode Why “hire good people and give them room” is wrong for founders
  • Keith Rabois — “How to Operate” (2014, lecture) → rabois-how-to-operate Editing, barrels vs ammunition, the delegation matrix
  • Paul Graham — “The Right Kind of Stubborn” (2024, essay) → pg-right-kind-of-stubborn Persistence vs obstinacy — “attached to the goal, not the idea”

Money & Fundraising

  • Paul Graham — “Default Alive or Default Dead?” (2015, essay) → pg-default-alive-dead The three-variable test every founder should run monthly
  • Tyler Tringas — “Calm Company Fund” (blog) → tringas-calm-company-fund The third path: revenue-based financing, no exit pressure

The Contrarian View

  • Jason Fried — “Bootstrapping Philosophy” (interview) → fried-bootstrapping 80 people, 100K customers, no VC, tens of millions in profit
  • Naval Ravikant — “How to Get Rich (Without Getting Lucky)” (2018, tweetstorm) → naval-how-to-get-rich Four types of leverage (labor, capital, code, media); code and media are permissionless

The AI Era

  • Garry Tan — “YC in the AI Era” (2025, interview) → tan-yc-ai-era 25% of YC startups with 95% AI code; $10-20M ARR in 10-20 months
  • Michael Seibel — “YC’s Essential Startup Advice” (article) → seibel-yc-essential-advice The 90/10 rule and the pocket guide
  • Mike Knoop — “Zapier’s AI Code Red” (2025, interview) → knoop-zapier-ai-code-red The research sabbatical, when to hit the panic button, agent architecture
  • Hamel Shankar & Hussain — “AI Evals for Engineers & PMs” (2024, guide) → shankar-husain-ai-evals The hottest new skill: measuring whether AI features actually work

The Full Bookshelf

For the dedicated reader, the books behind the essays:

BookAuthorCore Idea
Zero to OnePeter ThielMonopoly > competition; secrets; 0→1
The Lean StartupEric RiesBuild-Measure-Learn; validated learning
Competing Against LuckClayton ChristensenJobs-to-be-Done; the milkshake story
Obviously AwesomeApril DunfordThe 5-component positioning canvas
The Mom TestRob FitzpatrickHow to talk to customers without lying to yourself
The Cold Start ProblemAndrew ChenNetwork effects, atomic networks, cold starts
The Hard Thing About Hard ThingsBen HorowitzWartime/peacetime; the struggle
The Minimalist EntrepreneurSahil LavingiaThe Gumroad story; build less
The SaaS PlaybookRob WallingBootstrapped SaaS from $0 to $1M MRR
Founders at WorkJessica LivingstonInterviews with early-stage founders
BlitzscalingReid HoffmanSpeed > efficiency in winner-take-all markets
High Growth HandbookElad GilScaling from 10 to 10,000 people
InspiredMarty CaganProduct discovery and empowered teams
It Doesn’t Have to Be Crazy at WorkJason FriedThe calm company manifesto
The Almanack of Naval RavikantEric JorgensonLeverage, specific knowledge, wealth creation

See Also

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