Book Club

Heads up: All books featured here have been read or vetted by Startup Chucktown's team and meet or exceed our precise standards. If you buy something, we may earn an affiliate commission. This list is constantly evolving, so check back frequently. Think a great book is missing? Let me know.

Currently Reading

Entrepreneurship 101

• The $100 Startup: Reinvent the Way You Make a Living, Do What You Love, and Create a New Future
• The Entrepreneur Mind: 100 Essential Beliefs, Characteristics, and Habits of Elite Entrepreneurs
• The Inmates Are Running the Asylum: Why High Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity
• The 7 Day Startup: You Don't Learn Until You Launch
• Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action
• Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future

Part-time Entrepreneur (Building A Side Hustle)

• The 10% Entrepreneur: Live Your Startup Dream Without Quitting Your Day Job
• The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich
• Crush It!: Why NOW is the Time to Cash In on Your Passion

Product Development & Idea Validation

• Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days
• The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses
• Will It Fly? How to Test Your Next Business Idea So You Don't Waste Your Time and Money
• Hooked: How to BUild Habit-Forming Products
• How to Transform Your Ideas Into Software Products: A step-by-step guide for validating your ideas and bringing them to life!

Strategy & Marketing

• Growth Hacker Marketing: A Primer on the Future of PR, Marketing, and Advertising
• Contagious: Why Things Catch On
• The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less
• The Brand Gap: How to Bridge the Distance Between Business Strategy and Design
• The Art of Social Media: Power Tips for Power Users
• Punk Marketing: Get Off Your Ass and Join the Revolution
• Chasing Cool: Standing Out in Today's Cluttered Marketplace
• The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference
• Lean Analytics: Use Data to Build a Better Startup Faster
• Marketing Metrics: The Manager's Guide to Measuring Marketing Performance

Understanding Your Customer

• Why We Buy: The Science of Shopping--Updated and Revised for the Internet, the Global Consumer, and Beyond
• Ask: The Counterintuitive Online Method to Discover Exactly What Your Customers Want to Buy...Create a Mass of Raving Fans...and Take Any BUsiness to the Next Level
• What Customers Crave: How to Create Relevant and Memorable Experiences at Every Touchpoint
• Customer Experience: What, How and Why Now
• Hug Your Haters: How to Embrace Complaints and Keep Your Customers

Stories from the Trenches

• One Million Frogs: Lessons About Entrepreneurship Learned the Hard Way
• Outliers: The Story of Success
• Losing My Virginity: How I Survived, Had Fun, and Made a Fortune Doing Business My Way
• Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose
• Blue Streak: Inside jetBlue, the Upstart that Rocked an Industry
• It's My Pleasure: The Impact of Extraordinary Talent and a Compelling Culture

Keep Developing Yourself

• Creative Confidence: Unleashing the Creative Potential Within Us All
• Smarter Faster Better: The Secrets of Being Productive in Life and Business
• The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business
• 17 Anti-Procrastination Hacks: How to Stop Being Lazy, Overcome Procrastination, and Finally Get Stuff Done
• The Power of Positive Thinking
• How to Win Friends & Influence People
• Present! A Techie's Guide to Public Speaking
• Think and Grow Rich: The Original, and Official Publication of The Napoleon Hill Foundation
• Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience
• Information Anxiety 2
• Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less
• Leaders Eat Last: Why Some Teams Pull Together and Others Don't
• The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership: Follow Them and People Will Follow You
• The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change
• Give and Take: Why Helping Others Drives Our Success
• Who Moved My Cheese?: An Amazing Way to Deal with Change in Your Work and in Your Life
• Words That Work: It's Not What You Say, It's What People Hear
• Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking