I’m not the kind of person who binge reads books. I do read sometimes novels, rarely nonfictions. In a world of videos and sounds, I find reading books time-consuming as it requires a permanent attention to rightly get the ideas conveyed by the words. Yet, I recognize that books can be useful as they store a lot of knowledge available nowhere else. They let authors fully develop their ideas and tell their stories.

The entrepreneur literature is prolific and it would have been presumptuous of me to ignore all those relevant experiences. Authors might have faced a different context from mine but it is still interesting to get some inspiration from them.

Here are those I would recommend you to read before taking the first step.

  • Rich Dad Poor Dad by  Robert Kiyosaki

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Robert loves himself, a lot.
Robert is a friend of Donald Trump.
Robert can turn water into wine.
Yet, Robert has some good pieces of advice he got from his friend’s father when he was young. Money has to work for you not the other way round. You have to build assets that will generate regular incomes. Don’t buy expensive and luxury stuff if it costs you all your savings.

  • The $100 Startup: Fire Your Boss, Do What You Love and Work Better to Live More by Chris Guillebeau

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You think you need a truck full of cash to start your business? Think again ! Chris Guillebeau tells you how passionate people managed to run successful businesses with a small initial investment.

  • The Lean Startup: How Constant Innovation Creates Radically Successful Businesses by Eric Ries

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This book is a must read if you plan starting your company anytime soon. It gives you a proven practical framework to test your ideas quickly by measuring and validating every step you take.

  • The 7 Day Startup: You Don’t Learn Until You Launch by Dan Norris

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The Lean Startup is a great framework but it might not work for solo entrepreneurs with limited ressources who seek for a quick working company. Dan Norris draws a to-do list, day-by-day, for launching your own company in only 7 days.

  • Zero to One: Notes on Start Ups, or How to Build the Future by Peter Thiel

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Peter Thiel, founder of PayPal, explains us how innovation can create brand new markets with no competition. Globalization, which means to him copying what exists elsewhere, leads from 1 (idea) to n (times the same idea). Whereas innovation takes you from nothing to something entirely new. From zero to one.

  • Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think by Peter Diamandis51wczovxdsl

Our reptilian brain needs danger to feel alive and that’s the reason why we are surrounded with bad news. Yet, the world has never been so peaceful and innovation is driving a whole new era of abundance. Peter Diamandis maps the breakthrough in various industries that will reshape our world.

  • Y: The Last Man by Brian K. Vaughan

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What the hell this book has to do with entrepreneurship? Well, thank you for asking. Y : The Last Man is a graphic novel depicting what the world would be if all men vanish from Earth. Aside the main plot, the world imagined by Brian K. Vaughan cleverly shows how women adapt in a new environment. It is a nice analogy for companies facing new challenges in an ever changing world.