The Essential Twelve
For a practical VMT mentor-development curriculum, the following twelve books provide the strongest balanced foundation:
The Mom Test
This is one of the shortest and most practically useful books on customer interviews.
The Lean Startup
This is one of the most influential books in modern entrepreneurship and remains a useful introduction to validated learning, minimum viable products, Build-Mea…
The Startup Owner’s Manual
This is more detailed and operational than The Lean Startup.
Competing Against Luck
This is the most accessible full treatment of Jobs to Be Done theory.
Testing Business Ideas
This is one of the most useful practical reference books for designing startup experiments.
Obviously Awesome
This is one of the most practical books on positioning, particularly for B2B technology.
Founding Sales
This is one of the most useful books for technical or product-oriented founders who must learn founder-led B2B sales.
Financial Intelligence for Entrepreneurs
This is an excellent introduction for founders who do not come from accounting or finance.
The Founder’s Dilemmas
Based on extensive research, this book examines co-founder selection, equity, control, hiring, relationships, and the tradeoff between wealth and control.
Humble Inquiry
This short book is highly relevant to VMT mentoring.
The Hard Thing About Hard Things
Horowitz addresses the painful, ambiguous decisions that conventional management books often avoid: layoffs, executive failures, organizational politics, founde…
Practical Wisdom
This book examines the judgment required to apply rules, experience, ethics, and human understanding in circumstances too complex for formulas.
Together, these twelve cover
- Customer discovery
- Problem definition
- Experimentation
- Positioning
- Sales
- Finance
- Founder relationships
- Leadership under pressure
- Mentor inquiry
- Judgment and ethics