First 5 Books to Read for Financing Tech Startups

December 16, 2020 by Kaylan Pepin

No reading list can replace operating experience, but the right books give founders and finance partners a shared vocabulary for better conversations.

The shelf

These are books I return to when thinking about how technology companies are formed, financed, and scaled. Some are practical manuals; others are useful because they sharpen the questions.

Venture Deals — Brad Feld and Jason Mendelson
The Lean Startup — Eric Ries
Zero to One — Peter Thiel with Blake Masters
The Innovator’s Dilemma — Clayton Christensen
Disrupted — Dan Lyons

Read with a pencil

The best result is not memorizing someone else’s framework. It is developing a sharper point of view about which assumptions actually match the company in front of you.

Archive note: This edition was lightly restored for the new personal site. You can also read the Levr.ai edition.