What are the books you recommend startup founders read?

Based on my marketing consulting work with dozens of Founders, I am about to throw you a giant curveball:

Scientific Advertising
Book by Claude C. Hopkins

This book is a century old. And yet the concepts for how to think about marketing strategically that work over time have not changed. Just the vocabulary by people who need to sell books.

When I got my M.S. in database marketing in 2003, I quickly realized the concepts I was being taught were laid out by the Wunderman agency – and the man was a genius.

And he freely admitted he cribbed openly from that original text.

Then in the Internet onset, developers in Silicone Valley “invented” a new vocabulary for concepts that we’ve all known.

And on and on.

Read the master. But start with this. If a 2% email click-through rate is success, then a 98% non-click rate is success. Easy to say. Hard to bring into your thinking every day.

The Essential Drucker by Peter F. Drucker

Exactly What To Say by Phil M. Jones

Mastery by Robert Greene

Top Three:

Hero with a Thousand Faces by Joseph Campbell

Story Brand by Donald Miller

How To win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie

Hard Things about Hard Things, Founder’s Dilemma, Lean Startup, Play Bigger, Reboot, Start with Why, Zero to One

I like Art of the Start 2.0 by Guy Kawasaki.  I like it because Guy was one of the earliest Apple employees and has advised startups throughout the years.  He said this is basically his brain dump on building companies.  I do feel it’s a little marketing-focused, but it has a lot of good nuggets in it.