10 Books Every Startup Incubator and Growth Accelerator Should Read

Starting your own company as an entrepreneur is a challenge that many young graduates are facing these days. Granted it’s not easy, which is why approaching a start-up incubator and growth accelerator is a very viable option. But what does it take to be an Incubator and Growth Accelerator? If you’re in the business of helping entrepreneurs achieve their goals, you need to have a very different set of skills, especially since every company that approaches you is different, and has a different set of requirements. How do you handle it? How do you develop these companies? And most importantly, how do you turn a profit in the shortest time possible? Here are 10 books that every startup incubator and growth accelerator should read, as chosen by Adam Bain and Maya Grossman from Book Authority.

BookAuthority identifies and rates the best books in the world, based on public mentions, recommendations, ratings, and sentiment.

1. The Startup Playbook – Founder-to-Founder Advice From Two Startup Veterans by Rajat Bhargava and Will Herman

In The Startup Playbook, the authors share their years of combined knowledge gleaned from building and leading companies to help you make the right decisions to keep your company growing and out of the startup graveyard.

Featuring proven and repeatable tactics for refining your idea, team-building, raising money, developing a product or service, and more, this book is the essential guide containing everything you need to know as you take the journey from idea to successful startup.

2. How to start a start-up – The Silicon Valley Playbook for Entrepreneurs by Tarun Agarwal

Nominated as “Book of the Year” by Product Hunt (the leading Silicon Valley community for discovering the best new products), “How to Start a Startup” reveals the secrets to raising money, building products users love, hiring a great team, getting press coverage, attracting customers, growing your business, and more

No matter what type of product you’re creating (web, mobile, hardware, online-to-offline, etc.) or what audience you’re targeting (consumers or the enterprise), this playbook will give you all the information necessary to launch and scale a successful startup.

3. Bend the Curve – Accelerating Your Start-up’s Success by Andrew Razeghi

Bend the Curve is a book about how to get more out of your big idea from people who know—successful entrepreneurs, the venture capitalists who’ve funded them, and the experienced mentors of the world’s leading new venture accelerator, Techstars.

4.The Corporate Refugee Start-up Guide – How to Prepare Yourself, Prepare Your Family, Leave Your Job and Build the Ultimate Startup by Dave Gee

This book will not sugarcoat the entrepreneurial journey. It is a practical step-by-step guide that will provide you with insider startup secrets from an assembled team of world-class entrepreneurs, angel investors, startup accelerator executives, academics, attorneys and more

5. Accelerated Start-up – Everything You Need to Know to Make Your Startup Dreams Come True From Idea to Product to Company by Vitaly Golomb

A Silicon Valley Venture Capitalist and Serial Entrepreneur teaches you how to succeed in taking your startup from idea to product to company. Accelerated Startup takes entrepreneurs through the startup minefield from fostering revolutionary ideas to building the right team and launching the product to raising angel and venture capital, to finding the first 10,000 customers and ultimately taking the company to a successful exit.

6. Lean Accelerator – Lessons and Stories from five early-stage startups by Eric Morrow

This book explores the lessons learned from a number of startups and empowers anyone with a business idea to gain traction and to find paying customers. It includes weekly journal entries written by the startups explaining what their hypotheses were, the exact tests they ran to validate their ideas and the results of their experiments. 99% of startups fail – use the tools described in this book to join the 1% that succeed. 

7. Collective Disruption – How Corporations & Startups Can Co-Create Transformative New Businesses by Michael Docherty

Disruption is the new mandate for big companies. Too often, disruption is a bad word, something you don’t see coming. It doesn’t have to be that way. This book is about changing that paradigm and learning to embrace disruption through collaboration. Whether you’re an executive trying to drive growth in a change-resistant organization or an entrepreneur with a big idea and looking for corporate partnerships, this book is for you. Collective Disruption provides a road map and a framework for co-creating new businesses.

8. Foundations of Founding – A handbook for startup CEOs by Alan Clayton

A handbook with all the basic tools that have stood the test of time about founding businesses and mentoring over 1000 startup founders backed by the world’s largest investor in early-stage startups, and contributing to accelerator programs around the world, Alan Clayton, the author of Foundations of Founding serves as the business coach for SOSV, global venture capital suppliers. Alan works directly with teams across all SOSV accelerators. He focuses much of his time on HAX Growth companies, growing hardware distribution and sales networks globally.

9. MBA Bootcamp – Ultimate Accelerator for Business by Harish Vepuri

This book basically covers content which could help in accelerating yourself in the field of business. Harish Vepuri nicknamed Harris is an instructor and contributor to Mooc startup Zeus Studios and Courskia.

10. Start-up Incubators and Business Accelerators – The Easy Way to Create a Startup Incubation and Business Acceleration Center by Jobe David Leonard

Startup Incubators and Business Accelerators breaks down how the system is currently not working in small communities and what it will take; from buildings, office equipment, people and support; to breaking free from what’s not working into something that can. The author breaks down how the system is currently not functioning the way it should, and how, with a few simple steps, businesses and communities can repair their broken business models.

What are your thoughts on this selection of books? Are you as excited as we are to read them? Let us know in the comments.