Startup Growth

10 Practical Startup Books Every Growth-Obsessed Founder Should Read in 2026

A quick search for “startup books” will surface the usual classics: The Lean Startup, Crossing the Chasm, Blitzscaling, The Hard Thing About Hard Things. They’re thoughtful, often inspiring, and occasionally sobering. But when you’re in the messy middle of building a startup — trying to land your first customers, work out why growth has stalled, or decide what to do next with limited time and money — inspiration isn’t the thing you’re short on. Clarity is.

Why The Growth Equation Ended Up as an Audiobook (and Why I Didn’t Read It Myself)

One of the quiet failures of most startup books is that they assume founders have time to read them. The reality is that most founders consume ideas in the cracks between everything else. On the morning commute. While walking the dog. At the gym. Audiobooks fit that reality far better than a hardback ever will, which is why I always planned to release an audio version of The Growth Equation.

In Defence of Enshittification

Every designer has felt it: that pang of frustration when you’re asked to make a product worse. Maybe it’s hiding a feature behind a paywall. Maybe it’s adding extra steps to the sign-up flow to capture more data. Maybe it’s cramming in additional ads in places you know will annoy people, just to squeeze out more revenue. It can feel like the opposite of what we signed up for. We’re here to improve things, not to degrade them.

Why Founders Should Think About Design from Day One

One of the most common mistakes I see founders make is thinking about design too late. They’ll bring in a designer to “make things look nice” after the product is built—when the features are locked in, the UX is baked, and the real strategic decisions have already been made.

The Inevitable Rise of Design: What Hardware’s Past Tells Us About Software’s Future

In 1999, James Dyson made a controversial decision.

After a decade of painstaking invention and a wildly successful UK launch, Dyson—the man and the company—relocated vacuum cleaner manufacturing from Wiltshire, England, to Malaysia. The move provoked public outcry. How could a proudly British inventor, one who’d made a name railing against poor design and shoddy performance, outsource to Asia?

The Need for Speed: How Startups Can Improve Product Velocity

For most startup founders, product velocity—the speed and consistency with which your team ships meaningful updates—is an obsession. And rightly so. In the early stages of a company, momentum is everything. The ability to move quickly can be the difference between winning early users or losing them to a better, faster-moving competitor.

But speed alone isn’t enough. High product velocity isn’t about frantic execution or cutting corners. It’s about consistently delivering value in a fast, focused, and sustainable way. And after working with dozens of early-stage startups, I’ve found it typically comes down to seven key principles.