5 books every budding entrepreneur needs to read

Startup School

Before you even start thinking about starting your own company, read these books. Photo by Utamaru Kido/Getty Images

You thought you were done with homework, but, if you're an entrepreneur looking to start a company, that's not the case. The startup world is a lot of fun, but also a lot of work and preparation.

So, what kind of homework should you do? Unfortunately, watching Shark Tank and HBO's Silicon Valley can only take you so far. You need to know about pre-money valuations, convertible notes, liquidation preferences, control provisions, and so much more. Fortunately, there are plenty of books to get you up to speed. Yes, books — do you remember those? Turns out plain old books can be very useful if you're looking to get involved with the even the highest tech parts of the startup world. So here are five books to get you started.

The Launch Pad: Inside Y Combinator, Silicon Valley's Most Exclusive School for Startups

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As a startup founder, you'll need to know what Y Combinator is, how it works, what the people are like, and how great founders and mentors conduct themselves. This book offers a behind the scenes look at the most elite startup incubator/accelerator. Why is it the most elite? Because it keeps producing unicorns (companies valued at over $1 billion) — think AirBnb, Dropbox, Twitch, Stripe. With this book, you'll really get a sense of the day to day conversations and challenges that startups face. It is also just a really entertaining book and a great starting point.

Venture Deals: Be Smarter Than Your Lawyer and Venture Capitalist

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After reading Launch Pad, it is time to get down to business. Venture Deals is a fairly in-depth breakdown of the relationship between investors and startup founders. It runs through typical VC titles, processes, and incentives. Perhaps most importantly, it goes into the economic and control provisions of the term sheet. You'll want a pen and paper to take plenty of notes when going through this one. Do not expect this book to always be fun, but do expect to learn a lot. If you can make it through this one and really absorb what is being said then you might actually be serious about the startup world, so good job.

Measure What Matters: How Google, Bono, and the Gates Foundation Rock the World with OKRs

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Whether you'll be a founder, investor, reporter, or just want to be a successful person, you need to set lofty goals, write them down, share them, and stick to them. OKR stands for objectives and key result. This book is less about startups and more about pushing yourself to achieve more. OKRs force you to break down your goals in metrics that can be tracked. For example, I knew I wanted to meet with hundreds of startups per year for my investment job. But how many exactly? How do I set a goal for that? Simple — just say you need to meet with at least two startups per day for a least one hour. That means at least 10 startups per week (five working days), or over 40 per month. Set lofty goals, so that you fail to achieve 30 percent of them.

Startup CEO: A Field Guide to Scaling Up Your Business

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Time to step inside the shoes of the CEO — must be nice to be in charge, right? I'm sure it is nice in some ways, but it is also an unbelievable amount of work. This book goes through every last detail — in detail. You may feel overwhelmed at times, but you might also feel ready to manage a company. There is much more to managing a company than can be found in a single book, but this is a great breakdown of the day-to-day activities. It has tips on how to be organized, prioritize time, grow your key employees, and interact with the board of directors. Sure, you'll still need to build a great product that customers want, and you'll still need to have great interpersonal and communication skills, but at least this book describes the details of how to operate.

​Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future​

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The final book in this short list will drive you to think big — and think differently. Think about building a dominating monopoly. Yes, monopolies are a good thing when you're the one making the business. I hope that concept is not too upsetting, but you should be ruthless when you are out there competing. That means giving your customers something amazing that your competition can't even compete with. If you think about it, the big tech companies pretty much dominate at least one market. Google has search and maps. Facebook, since owning Instagram, has social media. Amazon has logistics. If you're going to start a startup you should aim to be 10 times better than any competition in one key way. You want to clearly differentiate your product from your competition. Zero to One teaches you how to think that way, and so much more.

So, there you have it. I think these five books will give you a good starting point. There are a dozen or more other books you should also read about innovating, investing, and managing, but you must start somewhere. This list gives you a little bit of everything to get you started.

Now, you just have to actually start.

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Mark Friday is an associate leading venture capital investments at Houston-based Cathexis Holdings LP.

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UH lands $4M NIH grant to study early signs of autoimmune disease

NIH funding

The University of Houston recently received a $4 million National Institutes of Health grant to support a 10-year longitudinal study to identify the earliest biological markers of autoimmune disease.

Led by Chandra Mohan, the Hugh Roy and Lillie Cranz Cullen Endowed Professor of Biomedical Engineering, the study aims to examine what causes Systemic Autoimmune Rheumatic Diseases (SARDs) and to identify targets for future treatments. The study will be carried out in collaboration with Dr. Karen Costenbader at Harvard Medical School, Boston.

SARDs include conditions like rheumatoid arthritis, systemic lupus erythematosus, Sjögren’s syndrome and systemic sclerosis—all are considered chronic diseases currently without a cure. Autoimmune diseases affect over 30 million people globally, according to UH.

SARDs occur when the body’s immune system attacks healthy, non-threatening tissues and organs. According to UH, in these diseases, the body often attacks nuclear antigens, creating anti-nuclear autoantibodies, which can be early detection signs for SARDs in more than 50 percent of patients, Mohan says.

Researchers will study blood samples and environmental exposure over the 10 years to better understand anti-nuclear autoantibodies.

“Collectively, these studies will help identify the genetic, environmental and cellular factors that are operative at the two steps of SARD development, namely the emergence of anti-nuclear autoantibodies and disease onset,” Mohan said in a news release. “ More importantly, these studies will highlight functional molecular pathways and mechanisms that may be operative at each step."

Mohan predicts that looking at SARDs’ shared characteristics, rather than each disease individually, could help identify more treatment methods.

“Individual SARDs have been examined in silos without an attempt to discern shared underlying features at the molecular level,” he added in the release. “Current understanding of the initial (and likely shared) origins of SARDs is only rudimentary but urgently needed to develop means for prevention and treatment.”

Earlier this year, UH also received an $11 million NIH grant to conduct a first-of-its-kind study of early language development in children ages 18 to 24 months. Read more here.

New Texas Stock Exchange officially begins trading in Dallas

Welcome to Y'all Street

Two-step aside, New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq. The Dallas-based Texas Stock Exchange, nicknamed Y’all Street, just kicked off live trading with five stocks — and lots of Lone Star ambition.

“The Texas Stock Exchange aims to revitalize competition for [stock] issuers, establish the premier venue for listings, and create a world-class trading platform for all market participants,” the exchange says in a fact sheet.

The exchange — whose Texas-influenced nickname is a nod to New York City’s Wall Street — has collected at least $275 million in investments. The roughly 90 financial backers of TXSE include Bank of America, BlackRock, Charles Schwab, Citadel Securities, Dell Family Office, Fortress, Goldman Sachs, and JPMorgan Chase.

Representatives of TXSE couldn’t be reached for comment. On its website, the exchange calls itself “the most well-capitalized equities exchange to ever be approved” by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC).

Not to be outdone, NYSE has launched Dallas-based NYSE Texas and Nasdaq has expanded its presence in Dallas.

Y’all Street adds to Dallas-Fort Worth’s rising status as a major hub for financial services, with The Wall Street Journal naming North Texas the country’s second biggest financial hub after New York City.

“A homegrown national exchange means more jobs, more investment, and more growth opportunities for businesses and communities across the Lone Star State,” Gabriela von zur Muehlen, senior vice president and chief policy officer at the Texas Association of Business, told The Texas Tribune.

Bulent Temel, an associate professor of practice in economics at the University of Texas at San Antonio, told Texas Standard that TXSE “is going to boost the credibility of the Texas economy.”

Texas’ estimated gross domestic product (GDP), a yardstick for the size of an economy, climbed to a record-setting $2.9 trillion in 2025, making it the state with the second highest GDP after California. DFW’s estimated GDP in 2023 stood at $744.6 billion, eclipsing the GDP of many countries.

“The center of gravity for American capitalism is now headquartered in the Boom Belt,” Abbott proclaimed in April, referring to an 11-state region (including Texas) in the South and Southeast that’s seeing tremendous economic and population growth. “The Texas Stock Exchange is the natural extension of that capitalism. It ensures that capital markets will reflect the quadrant that is driving American growth.”

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This article originally appeared on CultureMap.com.

Orion vehicle manager reflects on Artemis II, looks to 2028 moon mission

Q&A

Humanity is finally headed back to the moon after more than half a century. This year's launch of the Artemis II mission in the Orion spacecraft put four crew members in lunar orbit and tested the new ship developed by Lockheed Martin.

Everything went smoothly, safely returning astronauts home, but there is always room to improve. InnovationMap chatted via email with Orion vehicle manager Branelle Rodriguez, shortly after a talk at The Ion, for insight on how Orion might perform in the future as the next lunar landing approaches in early 2028.

InnovationMap: How satisfied are you with the way Orion operated on this past mission?

Branelle Rodriguez: Orion performed exceptionally well during Artemis II, successfully demonstrating critical spacecraft capabilities, including life support systems, displays and controls, and executing manual piloting operations. Artemis II brought humans back to the moon, achieving key exploration and scientific imagery, while validating systems essential for future Artemis missions.

IM: What is the most important thing you learned about improving Orion for the next mission?

BR: The Artemis II mission provided invaluable insights into crew operations and spacecraft performance in a deep-space environment. With every mission, NASA applies lessons learned to continuously improve Orion’s operations, validate design and ensure mission readiness. Artemis II offered our first opportunity to evaluate several new systems and gain a deeper understanding of what it is like for astronauts to live and work inside the spacecraft. The operational, technical and human factors data collected are being integrated across the program to refine future missions, reduce risk and enhance overall mission success.

IM: How has Orion helped the mission to explore space?

BR: Orion is one of NASA’s foundational elements for human deep space exploration—not only supporting the mission but serving as a core component of it. It is currently the only spacecraft capable of carrying crew on deep space missions and returning them safely to Earth from the high speeds required from the vicinity of the moon. No other spacecraft has the technology to endure the extremes that come with human deep-space travel, such as advanced environmental and life support, navigation, communications, radiation shielding, and the world’s largest ablative heat shield to protect the astronauts during reentry into Earth’s atmosphere. Orion has already taken astronauts to explore space farther than ever before—252,756 miles from Earth— and will carry crews to the moon on future missions to explore the lunar South Pole region. The astronauts’ observations, samples, and data collected on these future missions will expand our understanding of our solar system and home planet.

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This conversation has been edited for brevity and clarity.

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