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

Photo via Amazon.com

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

Photo via Amazon.com

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

Photo via Amazon.com

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

Photo via Amazon.com

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​

Photo via Amazon.com

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.

------

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

Ad Placement 300x100
Ad Placement 300x600

CultureMap Emails are Awesome

Property Showcase

With boost from Houston, Texas is the No. 1 state for economic development

governor's cup

Texas is on a 14-year winning streak as the top state for attracting job-creating business location and expansion projects.

Once again, Texas has claimed Site Selection magazine’s Governor’s Cup. This year’s honor recognizes the state with the highest number of economic development projects in 2025. Texas landed more than 1,400 projects last year.

Ron Starner, executive vice president of Site Selection, calls Texas “a dynasty in economic development.”

Among metro areas, Houston lands at No. 2 for the most economic development projects secured last year (590), behind No. 1 Chicago and ahead of No. 3 Dallas-Fort Worth.

In praising Houston as a project magnet, Gov. Greg Abbott cites the November announcement by pharmaceutical giant Lilly that it’s building a $6.5 billion manufacturing plant at Houston’s Generation Park.

“Growth in the Greater Houston region is a great benefit to our state’s economy, a major location for foreign direct investment and key industry sectors like energy, aerospace, advanced manufacturing, and life sciences,” Abbott tells Site Selection. “Houston is also home to one of the largest concentrations of U.S. headquarters for companies from around the world.”

In 2025, Fortune ranked Houston as the U.S. city with the third-highest number of Fortune 500 headquarters (26).

Texas retained the Governor’s Cup by gaining over 1,400 business location and expansion projects last year, representing more than $75 billion in capital investments and producing more than 42,000 new jobs.

Site Selection says Texas’ project count for 2025 handily beat second-place Illinois (680 projects) and third-place Ohio (467 projects). Texas’ number for 2025 represented 18% of all qualifying U.S. projects tracked by Site Selection.

“You can see that we are on a trajectory to ensure our economic diversification is going to inoculate us in good times, as well as bad times, to ensure our economy is still going to grow, still create new jobs, prosperity, and opportunities for Texans going forward,” Abbott says.

Houston e-commerce giant Cart.com raises $180M, surpasses $1B in funding

fresh funding

Editor's note: This article has been updated to clarify information about Cart.com's investors.

Houston-based commerce and logistics platform Cart.com has raised $180 million in growth capital from private equity firm Springcoast Partners, pushing the startup past the $1 billion funding mark since its founding in 2020.

Cart.com says it will use the capital to scale its logistics network, expand AI capabilities and develop workflow automation tools.

“This investment will strengthen our balance sheet and provide us with the flexibility to accelerate our strategic priorities,” Omair Tariq, CEO of Cart.com, said in a news release. “We’ve built a platform that combines commerce software with a scaled logistics network, and we’re just getting started.”

In conjunction with the funding, Springcoast executive-in-residence Russell Klein has been appointed to Cart.com’s board of directors. Before joining Springcoast, he was chief commercial officer at Austin-based Commerce.com (Nasdaq: CMRC). Klein co-led Commerce.com’s IPO, led the company’s mergers-and-acquisitions strategy and played a key role in several funding rounds.

“The team at Cart.com has demonstrated excellence in their ability to scale efficiently while continuing to innovate,” Klein said. “I’m excited to join the board and support the company as it expands its AI-driven capabilities, deepens enterprise relationships, and further strengthens its position as a category-defining commerce and fulfillment platform.”

Before this funding round, Cart.com had raised $872 million in venture capital and reached a valuation of about $1.6 billion, according to CB Insights. With the new funding, the startup has collected over $1 billion in just six years.

This is the income required to be a middle class earner in Houston in 2026

Cashing In

A new study tracking the upper and lower thresholds for middle class households across the nation's largest cities has revealed Houstonians need to make at least a grand more than last year to maintain their middle class status this year.

According to SmartAsset's just-released annual report, "What It Takes to Be Middle Class in America – 2026 Study," Houston households need to make anywhere from $42,907 to $128,722 to qualify as middle class earners this year.

Compared to 2025, Houstonians need to make $1,153 more per year to meet the minimum threshold for a middle class status, whereas the upper bound has stretched $3,448 higher. The median income for a Houston household in 2024 was $64,361, the study added.

SmartAsset's experts used 2024 Census Bureau median household income data for the 100 biggest U.S. cities and all 50 states and determined middle class income ranges by using a variation of Pew Research's definition of a middle class household, stating the salary range is "two-thirds to double the median U.S. salary."

In the report's ranking of the U.S. cities with the highest household incomes needed to maintain a middle class status, Houston ranked No. 80.

In the report's state-by-state comparison, Texas has the 24th highest middle class income range. Overall, Texas households need to make between $53,147 and $159,442 to be labeled "middle class" in 2026. For additional context, the median income for a Texas household in 2024 came out to $79,721.

"Often, the expectations that come with the term 'middle class' include reaching home ownership, raising kids, the comfort of modest emergency funds and retirement savings, and the occasional splurge or vacation," the report said. "And as the median household income varies widely across the U.S. depending on the local job market, housing market, infrastructure and other factors, so does swing the bounds on what constitutes a middle class income in America."

What it takes to be middle class elsewhere around Texas

Two Dallas-Fort Worth suburbs – Frisco and Plano – have some of the highest middle class income ranges in the country for 2026, SmartAsset found.

Frisco households need to make between $96,963 and $290,888 to qualify as middle class this year, which is the third-highest middle class income range nationwide.

Plano's middle class income range is the eighth highest nationally, with households needing to make between $77,267 and $231,802 for the designation.

Salary range needed to be a middle class earner in other Texas cities:

  • No. 28 – Austin: between $60,287 and $180,860
  • No. 40 – Irving: between $56,566 and $169,698
  • No. 44 – Fort Worth: between $55,002 and $165,006
  • No. 57 – Garland: between $50,531 and $151,594
  • No. 60 – Arlington: between $49,592 and $148,77
  • No. 61 – Dallas: between $49,549 and $148,646
  • No. 73 – Corpus Christi: between $44,645 and $133,934
  • No. 77 – San Antonio: between $44,117 and $132,352
  • No. 83 – Lubbock: between $41,573 and $124,720
  • No. 84 – Laredo: between $41,013 and $123,038
  • No. 89 – El Paso: between $39,955 and $119,864
---

This article originally appeared on CultureMap.com.

View All Listings