5 Books Every Startup Founder Should Read

When it comes to pitch deck literature, it’s always useful to have a list of the most successful books ever written around. These pitch deck books undefinedwill certainly help you to focus your presentations better, aside from the multiple free templates and other resources available online.

1. Traction

Traction slides are one of the toughest to put together. To help you nail them better, Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares’ book, Traction, is just the perfect read on growth channels. The authors help you decide which system applies best to your startup, a great tool when you’re debating what to choose as your metrics for business growth, amongst others. 

How you capture and monetize value from your customers is part of ensuring a business succeeds beyond its marketing strategies. Weinberg and Mares are clear on which areas to focus on for money-raising and growth. If you care about an accurate business plan that is based on solid traction, make sure to read Traction. 

2. The 12 Magic Slides

Paul Getty is the name behind a very concise and to-the-point book that’s named The 12 Magic Slides. Actually, the full-fledged name version is The 12 Magic Slides: Insider Secrets for Raising Growth Capital. This is precisely a book on how to present a startup pitch deck in front of investors.

Published in 2013, this text was written by a VC with wide experience in technology and real estate investment firms. Having seen multiple pitches come and go, as well as the businesses they represent, the author has devoted this production to coach founders to better fundraising success. And he focuses on the perfect 12 slides needed to give investors they key topics of what they need and want to know before they consider putting their money on a startup. 

Getty touches base on ideal business opportunity definitions, potential ROIs and the chain of thought that should control these diverse slide propositions. 

Ideally restructuring ways of conceiving how startups are to be developed, Getty revises every step of the way along with do’s and don’ts for pitching VCs. 

3. The Art of the Start

Guy Kawasaki's The Art of the Start, now in its 2.0 version, is a go-to point for anyone who’s still learning how to start a business. Guy Kawasaki’s pitch deck knowledge in this book is just a startup standard. In fact, consider it more of a guide, really, on successfully launching a new...almost anything!

This book facilitates learning from Kawasaki through his humorous approach. And in it, he shares much of his failures, as well as his successes. Reading up on this trajectory is a benefit in itself. Yet, the author also shares advice on crowdfunding, social media, and many other topics. 

Reading The Art of the Start will help creating better slides. It will give you a better perspective in terms of raw content, as the author discusses how to build a strong team, what it takes to come up with an incredible product or service, and how to face your competition.

4. Lean Startup

If you haven’t read The Lean Startup by Eric Ries, that is also an inclusion you must make room for in your reading time slots. Ries expands with examples on how to stay away from the most common startup mistakes that leave companies without a budget and on their way to failure. 

Speaking of which, you may be interested in checking this video out.

Originally published back in 2011, this book’s official name is The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses. And he does focus on practices that might go against most entrepreneurs’ intuition. Yet, in doing so, he manages to develop and share tactics that shorten cycles of product development, for instance. 

Acknowledging the uncertainty that abounds in being a part of the startup world, Ries tries to define a clear patch for entrepreneurs to attain sustainability throughout his book. With it, he also shares knowledge on how to measure progress and being able to pinpoint what customers really want. 

For application to pitch deck slides, he will clearly refer to a business problem and solution slides in terms of studied background content. He tackles the issue of problem understanding and solution definition in ways that constitute just the first approach to a lean startup. 

5. Bonus literature

A couple of Evans got together to write a book they have titled Get Backed: Craft Your Story, Build the Perfect Pitch Deck, and Launch the Venture of Your Dreams. You might want to read up on it. This is authored by Evan Baehr and Evan Loomis and was published back in 2015. 

There is also a book by Scott Douglas that’s called The Keynote Pitch Deck: Creating a Pitch Deck That Wows Investors and Raises the Money You Need to Soar! Douglas has made the best of his successful startup accelerator experience to draft these lines, backed by the fact that he has raised funds from a multi-billion dollar corporation. There’s a Kindle version available in case you would like to venture into more of his writing. 

Jeffrey Bussgang is also author to a book called Mastering the VC Game in which he promises to teach his readers “how to prepare the perfect pitch” through “practical advice gathered from interviews with a dozen of successful entrepreneurs and VCs”. We leave you up to the possibility of expanding on your pitch deck impressions with this publication. 

Are you ready to start crafting your pitch deck, yet? Head on out to our pitch deck template section to view the dozens of models we have in store for you. With the best design to your slides and this current content security now on your back, we hope you absolutely kill your next presentation! 

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