Harvard Business Review – HBR’s 10 Must Reads on Entrepreneurship and Startups

The best entrepreneurs balance brilliant business ideas with a rigorous commitment to serving their customers’ needs.

If you read nothing else on entrepreneurship and startups, read these 10 articles by experts in the field. We’ve combed through hundreds of articles in the Harvard Business Review archive and selected the most important ones to help you build your company for enduring success.

Leading experts and practitioners such as Clayton Christensen, Marc Andreessen, and Reid Hoffman provide the insights and advice that will inspire you to:

– Understand what makes entrepreneurial leaders tick
– Know what matters in a great business plan
– Adopt lean startup practices such as business model experimentation
– Be prepared for the race for scale in Silicon Valley
– Better understand the world of venture capital–and know what you’ll get along with VC funding
– Take an alternative approach to entrepreneurship: buy an existing business and run it as CEO

This collection of articles includes the following CONTENTS:

Hiring an Entrepreneurial Leader 1
by Timothy Butler

How to Write a Great Business Plan 13
by William A. Sahlman

Why the Lean Start-Up Changes Everything 35
by Steve Blank

The President of SRI Ventures on Bringing Siri to Life 49
by Norman Winarsky

In Search of the Next Big Thing 59
An interview with Marc Andreessen by Adi Ignatius

Six Myths About Venture Capitalists 69
by Diane Mulcahy

Chobani’s Founder on Growing a Start-Up Without Outside Investors 77
by Hamdi Ulukaya

Network Effects Aren’t Enough 87
by Andrei Hagiu and Simon Rothman

Blitzscaling 101
An interview with Reid Hoffman by Tim Sullivan

Buying Your Way into Entrepreneurship 115
by Richard S. Ruback and Royce Yudkoff

The Founder’s Dilemma 125
by Noam Wasserman