The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses, Eric Ries

Entrepreneurship is about sailing off into the dark unknown in the hope of finding new land. Most don’t survive the trip. The Lean Startup is book about improving those odds. By focusing on testing early and often, and gathering objective data, the book is, at its heart, a love letter to the scientific method – using experimentation in a concrete, measurable manner to guide you your journey and ensure you’re decisions are actual decisions, and not just guesses.

The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers, Ben Horowitz

If you want the straight dope on how much it sucks to be the man or woman in charge, and what to do about it, look no further than Ben Horowitz’ no-holds-barred, warts-and-all, eminently readable treatise on the topic. Full of anecdotes and advice from a man who’s seen it all and lived to tell the tale. A must read if you plan to start your own studio or publishing company. Or any company, really.

Crossing the Chasm, 3rd Edition: Marketing and Selling Disruptive Products to Mainstream Customers, Geoffrey Moore

Moore’s model for the business lifecycle was a landmark moment for entrepreneurship. And while Crossing The Chasm is focused on business-to-business applications, there is a lot for any entrepreneur to learn about how early adopters differ from the member of the so-called “band wagon”. Worthwhile reading for any developer, particularly if you’re creating new brands or genres.

The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Business Law, 4th Edition, Constance Bagley and Craig E. Dauchy

A great guide to the legal in’s and out’s of starting, running, and selling a business. It will not make you a lawyer, but it will help you communicate a lot more effectively (and therefore, cost-effectively) with an attorney should the need arise. It’s dense by necessity, but it doesn’t get lost in the weeds.

The Founder’s Dilemmas: Anticipating and Avoiding the Pitfalls That Can Sink a Startup, Noam Wasserman

A primer for the types of issues that can cause a start-up to implode, from misaligned priorities to bad hiring decisions to fights over equity.

StartUp Podcast

NPR-style journalism covering the trials and tribulations of start-up companies. As of yet, they haven’t covered any game companies (unless I missed something), but the problems these founders face are pretty much universal.

Incidentally, this podcast started as one of the most beautiful feats of content marketing I’ve ever seen: a former NPR journalist decided to start his own podcast company, and promoted this new company by creating a podcast about founding it and then used the advertising revenue from the podcast as starting capital for said company. From a guerilla marketing stand point, it was a stroke of genius.

• iTunes feed
• Stitcher feed

Open For Business

If StartUp is start-up focused journalism, Open For Business is the how-to guide:  tips and recommendations for entrepreneurs from entrepreneurs (and other experts). As with StartUp, Open For Business doesn’t speak to game development specifically, but the lessons are applicable nonetheless.

• iTunes feed
• Stitcher feed