Ben Horowitz offers essential advice on building and running a startup - practical wisdom for managing the toughest problems business school doesn’t cover, based on his popular ben’s blog. While many people talk about how great it is to start a business, very few are honest about how difficult it is to run one. The Hard Thing About Hard Things is invaluable for veteran entrepreneurs as well as those aspiring to their own new ventures, drawing from Horowitz’s personal and often humbling experiences.

Tony Fadell led the teams that created the iPod, iPhone and Nest Learning Thermostat and learned enough in 30+ years in Silicon Valley about leadership, design, startups, Apple, Google, decision-making, mentorship, devastating failure and unbelievable success to fill an encyclopedia.

People don't buy from people they like. No! Your buyer doesn't care about you or your product or service. It's not your job to overcome objections, it's your buyer's. Closing isn't a skill of good salespeople; it's the skill of weak salespeople. Price isn't the main reason salespeople lose the sale. Gap Selling shreds traditional and closely held sales beliefs that have been hurting salespeople for decades. For years, salespeople have embraced a myriad of sales tactics and belief systems that have unknowingly created many of the issues they have been trying to avoid.

Jack Welch knows how to win. During his 40-year career at General Electric, he led the company to year-after-year success around the globe, in multiple markets, against brutal competition. His honest, be-the-best style of management became the gold standard in business, with his relentless focus on people, teamwork, and profits.

The Great Game of Business started a business revolution by introducing the world to open-book management, a new way of running a business that created unprecedented profit and employee engagement. The revised and updated edition of The Great Game of Business lays out an entirely different way of running a company.

Google Executive Chairman and ex-CEO Eric Schmidt and former SVP of Products Jonathan Rosenberg came to Google over a decade ago as proven technology executives. At the time, the company was already well-known for doing things differently, reflecting the visionary - and frequently contrarian - principles of founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin. If Eric and Jonathan were going to succeed, they realized they would have to relearn everything they thought they knew about management and business.

When it comes to recruiting, motivating, and creating great teams, Patty McCord says most companies have it all wrong. McCord helped create the unique and high-performing culture at Netflix, where she was chief talent officer. In her new book, Powerful: Building a Culture of Freedom and Responsibility, she shares what she learned there and elsewhere in Silicon Valley.

People starting out in business tend to seek step-by-step formulas or rules, but in reality there are no magic bullets. Rather, says veteran company-builder Norm Brodsky, there's a mentality that helps street- smart entrepreneurs solve problems and pursue opportunities as they arise. Brodsky shares his hard-earned wisdom every month in Inc. magazine, in the hugely popular "Street Smarts" column he cowrites with Bo Burlingham. Now they've adapted their best advice into a comprehensive guide for anyone running a small business.

How do the really exceptional CEOs get more done in less time than everyone else? What is their technique for getting their work done, while still having the time to spend pursuing hobbies and spending quality time with their friends and family? The truth is that great and lazy CEOs know a secret when it comes to time management. Rather than spending a little time on a lot of things, the best CEOs spend most of their time eliminating the single biggest constraint to the growth of their business.

Have you ever thought about starting a business but don't know where to begin? Or, do you have a great product or service idea with limited resources to get it off the ground? Maybe you just want to be the boss and that's it? If you're just like how I was many years ago with tons of ambition and no clue where to start, then this is the book for you. I have designed a thorough step by step guide through actual experience which will teach you how to build your own business from the ground up or through buying a franchise.

Over the past twenty years, as he first worked as an early employee at Salesforce and later cofounded Okta, a publicly traded software company now valued at over $40 billion, Frederic Kerrest met hundreds of business leaders and investors in Silicon Valley and beyond. In Zero to IPO, he's collected a trove of nitty-gritty tips for each stage of a company's growth and assembled them into a clear blueprint for how to build a business.

In 1990, IBM had its most profitable year ever. By 1993, the company was on a watch list for extinction, victimized by its own lumbering size, an insular corporate culture, and the PC era IBM had itself helped invent.

A straight-shooting Silicon Valley executive reveals insider career strategies to becoming a great leader, developing your network, succeeding without wasting time, and managing trade-offs between your work and life so your life works. Patty Azzarello became the youngest general manager at Hewlett-Packard at age 33, ran a $1 billion software business at 35, and became a CEO at 38 - all without turning into a self-centered, miserable jerk. In Rise, Azzarello shares the insider secrets to advancing your career (while having a life) in three practical steps.

Global technology executive, serial entrepreneur, and angel investor Elad Gil has worked with high-growth, tech companies like Airbnb, Twitter, Google, Stripe, and Square as they've grown from small companies to global enterprises. Across all of these breakout companies, a set of common patterns has evolved into a repeatable playbook that Gil has now codified in High Growth Handbook.

In the decade since their blockbuster international best seller Winning was published, Jack and Suzy Welch have dug deeper into business, traveling the world; consulting to organizations of every size and in every industry; speaking before hundreds of audiences; working closely with entrepreneurs from Mumbai to Silicon Valley; and, in 2010, starting their own fully accredited online MBA program, which now has approximately 1,000 students enrolled.

In Silicon Valley slang, a "bozo explosion" is what causes a lean, mean, fighting machine of a company to slide into mediocrity. As Guy Kawasaki puts it, "If the two most popular words in your company are partner and strategic, and partner has become a verb, and strategic is used to describe decisions and activities that don't make sense"...then it's time for a reality check.

Big new ideas rarely make great businesses. Laboring on a business plan can be a waste of time. You are going to need dramatically more start-up money than you think you do. Counterintuitive concepts like these have helped the world's best entrepreneurs succeed. Yet most of us only learn them the hard way. Len Green, an experienced investor, entrepreneur, and business professor, shares inside secrets and proven tactics for launching a business.

People starting out in business tend to seek step-by-step formulas or rules, but in reality there are no magic bullets. Rather, says veteran company-builder Norm Brodsky, there's a mentality that helps street- smart entrepreneurs solve problems and pursue opportunities as they arise. Brodsky shares his hard-earned wisdom every month in Inc. magazine, in the hugely popular "Street Smarts" column he cowrites with Bo Burlingham. Now they've adapted their best advice into a comprehensive guide for anyone running a small business.

Geoff Smart and Randy Street offer a simple, four-step method for hiring with confidence, designed for everyone from the CEO on down. Who shows you how to avoid the most common pitfalls of hiring, how to identify "A Players" - people who can perform their job better than 90 percent of the candidates in their field - and how to make sure the best candidate will be excited to join your organization.

When pioneering business journalist and Inc. magazine editor at large Bo Burlingham wrote Small Giants, it became an instant classic for its original take on a common business problem - how to handle the pressure to grow. Now Burlingham is back to tackle an even more common problem - how to exit your company well. Sooner or later, all entrepreneurs leave their businesses and all businesses get sold, given away, or liquidated.

It's an axiom of business that great companies grow their revenues and profits year after year. Yet quietly, under the radar, a small number of companies have rejected the pressure of endless growth to focus on more satisfying business goals. Goals like being great at what they do, creating a great place to work, providing great customer service, making great contributions to their communities, and finding great ways to lead their lives. In Small Giants, veteran journalist Bo Burlingham takes us deep inside 14 such remarkable companies.

No matter what kind of organization you work for, whether it's your own small business or a global Fortune 100 company, your number one goal is success. Predictable Success takes you step-by-step through a startlingly simple, intuitive, and universal process that shows you how to bring sustained, lasting, predictable success to your organization.

Finding the right venture capitalist to back your start-up is a challenge. Even if you manage to get backing, you want your VC to be a partner, not some dictator who will undermine your vision and take control of your life's work. Jeffrey Bussgang is one of a very few people who have played on both sides of this high-stakes game. Now he draws on his unique perspective to offer high-level insights, colorful stories, and practical advice. He reveals how to get noticed, perfect a pitch, and negotiate a partnership that works for everyone.

Eventually every job and every business will become irrelevant. According to Jason Jennings, the past few decades have seen unprecedented shifts: former third-world nations have transformed themselves into high-tech manufacturing powerhouses; technology has democratized business and increased competition in ways never before seen; and customers, used to getting exactly what they want when they want it, are no longer beholden to the corporate giants.

Over the past decade, Inbound Marketing has changed the way companies earn buyers’ trust and build their brands - through meaningful, helpful content. But with that change comes unprecedented access to information in a few quick keystrokes. Enter the age of the empowered buyer, one who no longer has to rely on a sales rep to research their challenges or learn more about how a company’s offering might fit their needs. Now, with more than 60 percent of purchasing decisions made in the absence of a sales rep, the role of the rep itself has been called into question.

Courtney and Carter Reum have years of experience in the field, from investing in over 130 companies, including Lyft, Pinterest, Warby Parker, and ClassPass, to driving the success of their own liquor brand, VEEV Spirits. The Reum brothers have learned from every triumph and tribulation and over the years have developed an effective and easy-to-understand guide to help entrepreneurs through the startup journey from inception to sale.

Companies need high potential leaders (Hi-Pos) more than ever before to help them adapt to today's tumultuous, digitally-driven business environment. If you meet the Hi-Po criteria, you're in high demand - and this book explains how to fast-track yourself.

Whether you're an entrepreneur, an intrapreneur, or a not-for-profit leader, there's no shortage of advice on such topics as writing a business plan, recruiting, raising capital, and branding. In fact there are so many books, articles, and websites that many startups get bogged down to the point of paralysis, or they focus on the wrong priorities and go broke before they discover their mistakes.

Ryan Blair knows about building a business from the ground up. Like many entrepreneurs he had no formal business education. But he had great survival instincts, tenacity, and, above all, a "nothing to lose" mindset.Blair's middle-class childhood came to an abrupt end when his abusive father succumbed to drug addiction and abandoned the family. Blair and his mother moved to a bad neighborhood, and soon he was in and out of juvenile detention, joining a gang just to survive. Then his mother fell in love with a successful entrepreneur who took Ryan under his wing.

From the ABC hit show Shark Tank, this book - filled with practical advice and introductions from the Sharks themselves - will be the ultimate resource for anyone thinking about starting a business or growing the one they have. Full of tips for navigating the confusing world of entrepreneurship, the book will intersperse words of wisdom with inspirational stories from the show.