"Best Practices"-type books that cover the tools and technology the startup is using, whether its Textmate, Unix, Subversion, whatever. Becoming more efficient is never a bad thing.
I'd also add books on management and dealing with people:
- The Art of Speedreading People - Tieger
- Behind Closed Doors - Rothman, Derby
- The Mythical Man Month - Brooks
- Most if not all the books on Joel Spolsky's "MBA Curriculum":
I'm surprised that 'Getting Real' hasn't been suggested yet, perhaps it has something to do with the recent backlash against 37signals. Anyway I'll stand by it. Fantastic book. I might even go as far as to say 'essential'.
For the German readership: "Cash Code" by Tritsch and Kohlhammer. It has a focus on the legal and administrative stuff around a startup. http://www.cashcodeportal.de/
eBoys: The First Inside Account of Venture Capitalists at Work by Randall Stross (San Jose State Professor, Writes for the Times Occasionally, etc.)
Seriously, this is a really open approach to how Benchmark Capital approached investments in eBay, Webvan,etc. I believe it's available on itunes as an audiobook as well.
I have a book left over from my b-school days that I often dip back into. It's called "The Entrepreneurial Venture" and it's sort of like "Founders at Work" if that had been written by Harvard Business School professors.
This might be only tangentially related, but I dig "How To Be Rich" by J. Paul Getty. He talks a lot about how he built Getty Oil, and about what's important in business and in life.
I recommend "The Design of Everyday Things" (formely "The Psychology of Everyday Things") by Donald Norman. It's kind of dated and it's focused on product design, but it has some very good ideas about making products that are easy to use and understand.
It looks like nobody else has recommend one book I particularly like: Startups That Work: Surprising Research on What Makes or Breaks a New Company by Joel Kurtzman and Glenn Rifkin.
It combines a large quantitative study on startups with highlights from case interviews. The book's claims are generally backed by empirical evidence, which is something missing in many other entrepreneurship books.
