Startup Book Club: reading and founder exercises
Explore the books from TorontoStarts’ 2020–2021 reading list and apply one idea to your business. No upcoming book-club meeting is currently listed on this page.
Turn reading into an experiment
- Choose a book that addresses a problem you are working on now.
- Bring one passage, one disagreement and one concrete business experiment to your discussion.
- Agree on an action and review what happened a week later.
The original reading list
The book links below retain TorontoStarts’ original Amazon affiliate links. You can also borrow a copy from a library. These exercises are TorontoStarts prompts, not quotations from the books.
The Lean Startup
Choose one risky business assumption and design a small experiment.
Blue Ocean Strategy
Compare your offer with alternatives and identify one difference customers value.
Fascinate
Ask customers which parts of your message they remember.
Purple Cow
Identify one part of your offer a customer would describe to a friend.
Delivering Happiness
Choose a service experience to improve and define how you will measure it.
Sell or Be Sold
Write down objections from real sales calls and test a clearer response.
The First 90 Days
Set a measurable goal and a weekly review for your next 90 days.
Startup CFO
Build a cash forecast with a downside scenario.
The Tipping Point
Identify a customer group and a distribution experiment.
Outliers
List the support and access your team needs to improve its opportunities.
Meet other founders
Use the existing calendar for dated sessions and the founder-group guide to find a community. This reading list does not reserve a place at an event.