8 Little-Known Books Every AI Founder Should Read First (Before Building a Unicorn)

8 Little-Known Books Every AI Founder Should Read First (Before Building a Unicorn) We all have dreams, but few reach the finish line. Why? It’s been 2 years, counting, dreaming, or attempting to …

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We all have dreams, but few reach the finish line. Why?

It’s been 2 years, counting, dreaming, or attempting to build your AI product or a unicorn.

You started with vigor, then got midway and ran out of grit, or you’re still grinding in the build but unsure of the direction.

This is not unusual. Let me tell you about my first AI gold rush project that taught me a life lesson.

If you are not a paid Medium member, you can read the article here.

First, it was not a disastrous failure; it just lacked vision. After 4 months in, I was overrun, so I threw my hands up.

In the summer of 2023, I had a very successful freelancing consulting business and, on the side, a few SAAS products I was building.

One was successful — selling a $49/year software product for small businesses to add a better post-checkout experience on WooCommerce and WordPress.

It was nothing significant in the software-as-a-service business, since it was a micro-niche product, but it was enough to earn me gross revenue of $12,000–$29,000 per year.

But in November, my sales took a nosedive, and I was the first casualty of the AI wave.

My potential customers had discovered they did not need my complex product, since they could string together a number of AI-generated code snippets to achieve the same result.

My boat had not only capsized but sunk deep, and I was back to the drawing board.

I was still radarless and lacked vision on what to build next, but I needed direction and a good recovery plan.

So I turned to Reddit for advice and research. A few months in, I realized I would sell prompts as a business, and I did not like that idea. But soon I came across the idea of an LLM wrapper — I quickly built a prototype and got my first customer in 60 days.

But in a few months of working on it, it became redundant, and today it’s still a shell of a product, making $150 a year, and I’m about to retire it.

So what am I talking about here? — Vision.

Now, to save you from wasting time trying out ideas, it helps to build up your knowledge on what it takes to build a successful, scalable AI tech product business.

A good place to start is always ideas shared in books. If I were to recommend some good books that will help steer your vision of building an AI software product, here is my list of books that are not common but very insightful.

But first, I have this FTC disclosure to make:

Amazon Affiliate Disclosure: This post contains Amazon affiliate links. When you purchase through these links, I earn a small commission at no additional cost to you. This helps support my content creation and allows me to continue providing valuable resources. As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases. I only recommend books I genuinely believe will help you succeed as an AI entrepreneur.

1. The 1-Page Marketing Plan by Allan Dib

The 1-Page Marketing Plan by Allan Dib

Most AI founders can code but can’t market.

Allan Dib is a serial entrepreneur who has built and exited multiple businesses in Australia. One of his companies made the BRW Fast 100 list of the fastest-growing companies. He knows what works.

The book solves a real problem. Traditional marketing plans are 50-page documents nobody reads. Dib’s approach fits on one page, divided into nine squares.

Each square represents a critical part of your marketing strategy. Target market, message, advertising media, lead capture, lead nurture, sales conversion, delivery, increasing customer value, and orchestrating referrals.

The framework forces clarity. You can’t hide behind jargon when you only have one page. Either you know your market or you don’t. Either your message works or it doesn’t.

Key Ideas

• The marketing plan should fit on one page with nine squares
• Direct response marketing beats brand marketing for startups
• Focus on getting prospects to know, like, and trust you
• Different marketing approaches for before, during, and after the sale
• Lead nurturing systems separate winners from losers
• Lifetime customer value matters more than acquisition cost

The Huffington Post named this one of the 10 best marketing books. It’s been translated into over 40 languages and changed how more than a million businesses approach marketing.

Dib doesn’t pull punches. He tells you most marketing advice is garbage designed for big companies with big budgets. AI startups need different tactics.

Link:The 1-Page Marketing Plan

2. The Art Of Saying NO by Damon Zahariades

The Art Of Saying NO by Damon Zahariades

Founders who can’t say no end up building someone else’s company.

Damon Zahariades spent years in corporate America getting pulled into meetings and distracted by drive-by requests. Then he started his own business and had to learn boundaries fast.

This book is about protecting your time and energy, not in a selfish way, but in a survival way. Every yes to someone else is a no to your priorities.

AI founders face constant requests. Investors want meetings. Potential customers wish to see features. Team members want decisions. Advisors want calls. If you say yes to everything, nothing important gets done.

The book provides specific scripts for saying no in different situations. To your spouse, your kids, your friends, your neighbors, your coworkers, your clients, your boss, and even strangers.

Key Ideas

• People-pleasing kills productivity and breeds resentment
• Saying no doesn’t make you selfish; it makes you focused
• Set boundaries early, or others will set them for you
• You can decline requests while maintaining respect
• Time is limited, every yes means saying no to something else
• Self-care isn’t optional when building a startup

Some reviewers found it basic. The advice isn’t revolutionary. But most founders need the permission more than the tactics. The book gives you that permission.

Zahariades argues that you’ll become more valuable to others when you protect your time. People respect boundaries more than they respect doormats.

Link:The Art Of Saying NO

3. The SaaS Playbook by Rob Walling

SaaS Playbook by Rob Walling

Rob Walling has built multiple multimillion-dollar SaaS companies without venture capital.

He’s not theorizing. He’s done this repeatedly over nearly two decades. He also runs TinySeed, an accelerator that’s invested in over 200 startups, and MicroConf, the largest community for bootstrapped SaaS founders.

The book distills everything Walling learned from building his own companies and watching hundreds of others succeed or fail. It’s written explicitly for B2B SaaS founders going from product-market fit to scale.

Most SaaS advice assumes you’re raising millions. Walling assumes you’re not. The strategies are different when you’re bootstrapping or mostly bootstrapped.

He covers four SaaS cheat codes that can dramatically accelerate growth. Market selection, pricing strategy, customer acquisition, and knowing which metrics matter.

The book is short and actionable. No fluff about mission statements or company culture. Just tactics that work for real businesses operating today.

Key Ideas

• Choose narrow markets where you can become the obvious choice
• Pricing should be simple and high enough to support growth
• Product-led growth isn’t the only path to millions in revenue
• Focus on a handful of traffic channels that convert
• Avoid common mistakes that kill 95% of SaaS startups
• Bootstraping to millions is possible with the right approach

Patrick Campbell from ProfitWell said this is the playbook he’s wanted for years. Rand Fishkin from SparkToro called it essential reading and said he kept finding gold chapter after chapter.

Critics might argue it’s too focused on bootstrapped B2B SaaS. If you’re building a consumer app or planning to raise $10 million, this isn’t your book. But for AI founders building tools for businesses, this is the blueprint.

Link:The SaaS Playbook

4. The Science of Scaling by Dr. Benjamin Hardy and Blake Erickson

Science of Scaling

Tony Robbins said he wished he’d written this book.

Dr. Benjamin Hardy is an organizational psychologist whose books have sold millions of copies. Blake Erickson has helped companies achieve rapid growth for over a decade. Together, they run Scaling.com, teaching their framework to startups and mature companies.

The book argues that most founders are optimizing the wrong things. They focus on incremental gains when they should be pursuing impossible goals that force complete transformation.

The framework is simple: change your frame, raise your floor, accelerate your focus. But implementing it requires radical commitment and brutal honesty about what’s holding you back.

Companies that apply this framework grow 10–100x within three years. Not because they work harder, but because they eliminate everything that doesn’t align with their highest vision.

The book pushes back against SMART goals and incremental thinking. Hardy argues these approaches lead to mediocrity. Absolute scaling requires setting deadlines that force impossible results.

Key Ideas

• Linear growth is a sign your business is heading toward failure
• One impossible goal focuses everything better than multiple goals
• Time pressure and deadlines force clarity and eliminate distractions
• Raise your minimum standards as your vision expands
• Filter for people and paths that align with your goal
• Most scaling advice is wrong because it assumes incremental thinking

Some readers found the tone too aggressive. The book pushes radical elimination and extreme focus. If you prefer balanced growth and steady progress, this approach will feel uncomfortable.

But for AI founders stuck at 10–20% annual growth who want to break through, the framework offers a clear path. Just be ready for the book to challenge every comfortable assumption you have about scaling.

Link:The Science of Scaling

5. Beyond the Hammer by Brian Gottlieb

Beyond the Hammer by Brian Gottlieb

Brian Gottlieb started a home services business on a plastic folding table with $3,000.

Twelve years later, he sold it for nearly $1 billion in lifetime sales. The company had expanded across multiple states and employed 600 people. INC 5000 recognized it as one of America’s fastest-growing companies.

The book uses a two-part structure. First, a fictional story about George, a business owner dealing with burnt-out employees, high turnover, and frustrated customers. Then, a strategy section that shows how to implement the five pillars in any business.

The five pillars aren’t theoretical. They’re what Gottlieb used to build a culture that made his company the best place to work in his state—strategy, empowerment, training, consistency, and execution.

Most leadership books tell you to be authentic and vulnerable, but they don’t explain how. Gottlieb shows you. He breaks down specific practices that turn abstract concepts into daily operations.

Wolfgang Puck endorsed it. The book won the Gold Award at the Global Book Awards for Business Leadership. It’s aimed at managers and leaders who are tired of fighting fires and want systems that work.

Key Ideas

• Five foundational pillars: strategy, empowerment, training, consistency, execution
• Culture is shaped by the lowest level of acceptable behavior
• Leaders must be vulnerable and authentic, not authoritarian
• Empathy builds stronger relationships than authority
• High turnover signals leadership problems, not employee problems
• World-class training creates teams that perform consistently

Some readers found the fictional story format engaging. Others wanted to skip straight to the strategy section. The book works either way since the sections are clearly divided.

The advice applies beyond home services. Any business with employees dealing with burnout, friction between departments, or inconsistent results will find practical frameworks here.

Link:Beyond the Hammer

6. Difficult Conversations by Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton, and Sheila Heen

Difficult Conversations

This book came from the Harvard Negotiation Project, the same team that created Getting to Yes.

Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton, and Sheila Heen teach at Harvard Law School. They’ve spent nearly thirty years researching how people communicate when stakes are high and emotions run strong.

The book became a New York Times bestseller and is taught at business, law, and therapy programs worldwide. Tom Peters said he’s read it three times, and half the pages are dog-eared.

Every difficult conversation is three conversations. The “what happened” conversation about facts and blame. The feelings conversation about emotions. The identity conversation about what this situation means for who you are.

Most people handle all three poorly. They argue about who’s right, hide their emotions, and get defensive when their identity feels threatened. The book provides a framework for doing better.

AI founders need this constantly. Telling a cofounder their code isn’t good enough. Firing someone who’s been with you from the start. Negotiating with investors who want control. Telling customers no.

Key Ideas

• Every difficult conversation contains three hidden conversations
• Focus on contribution, not blame
• Your story and their story are both incomplete
• Listen to understand, not to win
• Manage your own identity issues before the conversation
• Start from the “third story” that includes both perspectives

The third edition added sections on race, culture, gender, power, and social media. The framework adapts to modern workplace dynamics without losing its core insights.

Critics say the advice can feel obvious once you read it. The book makes explicit what successful communicators do intuitively. For everyone else, it provides a learnable system.

Link:Difficult Conversations

7. How to Make Meetings Not Suck by Jonathan Vehar and Cathi Brese Doebler

How to Make Meetings Not Suck

A 2014 Harris Poll found that half of the people would rather go to the DMV than attend a status meeting.

Jonathan Vehar and Cathi Brese Doebler are facilitators at the Center for Creative Leadership. They’ve taught senior executives at companies like Subaru, NASA, and the US Joint Special Forces University how to run better meetings.

The book estimates that meetings cost $1.4 trillion per year in the US alone. That’s close to 10% of GDP. With 55 million meetings happening daily, even minor improvements create massive value.

The authors organize the book around mindset, skill set, and tool set. You need all three to run meetings that don’t waste everyone’s time.

Most meeting problems start before the meeting. Leaders don’t clarify objectives, don’t prepare agendas, and invite too many people. The book provides checklists and templates to fix this.

The framework works for different meeting types. Decision-making meetings, brainstorming sessions, status updates, and social connection meetings all need different approaches.

Key Ideas

• Meetings should have clear objectives defined before scheduling
• The right people in the room matter more than the number of people
• Agendas with time boxes keep meetings focused
• Divergent thinking and convergent thinking require different facilitation
• Follow-up actions must be assigned with clear owners
• Meeting culture improves when leaders model effective practices

Readers say they keep the book as a reference. The templates and checklists make it practical rather than theoretical. You can apply the techniques immediately.

Some found it basic if they already had facilitation training. But for most founders running their first few team meetings, the structure prevents common mistakes.

Link:How to Make Meetings Not Suck

8. Build: Elements of an Effective Software Organization by Rebecca Murphey and Otto Hilska

Build Elements of an Effective Software Organization

Rebecca Murphey is Field CTO at Swarmia and a former manager at Stripe and Indeed.

She co-wrote this book with Otto Hilska based on decades of experience building software organizations. It’s short, concise, and packed with actionable frameworks.

The book focuses on three pillars: business outcomes, developer productivity, and developer experience. Most engineering books focus on one. This book shows how all three work together.

It’s beneficial as you scale. What works with 10 engineers breaks at 50. What works at 50 doesn’t scale to 200. The book helps you anticipate these transitions.

The writing is telegraphic. The authors cover a massive breadth without drowning you in details. Each chapter ends with excellent references for those who want to go deeper.

This isn’t theory. It’s a blueprint for continuous improvement based on what works at companies like Stripe, Indeed, and Swarmia.

Key Ideas

• Focus on business outcomes, not just shipping features
• Balance engineering investments between new features and technical debt
• Measure developer productivity with cycle time, not velocity
• Developer experience directly impacts productivity and retention
• Organize teams around outcomes, not projects
• Use OKRs to communicate priorities across the organization

Readers appreciate how practical it is. The book doesn’t waste time on obvious advice or hypothetical scenarios. Everything comes from real engineering organizations.

Critics note it assumes you’re already past the basics. If you don’t know what cycle time or KTLO means, you’ll need to look things up. But that’s by design. The book is for people running software teams, not learning to code.

Link:Build: Elements of an Effective Software Organization

Final Thoughts

These eight books won’t teach you how to build AI models or write better code.

They’ll teach you how to market your product, protect your time, scale without venture capital, build a culture that works, have conversations that matter, run meetings that don’t waste life, and organize engineering teams that ship.

Most AI founders read the same technical books. They know transformers and embeddings. But they can’t sell, manage people, or build organizations that survive their own growth.

I’d recommend starting with The 1-Page Marketing Plan if you’ve never marketed anything, or The SaaS Playbook if you’re already building. But honestly, read all eight before you raise your Series A.

Which of these books have you read? What changed after you read them? Please drop a comment and let me know.

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If you are new to my content, my name is Joe Njenga

Join thousands of other software engineers, AI engineers, and solopreneurs who read my content daily on Mediu m and on YouTube where I review the latest AI engineering tools and trends. If you are more curious about my projects and want to receive detailed guides and tutorials, join thousands of other AI enthusiasts in my weekly AI Software engineer newsletter## AI Integration Software Engineer (10+ Years Experience )

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