The Art of the Start 2.0: The Time-Tested, Battle-Hardened Guide for Anyone Starting Anything by Guy Kawasaki

Silicon Valley's top business and marketing guru provides practical step-by-step advice for founding and growing a successful tech startup.

"It's much easier to do things right from the start than to fix them later. At this stage, you are forming the DNA of your startup, and this genetic code is permanent. By paying attention to a few important issues, you can build the right foundation and free yourself to concentrate on the big challenges."

Team Genius: The New Science of High-Performing Organizations by Rich Karlgaard and Michael S. Malone

The latest scientific research on team behavior reveals that conventional wisdom about teamwork is wishful thinking. This book provides a blueprint for using that research to create more effective teams.

"Teams are not strictly practical responses to immediate challenges and situations. Teams are at the heart of what it means to be human. Put another way, as human beings, we must form teams. It is encoded in our DNA. It has proved to be the critical factor in the rise of civilization. The human drive to form teams is also a survival mechanism for individuals. The archeological evidence suggests that even the earliest hominids always grouped together to live and hunt."

The Go-Giver, Expanded Edition: A Little Story About a Powerful Business Idea by Bob Burg and John David Mann

Changing your focus from getting to giving--putting others' interests first and continually adding value to their lives--ultimately leads to unexpected returns.

"Go looking for conflict, and you'll find it. Go looking for people to take advantage of you, and they generally will. See the world as a dog-eat-dog place, and you'll always find a bigger dog looking at you as if you're his next meal. Go looking for the best in people, and you'll be amazed at how much talent, ingenuity, empathy, and goodwill you'll find. Ultimately, the world treats you more or less the way you expect to be treated."

The School of Greatness: A Real-World Guide to Living Bigger, Loving Deeper, and Leaving a Legacy by Lewis Howes

You can discover your own purpose in life and build effective strategies for achieving it by understanding how other exceptional people have done so in their own lives.

"A vision is the most important step to getting anywhere and achieving anything you want in any area of life. But we also have to be clear about what a vision is. A vision is not just a dream. A powerful vision emerges when we couple our dreams with a clear set of goals. Without both, we are apt to wander in a clueless and purposeless fog, because a dream without goals is just a fantasy. And fantasies are the bad kind of visions--the hallucinogenic kind, not the real kind."

Thrive: The Third Metric to Redefining Success and Creating a Life of Well-Being, Wisdom, and Wonder by Arianna Huffington

The unrelenting pursuit of success is a trap unless you consciously decide to slow down, create cherished memories, and pursue lifelong passions.

"If we let it, technology can also add a lot of noise and distraction that gets in the way of our most fundamental creative capabilities--instead of freeing us, it can consume us. What we're beginning to recognize now is that success is not always about doing more, but also about doing better--and we do better when we are connected to our inner wisdom, strength, and intuition."