Subreddit

Top books from r/Entrepreneur

A general-purpose entrepreneurship forum where founders, solopreneurs, and early-stage operators share advice, war stories, and book recommendations.

Updated September 2026 — rankings refresh with each new pull of comment data.

Books ranked

233

Published mentions

sum of exact per-book subreddit rows

5.2M

Members

Years tracked

About this ranking

r/Entrepreneur has a stronger bias toward foundational mindset books than its peer subs. The E-Myth Revisited dominates with 72 mentions — nearly 60% more than it gets in r/smallbusiness (46) and 18x its count in r/startups (4), where founders chase traction over operations. Zero to One and Never Split the Difference each pull 16 mentions, reflecting an audience that thinks about both market creation and deal-making, not just building product. r/startups skews heavily toward The Lean Startup (13 mentions vs. 19 here) and The Mom Test, books that treat validation as the core discipline; r/Entrepreneur casts a wider net, mixing negotiation, habit formation, and acquisition-led growth titles like Buy Then Build into its canon.

Guides built from this community

Ranked best-of lists and editorial guides that draw on r/Entrepreneur's tracked mentions.

By year

2025 2024 2023 2022 2021 2020 2019

Most-mentioned in r/Entrepreneur

Ordered by tracked mention count across all published years. Sentiment is shown as context and does not change the order. The Upvotes toggle re-sorts by comment-score weight — display only, the canonical order stays mention-count.

Sort by upvotes = sum of comment scores on recognized mentions

The E-Myth Revisited

Michael E. Gerber

Michael Gerber argues most small-business owners are technicians who mistake liking the craft for knowing how to run the company around it.

65 in this sub positive

The Lean Startup

Eric Ries

A cash-strapped founder ships an unfinished product on purpose, watches strangers misuse it, and rewrites the business plan around what they actually did.

19 in this sub positive

Never Split the Difference

Chris Voss

A former FBI hostage negotiator teaches you to get what you want in any negotiation by never actually accepting the middle.

16 in this sub positive

Zero to One

Peter Thiel

Peter Thiel argues that copying what already works produces competition and thin margins, and that building a monopoly is the only business worth starting.

16 in this sub positive

The 4-Hour Workweek

Timothy Ferriss

A guy quits his cubicle, outsources his own job to a virtual assistant, and starts running his business from wherever he wants.

11 in this sub positive

Shoe Dog

Phil Knight

Phil Knight borrows $50 from his dad, sells Japanese running shoes out of his car, and spends two decades nearly bankrupt building Nike.

10 in this sub positive

The Hard Thing About Hard Things

Ben Horowitz

A CEO recounts firing friends, running out of cash, and surviving the moments every founder secretly calls we're-fucked-it's-over.

9 in this sub positive

Atomic Habits

James Clear

James Clear argues that habits built two minutes at a time compound, over a year, into a completely different person.

8 in this sub Not scored

Buy Then Build

Walker Deibel

Walker Deibel's case that buying an existing profitable business beats starting from scratch, recommended on r/Entrepreneur as the first stop before any acquisition.

6 in this sub positive

#10

Principles

Ray Dalio

Ray Dalio turns his hedge fund's internal operating manual into a 500-page life philosophy—and Reddit isn't sure whether to treat it as scripture or autobiography.

6 in this sub positive

#11

$100M Offers

Alex Hormozi

Alex Hormozi's pricing manual, passed around r/Entrepreneur reading lists alongside Zero to One and Good to Great.

5 in this sub Not scored

#12

Company of One

Paul Jarvis

Paul Jarvis argues a business can choose to stay one person forever, and treats every 'when will you scale' question as the wrong question.

5 in this sub positive

#13

Good to Great

Jim Collins

A researcher spends five years asking why a handful of mediocre companies suddenly started beating the market and never stopped.

5 in this sub positive

#14

Start with Why

Simon Sinek

A consultant argues that Apple and Martin Luther King succeeded for the same underlying reason, then builds an entire framework around explaining it.

5 in this sub critical

#15

The Goal

Eliyahu M. Goldratt

Eli Goldratt's 1984 novel about a plant manager with 90 days to save his factory before corporate shuts it down.

5 in this sub positive

#16

Deep Work

Cal Newport

Cal Newport keeps his phone in a drawer and his calendar walled off in four-hour blocks, and argues that's the only way anyone still produces work that matters.

4 in this sub positive

#17

Hooked

Nir Eyal

A product designer maps the four-step loop (trigger, action, variable reward, investment) that keeps you opening apps you meant to delete.

4 in this sub positive

#18

Profit First

Mike Michalowicz

Mike Michalowicz proposes you pay yourself first, put the money in a separate account, and build a business on what's left—which turns out to be most of the job.

4 in this sub positive

#19

The Mom Test

Rob Fitzpatrick

Rob Fitzpatrick explains why your mom will lie to your face about your startup idea, and how to ask questions that stop that from happening.

4 in this sub Not scored

#20

Disciplined Entrepreneurship

Bill Aulet

Bill Aulet turns MIT's entrepreneurship course into 24 numbered steps for finding a customer before you've built anything to sell them.

3 in this sub positive

#21

Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion

Robert B. Cialdini

Robert Cialdini spent years studying the six levers that move people to say yes — scarcity, authority, social proof, and three more you've already been hit with today.

3 in this sub positive

#22

Made to Stick

Chip Heath

Chip and Dan Heath take apart six ideas that lasted centuries and explain the structural reasons your last presentation was forgotten by Tuesday.

3 in this sub positive

#23

The Personal MBA

Josh Kaufman

Josh Kaufman argues you can teach yourself everything an MBA covers for the price of a few books, then lists which mental models actually matter.

3 in this sub positive

#24

Traction

Gino Wickman

Gino Wickman gives small business owners a six-part operating system — Vision, People, Data, Process, Issues, Traction — and a meeting structure to run it.

3 in this sub positive

Looking for more? Similar subreddits

Subs whose top-mentioned books overlap most with this one.

r/smallbusiness 19 r/startups 11 r/selfimprovement 5 r/sysadmin 4 r/financialindependence 5