“There is no friend as loyal as a book” — a famous quote from Ernest Hemingway.
Reading one good book may change your life and business upside down. This is true especially if you want to start your own software-as-a-service based business. But before you do so, let’s quickly glance over a few stats.
A Deloitte survey published in 2021 found cloud-based As-a-Service model gives 6 out of 10 businesses a competitive edge. Still, 93% of the adopters of this model face many challenges while scaling up.
There are hundreds of books already written for the business world and some specifically for the SaaS niche. Thus, finding top SaaS books is like finding a needle in the biggest haystack possible.
But worry not!
We have prepared a curated list of bestselling books that most SaaS founders, directors, CEOs, marketers, and sales reps swear by. This list of top SaaS books will guide you from the launching phase to winning customers and everything in between such as sales, growth hacking, and content marketing.
So, without further ado, let’s begin!
Author: Eric Ries
The Lean Startup is an absolute must-read for SaaS founders when starting up. This bestseller from Eric Ries goes deeper in explaining all the ins and outs necessary for a lean startup. The book introduces concepts for constant experimentation to test, validate, and improve ideas.
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Authors: Aaron Ross and Jason Lemkin
The book is superbly packed with all the bits and pieces needed to achieve hyper-growth as a SaaS founder. Additionally, the authors have included many anecdotes and examples from companies like Salesforce, EchoSign, and many others for SaaS founders to create predictable revenue streams.
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Author: Marc Benioff
Marc Benioff, the Chairman, and CEO of Saleforce.com, pens down his journey from a rented apartment to building a SaaS-based revolutionary cloud computing company. The rags to riches story of Benioff will inspire many entrepreneurs of coming generations to innovate and grow their SaaS business faster.
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Author: Simon Sinek
Simon Sinek is a famous motivational speaker, author, and optimistic with highly watched Ted-Talk shows. In his book Start with Why, he says great inventors and thought leaders in history began their ambitious projects with a ‘Why’, and so should you. A great read for anyone beginning afresh in business.
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Author: Ben Horowitz
This is a book by one of the most respected & experienced entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley. The Hard Thing About Hard Things defines a critical approach on how founders should start and run their businesses. SaaS founders will find much-needed inspiration from this book.
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Author: Rob Bershteyn
Another must-read book in the list of top SaaS books is Value as a Service. Rob Bershteyn — the CEO of Coupa talks about how businesses should embrace the coming disruption and provides much-needed business insights for today’s business leaders.
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Author: Max Altschuler
Selling is the most vital aspect to keep revenue flowing in. Hacking Sales — a book by Max Altschuler is a worthy read for SaaS marketers who want to build a sales machine. The book is helpful to transform your sales processes using next-gen and modern tools, strategies, and tactics.
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Author: Jacco Van Dar Kooiji and Fernando Pizzaro
Another great book that finds its place in top SaaS books is The SaaS Sales Method. It’s a pure value addition from marketers’ point of view to learn sales recreation and revenue generation. The authors break down their sales process in easy to understand elements.
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Author: Steli Efti
Product demos are essential for selling SaaS products. This book from Steli Efti is one of the highly recommended and best SaaS sales books to read. From training thousands of SaaS founders, directors, sales reps, and marketers, Steli presents a no B.S guide on how to effectively deliver winning SaaS product demos.
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Author: Tim Hughes
This book by Tim Hughes explains the importance of building relationships with potential clients on social networks. We all know the power social media hold today and this book would be a perfect fit for SaaS startups to leverage this power to their advantage.
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Author: David Hoffeld
Another masterpiece that demystifies the tidbits of sales with proven strategies is a book by David Hoffeld. The author teaches various science and research-based sales techniques that use behavioral economics, social psychology, and neuroscience.
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Author: Ryan Holiday
Ryan Holiday is one of the bestselling authors of multiple books. If he’s not on your list of business authors to follow, include him immediately. His book Growth Hacker Marketing sheds light on the growth strategies that marketers and founders can take inspiration from.
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Author: Verne Harnish
Another book that should be on your bucket list is Scaling Up by Verne Harnish. The author writes about four key areas and a 4D framework for companies to unlock maximum benefits and grow 10 times.
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Author: Sean Ellis & Morgan Brown
A must-read in the list of top SaaS books for entrepreneurs, marketers, innovators, and many others who want to grow their company. The author takes you on a ride to hack growth by creating and executing your own custom strategies.
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Author: David Cancel
Having founded one of the fastest-growing SaaS companies called Drift, David Cancel presents a super impressive piece on how SaaS founders can achieve HYPERGROWTH. The book includes practical advice and frameworks SaaS founders can replicate for their business.
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Author: Ann Handley
Generating sales through content marketing is one of the most preferred ways. This book by Ann Handley perfectly dives into how everyone can write effective marketing content. An absolute read for SaaS marketers.
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Author: Kristina Halvorson
This book deals with how to create compelling, accurate, and to-the-point content that delivers value to your online audiences. It covers different aspects of producing a useful content strategy for your business. A must-read for marketers who want to adopt content-based growth strategies.
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Author: Nick Mehta, Dan Steinman, and Lincoln Murphy
Co-authored by three individuals, this book goes on to explain how customer success is vital more than ever and how it works for your business. The book is worth your reading time if you want to kick start the next customer-centric revolution and make the success stick for longer.
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Author: R “Ray” Wang
This book by Ray Wang is an excellent and unmissable read for digital business owners. The book shares insights on how organizations can ride the waves of change to deliver their promise to customers. Do give it a read if you wish to learn more about the peer-to-peer economy for an authentic experience.
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Author: Gabriel Weinberg & Justin Mares
Traction by Weinberg and Mares is a beautifully crafted piece of work tailored for startups that can’t get traction during their initial days. It teaches 19 channels using which startups can build their customer base. So, definitely worth giving a read for SaaS founders.
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We hope you found some binge-worthy books from this curated list of top Software-as-a-Service books. Sure, you’ll find many others on the internet, but we have covered the most useful ones before you embark on your SaaS startup journey.
Each book is unique on its own and presents a distinct perspective with some of them dwelling a bit on the technical side of the SaaS. Written by industry experts, these books are a must-read to deal with the launch, sales, growth hacking, content marketing, and customer success of your SaaS business.
Do give them a read and let us know which book inspired you the most to take that next leap in the world of SaaS.
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