In this solo video, SaaS District host Akeel Jabbar (founder and co‑investor at Horizon Capital) argues that the single best investment a SaaS founder can make is knowledge, specifically through books that distill decades of experience from successful entrepreneurs. He presents five essential titles and extracts actionable lessons from each. 1. The Lean Startup (Eric Ries) – Emphasizes speed over perfection, building a minimum viable product (MVP), and rapid customer feedback to validate demand. Akeel shares his own early‑stage mistake of over‑engineering his recruitment startup, illustrating the cost of perfectionism. 2. Zero to One (Peter Thiel & Blake Masters) – Advocates creating a monopoly by being 10× better, faster, cheaper, or more convenient than competitors, focusing on a single niche before scaling, and leveraging personal strengths to dominate a market. 3. Scaling Up (Verne Harnish) – Breaks scaling into four pillars: People, Strategy, Execution, and Cash. Akeel details his personal hiring framework (grit, values, results, then skills) derived from the book. 4. The Hard Thing About Hard Things (Ben Horowitz) – Explores the dual CEO archetypes (strategic vs. practical), the necessity of complementary leadership, and the importance of being comfortable with discomfort through scenario planning. 5. The Effective Executive (Peter Drucker) – Focuses on time‑management as the core of executive effectiveness: measuring, cutting, and consolidating time to prioritize high‑impact activities. Akeel concludes that a sub‑$50 investment in these books can yield a 10‑ to 100‑fold return by accelerating growth, improving leadership, and avoiding common pitfalls. He invites viewers to comment on additional recommendations and to subscribe for more SaaS insights.
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Woo! If you have one investment to make this year as a SaaS founder, literally the most important thing you can do and get the best ROI on your investment to help you grow your company is knowledge and books. For less than $10, you can soak up the knowledge and all the experience of millionaires and billionaires, something that took them 20, if not 30+ years to learn. They've went through all the failures and they give you all the knowledge into one single book. single book that you'll never have the time as a human being to learn on your own. My name is Akeel Jabbar. Welcome back to another video of SaaS District, where I'm the founder and co-investor at Horizon Capital. And today we're going to talk about 5 books that every single co-founder or SaaS founder must read to be successful as a founder. Okay, so starting with number 1, the first book that I recommend for new founders and also established founders or any business founder is The Lean Startup by Eric Ries. Okay, every founder must read this and I'll tell you why in a second. I remember when I was in university, I was studying engineering, I launched my first startup. It was a recruitment company for SaaS companies. Fast-growing companies were looking for developers all over the world, and they used to come to me and ask me to help them hire for their— for those open positions. Now, I remember when I first launched, it took me literally weeks just to figure out the name. What was the name of the business I was going to decide on? It was actually Delta Staffing, if you guys want to look that up. Then it was, what was the— how do I incorporate this business? Should I incorporate it? Should I be independent contractor? How should I set that up? That took another week. Then it was the logo. Don't even get me started on the logo. It literally took me a week or two just to figure out how to perfect the perfect logo. Then I wanted to build a website. Okay, so I went out there and I think it was Weebly. That was the site I created by myself. I got the domain deltastaffing.com and I built the website all by myself. And I realized it literally took me almost 3 months or 4 months of my time and I didn't even make a single sale. I was just going out there trying to perfect everything. Okay, and that's how it is when you're first out there. It's the insecurity of you that wants to perfect everything before going out there. Now, as soon as I did launch, I ended up doing really well and getting a bunch of clients lined up in the first few months that I did go out and sell. But I realized looking back now, if I was to do this again, I wouldn't have spent that much time trying to perfect everything. Okay? And that's the lesson what Eric teaches you in The Lean Startup. Okay? It's all about, the biggest lesson is speed over perfection. Okay? When you're going out there to launch your business, always start with an MVP, your minimum viable product. So what that is, is just enough. You need to have just enough investment, Just enough time to be able to go out there and speak to your customer and get real user feedback. So you know what you're— if your building is actually a demand, if people are willing to pay the price that you're justifying, and if they trust you and they're willing to sign up and pay you with their hard-earned money. Okay, so looking back now, if I would have taken the lessons and if I read that book, what I would have done differently is maybe just spent a couple of days building a very, very nicely designed PowerPoint presentation that highlighted all my pricing, what my offer is, what was the benefits. And I would have just started calling right away. And that's exactly what I did. I used to just cold call companies that were looking to hire. I would have just called them from day one and give them my service. Say, hey, I've got this service. Are you interested? Get some feedback. And that would validate and save me a lot of time going forward. Okay. So that's number one, The Lean Startup by Eric Ries. Number 2, the second book that I recommend to all SaaS founders and entrepreneurs is Zero to One by Peter Thiel and Blake Masters. Now, if you guys don't know who Peter Thiel is, he is a legendary investor and entrepreneur who co-founded companies such as PayPal and Palantir, both billion-dollar companies. Okay? And what, what he recommends in his book is start with a company where you can be the dominant player in the industry. Okay? You don't want competition. You wanna be a monopoly. Find something that's super unique where you can launch it and it's gonna grow super fast and you can become the market leader. Okay? And the way you do that is you start with yourself. Okay? A lot of people think is you start with the problem, but no, you actually have to start with yourself. Success isn't luck. You create your own success. Okay? And that's what he really, really highlights in this. And the way you do that is you get good at something Get good at one thing. Get good at one thing and be really, really, really good at it, and then laser focus. Once you find something that works and you see it's growing, laser focus and cut everything else out. And once you find something, if you're trying to decide what to invest in or what to build, think about building something that's 10 times, not just a little bit better than the competition, but 10 times faster, 10 times more convenient, or 10 times cheaper than what's the normal. Okay, once you can figure out how to do that, then you know you can dominate because you have a competitive edge. And then the way you do that is once you have that product, start with one niche, okay? Focus on one niche of the market, focus on scaling with them, and then you go out and expand into the market and try to capture the entire market once you figured out how to do it with one. So that's number 2, Zero to One by Peter Thiel and Blake Masters. So as you're starting to scale, these next 3 books become super, super important. And the 3rd book I'm going to talk about is called Scaling Up: How a Few Companies Make It and Why the Rest Don't, which is based on the Rockefeller Habits and written by Verne Harnish. Okay? And what Verne talks about is the main challenges of trying to scale a company. It's fine when you're just starting off, but as you're really scaling, you're hiring people, building management teams and managing a lot of capital, these 4 points become super, super important. And the first point that he talks about is your people. Okay? Fundamentally, you know, it's your people who are going to make your business or break your business. And the goal is, the challenge that we have as entrepreneurs and founders is not only attracting high quality and the top talent, but also how to keep them. Okay? And that's what he covers in this book is how to attract them and also keep them. The second thing he talks about is your strategy. You need to create a strategy that's different, that's differentiated, and going to help you actually scale your business and be robust. Third is your execution. How do you drive execution flawlessly? Because that's going to make the difference between a good versus a great startup that's able to scale. And finally, the fourth point is your cash. You want to make sure you have plenty of cash to weather the storm. Now you always think you have lots of money and things are going well, But one day something happens in the market, a big client pulls out or cancels, and now you're all of a sudden looking for cash to keep up and manage your business. So I've used a lot of his recommendations. One that I love to use and I always use now, I remember when I did my hiring in the past, I always struggled. I used to try to hire people because they were my friends or I thought they were smart or just because from their resume I thought they were the right people because they had the experience. But I love to use his hiring criteria for all my own businesses going forward. So I use, I have 4 criteria that I learned from that book and that I use now in my own hiring criteria in this exact order. Okay. The first thing I look for when hiring is your will, or other word is grit. What's your desire to learn, to innovate, to excel, to act with courage that you want to figure out on your own? Okay. You guys probably heard the word grit. That's the number one thing I look for when looking to hire before experience. Number 2 is the values. Do they match the values of the team, of our culture, of the community, of what we built internally of the company? Okay, so the values is super important. Are they a cultural fit? Do they align with the core values that you set of your business? Number 3, the third thing I look for is the results. Can they deliver on the results that they promise? They say, I'm going to do ABC. You're going to set the KPIs. Do they actually deliver on the KPIs and the outcomes of which you've set for them that are realistic and they're overachievers? And the 4th thing, see, this is, this is kind of counterintuitive, is your skills and experience. Most people think skills and experience is the number one thing, but it's actually the 4th thing that matters here. It's the last thing. It's the least important because skills need to be upgraded every 3 to 5 years. Things change so quickly that the skills that you thought were important today in a couple of years are going to be irrelevant. And if they have the other skills, or the other knowledge or the foundation, they'll be able to adapt and learn the new skills. So that's the third book, Scaling Up: How a Few Companies Make It and Why Others Don't by Verne Harnish. The fourth book that I absolutely love is called The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz. Now if you guys don't know Ben, Ben is a legendary investor as well. He sold his company LoudCloud to HP for $1.8 billion in cash. Okay, that's unheard of. He now runs a VC firm called a16z. He also has his own podcast. He's an absolutely awesome entrepreneur and investor. Now what he recommends in his book is the main takeaways which I got from reading that book is what makes a great CEO. And he mentions there's 2 types of successful CEOs. The first one is the practical CEO and the second one is the strategic CEO. So think of a strategic as the visionary, the one who has a big grand idea, and wants to change the world, and the practical one is the one who's looking about executing, wants to go out there and push it forward on what the vision is. Now, what you might realize is it's very, very hard that one person has both qualities, so they're strategic and practical. So that's why you typically have like a co-founder or a CEO who would complement the other side of what you lack. Now, you can see that with companies like Facebook. Look at what Mark Zuckerberg did. He would be what I consider more of a strategic CEO, okay? But over time he realized that he's gonna be limited on how fast he can execute and how fast he can grow, and that's why he brought on his COO, Sheryl Sandberg, and that's what helped him complement that. And the idea there is to be aware, okay? Be aware of who you are, what kind of CEO you could be, and so that you know who you need to complement yourself with to help drive the company forward as a CEO. Okay. And what he really says that makes a great CEO and to be even better than the rest is to be comfortable being uncomfortable. Okay. The job of a CEO is actually unnatural. Okay. In so many ways, you'll often have to again go against your own instincts. And let me tell you, it's one of the toughest things you can do, but it's actually the best thing you can do is to practice leaving that comfort zone in advance. You have to practice that skill because that comfort zone, you like to stay, you know, what you're used to doing. But this is a long journey as a CEO. It's not a, it's not something you do for a month or a year when you're building a company. This is a 5, 10, maybe even 15-year business. So you have to be comfortable because a lot of things are going to happen and you've got to be able to embrace it and go out there and grow. Okay? So ask yourself worst-case scenario questions. What is the worst that could happen? What if we did lose all of our funding? What if we didn't raise the next round? What would happen then? What would you have to do? Go through those scenarios where you get uncomfortable and the worst thing could possibly happen, and then you can plan for it better as a CEO. Now remember, outside of your comfort zone is where the real magic happens, and that's the key of that book, Hard Things About the Hard Things by Ben Horowitz. So make sure you check that out. The 5th and final book that I absolutely love in helping you scale your business is The Effective Executive by Peter Drucker. Now, as you know at this point, managing a startup, managing a team, and leading a team as a manager is always, always going to be a massive challenge as a leader. Now, what this book teaches you is how to become an effective leader, and the keyword there is effective, and that's what we're going to talk about. Now, before we can answer that question, We need to understand that being a leader and being effective is not something that comes naturally. People think it's something you're born with, but it's actually something you can practice over time that eventually becomes a routine and helps you become better and better over time. Now, in order to become effective in your decision-making, you need to manage your time effectively. Okay? So that's what he recommends. The first thing to do in order to become better and become more effective as an executive is to manage your time better. And the first step you should take at that is to actually record your time. Go out there and measure your time. What are you doing with your time? People think they're being busy. They think they're being productive just because they're doing a bunch of things and their schedule is always full and they're getting pulled in all different directions. But the truth is, if you actually measure your time, take a week, see where you're actually spending your time. How much time is spent on emails? How many times is spent on meetings? How many time— how much time is spent on your phone or doing things that don't actually matter and push your business forward? So just measure it. Don't think of anything at that point. Just make a note of it every 15-minute increments for the entire week. I want you to go down and measure exactly where you're spending your time. Once you have that, the next step is to manage your time. Look at all the areas. Where are you wasting your time? Okay, where are areas where you find that they're not actually adding value to your business or your life? And cut that out ruthlessly. Okay, you'll probably find that you have hours and hours that you just want back in your day just by looking and measuring where your time is being spent. Third, once you know where you've cut your, your time and where to effectively place your time, you want to consolidate your time. And what I mean with that is you want to protect large chunks of units of time throughout your calendar and plan out the activities that are going to drive the highest results and only that you— only something that you can do as an effective leader. Okay? So that's the key of this book, The Effective Executive by Peter Drucker. It's all about being effective with your time. So there you have it guys. That's the 5 books I recommend every single founder go out there and buy today. Okay? That's a total investment of maybe less than $50, but I guarantee you whether you're starting off or you're trying to scale your business, that ROI will drive at least 10, if not even 100 times your investment that you'll get back by building your startup. All right, so if you guys like this video, please subscribe below. Write down, comment below, what other book do you suggest other founders to read? I'd love to hear your guys' comments and see you guys on the next video of SaaS District.
