As a founder of a fast-growing venture-backed company, I have found that there is no better resource to read than Paul Graham’s essays (paulgraham.com). He has seen more startups succeed and fail than any other individual in the history of startups. As such he has come closest to having a statistically representative sample to distill insights from. He is an excellent writer too.

I have also found Peter Thiel’s book Zero To One to be full of actionable insights and recommendations.

Finally, Eric Ries’s The Lean Startup is the bible of iterating fast and finding product-market fit before you invest in a product no one wants (#1 most common way to fail).

Just my 2 cents.

(Disclaimer: we are not funded by YC)