Winner
Start. Scale. Exit. Repeat.
Colin C Campbell
Start. Scale. Exit. Repeat. by Colin Campbell is the go-to guide for entrepreneurs who want to build, grow, and sell businesses on their terms. Drawing from Campbell’s own experience founding and exiting multiple companies, this book skips the theory and delivers real-world, actionable advice. It breaks down how to start with clarity, scale efficiently without burning out, and plan the kind of exit that rewards your hustle. Campbell shares proven strategies, hard lessons, and smart shortcuts to help readers avoid common pitfalls and make smarter moves at every stage. Whether you’re launching your first venture or prepping for your next big sale, this book hands you the mindset and playbook to move fast, stay focused, and build something worth selling.
Winner
The Slingshot Formula: How Angry Birds Launched Their Way from Indie Game to Global Icon
Pascal Clarysse
The Slingshot Formula is the definitive behind-the-scenes analysis into the business tactics, marketing genius and wild stunts that facilitated an unknown startup company to turn the mobile game Angry Birds into a true pop culture phenomenon. The small startup from Finland have grown their workforce from 18 to 800, with offices spanning across 4 continents. How did Rovio do it? Filled with exclusive stories and insider tips, The Slingshot Formula serves as the maverick playbook of what-to-do and what-not-to-do when navigating fast lane success in the rapidity of the digital era.
Winner
Startup Different: The Myth Busting Blueprint for Your Multi-Million Dollar Business
David Sinkinson
Chris Sinkinson
Startups are sexy. From revolutions to disruptions to pivots, running your own startup is an appealing but unfortunately overdramatized endeavor. The problem is that startup-land is full of myths and misnomers. Will early funding actually help your business in the longer term? Do you need a bunch of staff? Do you need to take big gambles to get ahead? Making the wrong call on questions like these can actually crush your dream rather than getting you closer to it.
And it’s not just business decisions. Entrepreneurs also feel constant challenges to their legitimacy—doubts from family, friends, their employees, mentors, the market… you name it.
Startup Different, provides you with a chronological framework for building your business—everything from idea generation to selling for millions and moving on—that dispels the common assumptions that come with starting your own business. You too can make your business legit and achieve your entrepreneurial dreams.
Finalist
Creating Unicorns with Simple Innovations: The PISA Method
Jorge Sá
Magda Pereira, Nadiia Nikitina
The book presents the PISA method illustrated by hundreds of examples of how unicorns can be created:
- Through simplicity (which is today, besides technology, the second great venue for entrepreneurship);
- By people of all backgrounds:
- Even without technical know-how; and
- Of all ages;
- With problems/opportunities which came to them (instead of having to look actively for opportunities); and
- Adapting solutions which already are in use elsewhere (rather than having to create them anew/from scratch).
That is the essence of the PISA method, which summarizes the actions of visionaries who touched lives by simplifying an increasing complex world.
And so in a certain sense this book was written by the multitude of entrepreneurs whose lives are nothing but examples of the PISA method, detailing a quiet revolution under way, which falls below the radar and therefore has, so far, been an untold story.
Finalist
Starting a Startup
James Sinclair
Starting a Startup provides a clear, actionable framework that helps first-time founders validate their ideas, truly understand their market, and build products that solve real problems. It is geared towards the first-time founder who has a great idea but is overwhelmed by the prospect of turning it into a successful business.