Start it Bookclub: What our business coaches are reading this summer
It may be summer break for some, but let's be honest: the entrepreneurial world doesn't really do "out of office." Somewhere between the beach towel and the second ice cream of the day, founders are still checking Slack, scaleups are still hiring, and term sheets don't wait for anyone's tan to fade. If anything, summer is when the busiest founders finally get a few uninterrupted hours to do the thing they never have time for during the year: read. So instead of fighting it, we asked a few of our Start it @KBC coaches for the books they’d actually put in founders' hands. Enjoy!
No Rules Rules - Reed Hastings & Erin Meyer
"For me, this book was a real eye-opener: it inspired me to think not only about 'what model works' as a startup, but also to consciously reflect on 'what culture do I want to build, and is it ready for the next phase of growth?'. It's something I often recommend founders to start thinking about early in their journey." Inge Wouters (Lead Business Coach)
The book shows how Netflix deliberately built a culture of freedom and responsibility instead of rules and control. For startups, it's a reminder that culture isn't something to figure out later: it's a strategic choice worth making consciously from day one, right alongside the business model.
The Founder's Dilemmas - Noam Wasserman
"This is the book I want every founder to read before they make a co-founder agreement, not after. A lot of coaching is really just fixing decisions that were made in month one, just because people were friends." Raf Seymus (Business Coach)
Drawing on data from nearly 10,000 founders, the book examines how early decisions around co-founders, equity splits, and control affect a startup's later trajectory. It's most valuable to read before a co-founder agreement is signed, since many of the issues it flags - unclear roles, uneven equity splits, misaligned expectations - are hard to correct once they've been baked into the founding structure.
Radical Candor - Kim Scott
"The difference between ruinous empathy (too nice to be honest) and obnoxious aggression (honest but without care) is something I use a lot in coaching talks about team feedback. Very useful for our founders, because most of them hire their first people right around the time they start coaching with us, and that is exactly the moment when feedback habits get formed, good or bad. Just be direct and caring at the same time" sounds easier than it really is. Without some basic trust in the team, radical candour can quickly become just being blunt, and early founding teams (friends, old colleagues) do not always have that trust yet." Raf Seymus (Business Coach)
Scott's framework argues that effective feedback requires both directness and genuine care at the same time, and that this combination only works when there's enough underlying trust in the team.
Building High-Impact Organizations - Alexander Vuylsteke
"As a business coach at Start it@KBC, I frequently see founders
wasting too much energy putting out daily fires instead of actually leading. Building High-Impact Organizations gives you the exact blueprint to break that habit. Its biggest lesson? Stop micromanaging and start aligning your team's personal growth with your company's mission. That's how you get people to take real ownership, stop burning out, and focus on what actually moves the needle if you are in the phase of growing from startup to scaleup." Dirk Lievens (Business Coach)
Written by Alexander Vuylsteke (who founded, scaled, and exited Yools before senior roles at EyeSee and JudgeMe) the book offers a practical blueprint for founders moving from startup to scaleup, and even features real case examples from Start it @KBC-alumni like Ziggu, Rock.estate and Funkey. That local, recognizable context makes it an easy one for our founders to see themselves in.