Jason Evanish
Founder and CEO of Get Lighthouse, a management-coaching software company, and previously a product lead at KISSmetrics. Writes about leadership, management and product at jasonevanish.com.
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Recommends rcmnd
What they recommendrcmnd 60 things — each backed by an exact quote.
Compiled by rcmnd.app, not by them: the quotes are theirs, and each links to the post it was copied from.
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The Lean Startup Disliked
If you actually want to learn how to actually BE a lean startup or how to actually do it, this book will not help you. If you want to learn the high level concepts only then this is a great book. The other books I have above I encourage you to read before this one if you want to truly learn and implement lean practices. 7. On the Shortness of Life by Seneca (3.13.18)
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Tipping Point Disliked
If you've ever read Malcolm Gladwell's books, you know the formula: 5-10 specific anecdotes and a rule he emphasis throughout. Save yourself some time and read a blog post or review of the book. 4. "Startup Lessons Learned" by Eric Ries (10.12.10)
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Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind Liked
A lot of people have raved about this book in Silicon Valley, so I wanted to see what it was all about. It's a great interpretation of the history of man. Unfortunately, it has about 10% of the citations it deserves for the subject matter. I found it a really interesting set of ideas for how to think about how we evolved. I felt there was some inaccuracies, but appreciate having the perspective of an expert.
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Bossypants Liked
Not only is Tina Fey a very funny writer, it's fascinating to have the opportunity to climb inside the head of a successful female leader. Reading the internal drama within Tina's head as she thought about whether she wanted a second child while considering how it would affect the 100+ employees that worked for her on 30 Rock was priceless. As a manager, it gives me an understanding and level of empathy I wouldn't have had otherwise.
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Not Caring What Other People Think is a SuperPower Liked
I follow Ed Latimore on twitter. He writes a lot of interest things there, so I was curious to pick up his book to see what he'd say in a longer form. This book is like getting beers and talking life with Ed for about 5-6 hours. Lots of truisms and life lessons that should resonate in the world we live in today. It's no Earth-shattering, but it is a great way to get more good ideas in your head.
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Permanent Record Liked
If you care about privacy, or want to understand what the NSA and CIA really do to monitor Americans, this book is an important read. It explains from beginning to end how Snowden became the privacy hero he is today, why he decided to leak the information, and how he did it. It's an interesting and important read, but also probably 100 pages too long.
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Decoded Liked
Decoded is a semi-autobiographical book that tells Jay-Z's story growing up and finding success in hip hop. It also helps you deeply understand the inner-city ghetto struggles (Jay was actually a drug dealer until age 27). In organized sections of hand picked songs with RapGenius-style lyric explanations (note: Decoded came first), you see through his eyes the difficult choices he and so many others faced while listening to some of his best tracks.
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Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired Liked
Who are the best engineers and designers in the world? Nature. This book is an interesting, science-heavy look at some really interesting properties in nature we could use to learn from as we try to design new technology. Benyus takes us across the spectrum from photosynthesis, to agriculture, to spiders. If you want to geek out on a little biology while applying it to technology this is a good read.
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Economics in One Lesson Liked
This economics thought experiment is a classic book originally written in 1946. Like most books that follow Nassim Taleb's "all books worth reading are at least 20 years old" rule, it has timeless lessons throughout. It tackles all kinds of ongoing political/economic concepts like rent control, minimum wage, tariffs, "saving industries", and more.
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The Fountainhead Liked
After having multiple friends recommend it, I decided it was time to read a book by the controversial Ayn Rand. I greatly enjoyed the lengthy story of triumph of the creative individual over the status quo, but I found the rape-driven relationship between main characters distasteful and took away from the story.
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REWORK Liked
The team at 37 Signals have very strong opinions on how to build a company and much of it is solid advice to consider. This book is particularly great because it's a simple, quick read; they do not waste your time with fluff.
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Mastering the VC Game Liked
The interests of a Venture Capitalist are different than those of the entrepreneurs building a company they've invested in. Jeff does an awesome job of helping explain how you can get misaligned in your goals versus your investors. Fortunately, he also covers how to avoid it.
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Pitching Hacks Liked
This is a really short book that just gets to the point. It's a great checklist to think about what you need to pull together if you're going to raise money from investors. It helps you avoid some common pitfalls and gives you a good start on what you need to do to nail your elevator, recruiting, and funding pitches.
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Venture Deals: Be Smarter Than Your Lawyer and VC Liked
If you're considering raising institutional funding for your startup, then this is a key book to read to understand the fundamentals of the legal documents and terms. It came recommended by a number of fellow entrepreneurs and it didn't disappoint. I haven't raised money yet myself so I may change this score up or down significantly once I have that first hand experience.
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The Art of the Start Liked
If you have no idea what it takes to start a company, this is a great book to start with. Guy does an excellent job of covering all the basics quickly and efficiently.
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The Knack: How Street-Smart Entrepreneurs Learn to Handle Whatever Comes Up Recommends
If you're deep into building a company, or serious about building something that lasts, this is an excellent read. Written by a man who has built multiple $100Mn+ revenue companies. He has a great, matter of fact language and lessons that are key to the most essential parts of building a business. This is a must read for any serious founder.
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Buy This Book Before You Buy Facebook: A PandoDaily Expert Guide To The Internet's Biggest IPO Liked
If you don't know how Facebook became what it is today, this is an interesting account of many of the key steps along the way.
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Iconoclasts Liked
I read this because I was curious what sets the greatest entrepreneurs apart from everyone else? Where do they get their inspiration and how did they do it? While this book isn't completely satisfying, it does provide a number of interesting insights into the likes of Steve Jobs and other such icons.
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Behind the Cloud: The Untold Story of Salesforce.com Liked
Want to know the story behind how Salesforce was built? This is that story in founder Marc Benioff's own words. At times I found him overly prescriptive without an appreciation for his unfair advantages he had (getting to start it while having a big salary at Oracle, having $6Mn in "bootstrapped funding", etc). However, he also helped pioneer the cloud and SaaS as a business model, so there are many great lessons to glean if you're building a high-growth SaaS business.
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PayPal Wars Liked
Paypal survived the dot com crash to become a massively successful company. They also led to the Paypal Mafia, the most famous group of people formerly of the same company that went on to do other successful things. I wanted to know the story of the company and this book covers the good, the bad and the ugly of their journey to success.
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Work Rules!: Insights from Inside Google Liked
If you're curious how Google built it's culture and the processes thanks to their extremely data & engineering driven nature, this is a great book. What held it back was being ~100 pages too long and Bock didn't always understand where what they did only fit at a $100Bn+, mega-profitable company. Still, the insights on the studies on their 50,000+ employees is well worth the read since so few of us can get similar statistical significance to apply to our teams.
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How to Become a Rainmaker Mixed on
If you like simple books like "ReWork", this is the sales book for you. Fox has a simple, direct way of sharing advice on how he sees the best sales people operate. Nothing here is Earth-shattering, but if you zoom out, you realize that the little details, the simple things are what trip a lot of people up in sales (myself included). If you want to tighten up your sales game, or just get some fundamentals right, this is a good, quick read.
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Predictable Revenue: Turn Your Business Into A Sales Machine With The $100 Million Best Practices Of Salesforce.com Liked
If you're looking to understand the basics of building and scaling a sales process and team, this book is a great primer. It also goes into great detail in how the author built a better, more reliable method than pure cold-calling to generate leads beyond the marketing team at Salesforce's efforts.
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From Impossible to Inevitable Liked
This book is a great overview of the keys to building a repeatable sales model for your SaaS business. It's a great mix of the best lessons from Jason Lemkin and his SaaStr blog and Aaron Ross's top tier consulting work. You can skip the last 50 pages which transitions to being a bad self-help book.
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Selling to Big Companies Liked
Selling to big companies is a different process than selling to an individual. If you're new to sales, this book is a great way to understand the added steps and what to do. I loved how actionable the book was. You can literally open it up and know the tactic to use, the questions to ask, or pitfalls to avoid for each step in the process.
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You can't teach a kid to ride a bicycle at a seminar Liked
Sales isn't easy to learn, especially when you have beginners luck and then hit a wall. This book, from the Sandler Sales Method, gives a good overview of the approach, and why it can be easier to sell when you first start, than once you get into it.
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The Challenger Sale: Taking Control of the Customer Conversatio Liked
What do you do if someone doesn't immediately see how your product will solve their problems? Do you give up? No. With the Challenger Sale, you can see how you can help customers understand why they need what you do.
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The Sales Acceleration Formula: Using Data, Technology, and Inbound Selling to go from $0 to $100 Million Liked
Selling is hard. Building a repeatable model with a team that you attempt to rapidly scale is even harder. Fortunately, Mark Roberge, who was one of the very first employees at HubSpot shares the processes and frameworks he used to build a sales machine. If you like the principles behind Lean Startups, then his data- and experiment-driven approach to sales will be very appealing.
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The Ultimate Sales Machine Liked
When Brian Balfour wrote, "I have never ear marked a book so much in my life. My recommendation is to just get it," I knew I had to check this out. I need to put more of the ideas into action (at which point the rating may rise), but it feels like this book is a playbook for building a monster sales machine and frankly, an amazing company all around. I wrote all over this book and filled the front and back covers with ideas from it.
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Enchantment Liked
It's a decent coverage of the concepts of planning how to delight your customers from your product's design to how you support and serve them. However, it felt a bit like a poor man's Thank You Economy, with less novel ideas and some filler.
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Community Building on the Web Liked
If you need a 101 outline of the basics of how to build a community on the web regardless of your business type, this is a good, although now slightly dated, book to check out.
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The Thank You Economy Liked
Is there a financially justifiable reason to send a customer an exorbitant gift like a football jersey? Gary makes a very compelling case for such a move and others like it. It's a great exercise in thinking about unconventional marketing opportunities.
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The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing Liked
My favorite kinds of books are to the point and filled with solid, actionable advice. It's amazing how much wisdom Ries & Trout have fit into a 130 page book. If you want to learn key marketing fundamentals, and avoid major marketing strategy failures, this book is well worth the read.
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Different: Escaping the Competitive Herd Liked
In today's world of massive consumer choice, it's easy to end up locked in competitive battles where no one stands out. Harvard professor Youngme Moon makes a great series of cases for how you can still stand out. What I particularly liked about this book was it's not like your average marketing book; instead it's like an extended conversation with Moon exploring key concepts on differentiation without the heavy-handedness of specific rules.
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Lean Startup Marketing Liked
One of the hardest things about starting a business is getting your early customers. After that, you have to find a way to *scalably* acquire those customers at a cost you can afford (i.e.- profitably). Fortunately, there are thought leaders like Sean Ellis. This is collection of Sean's greatest wisdom on his startup marketing blog, updated with even deeper insights. A must read if you're just starting out on a new internet venture.
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Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind Liked
This is a true marketing classic. Written originally in the '70s, this book has aged very well by explaining the most important part of your marketing plan: How you position your company and products. This book is filled with great examples that are easy to follow and understand. It all boils down to one thing: Be #1 at something.
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Obviously Awesome Liked
Simple, practical, useful. This book is a quick read that covers modern positioning and how to do it. Unlike all the theoretical books out there, this is a VC who lived a life as a marketer (all the way up to CMO/VP) doing this and then worked with more entrepreneurs. This hands on experience leads to a system that is easy to understand and apply. I'm now trying to apply it so this score will rise or fall based on the results we have.
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Alchemy Liked
Rory Sutherland was part of one of the most legendary ad agencies in the world (Ogilvy) and shared the truth of what he has seen work best in advertising. The truth is that most of it is totally unexpected and counterintuitive. It was always the craziest, boldest, most unique things that outperformed the "tried and true" methods. This book will help your marketing get out of the incremental rut and on track with bolder ideas.
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Tested Advertising Methods Recommends
If you want to learn the art and science of copywriting, then this is the book for you. An expert copywriter for decades, Caples breaks down in detail what makes a great ad versus a failing one. It's loaded with examples and the kind of insights only a veteran can provide. You do need to provide a little imagination as he focuses on mail in based advertising in magazines, which isn't common today. But really, how different is that from downloading free whitepapers today?
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Own the Room: Business Presentations that Persuade, Engage, and Get Results Recommends
If you want one book to teach you everything you need to know about giving great presentations, this is the book. A film director, a psychologist, and an actor share their combined experiences to help improve your content, the design, your movements, and just about every other detail of being a great speaker. It was a slow start, but by the end, I had dog-eared dozens of pages and marked up many more which I was able to directly apply to a major talk I was working on.
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Where Good Ideas Come From Liked
If you're looking for inspiration and understanding how inspiration comes to you. This is an interesting hybrid investigation of how to come up with ideas and the underlying psychology of doing so.
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Brainsteering Liked
Brainstorming sucks. If you don't know that, read this book to understand why. If you know that but don't feel like you have a great alternative, this is a book with a great process I have since used and found it to works great.
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The Creative Habit Liked
This is a great book for understanding how the creative process works. It left me with a lot of ideas I could apply to my day to day to be more creative. After living in the world of startups and business in real life and most of the books I read, it was great to hear how the different world of dance performance can be learned from.
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What Customers Want Liked
This book was written before the Lean Startup movement, but espouses many of the same concepts. If you feel like you're starting at zero in understanding what to do to become customer driven, this is a good place to start.
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Little Bets: How breakthrough ideas emerge from small discoveries Liked
If you ever needed convinced of the importance of why starting with a small experiment is really important this is the book to convince. With interesting stories from Pixar and amongst others, it makes a compelling case.
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Getting to Plan B Liked
If your company is struggling because your initial idea isn't working, this is the book to read. It provides a great blueprint for thinking through pivots for your business. As oneforty was considering pivots in Fall 2010, this book proved very helpful.
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The Lean Entrepreneur Liked
It goes much further and deeper into how to approach actually doing Lean in your business than Eric Ries's The Lean Startup book. It also has some awesome case studies showing how lean can apply to any industry. See my full review here.
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When Coffee Competes with Kale Liked
If you need to beef up your understanding of the philosophy of how to be customer driven and really understand who you're building for, this is a great book. Alan does a great job of digging into the jobs to be done concept and helping you understand what it means. The main flaw of the book is it does little to tell you *how* to do it.
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The Four Steps to the Epiphany Liked
This is the book that started the Lean Startup movement. While it is not an easy read, it is packed full of good information and helpful charts and guides.
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The Entrepreneur's Guide to Customer Development Liked
If you want to learn the basics of Customer Development in only an hour or two, this is the book to read. This is a book you can give to any member of your startup and have them understand the importance of and how to implement customer development in your company.
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The Startup Owner's Manual Recommends
This is Steve Blank's textbook to starting a company. It's the Four Steps to the Epiphany, expanded and much more readable. If you want to deep dive into the Lean methodology, this is the book to read.
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Rocket Surgery Made Easy Liked
If you want to learn the basics of usability testing to improve your app or site without breaking the bank, this is the book to get. It's a quick read completely focused on getting you to actually do your own testing.
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The Non-Designers Design Book Liked
If you're like me, I knew nothing about fonts, layouts or basic usage of text before I read this. This book uses great, full-color examples to explain the basics of designs. If you don't know the difference between a serif and a sans-serif font, this is a great place to start.
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Simple and Usable Liked
I felt like I often saw things that were good or bad design but didn't know why. Using beautiful full page pictures and simple explanations, this book goes through great principles for building simple & usable apps and sites.
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Don't Make Me Think Liked
The original usability book by Steve Krug is the best starter for anyone looking to learn the basics of the subject. Nothing I've read helps crystallize as well the idea of your complicated user flow actually being a mess.
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The Systems Bible Liked
Does part of your work include designing, architecting, building, or thinking about how systems work? This book is a snarky look at all the reasons systems fail. The author has clearly lived a life in systems design and has no qualms about calling out all the obvious and not so obvious reasons an complex or complicated system struggles. My main qualm was it offered few solutions while pointing out problems.
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The Messy Middle: Finding your way through the hardest and most crucial part of any bold venture Liked
Part autobiography, part startup + life philosophy, and part product book, I could have categorized this in a few sections. However, the strength of this book is clearly the advice and insights for how Scott's 7+ year journey led to a fantastically successful exit to Adobe for his startup, Behance. The middle of the book is a great mix of anecdotes and tactical things you can apply if your startup is in "the Messy Middle" to turn the corner for your product.
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Creative Selection: Inside Apple's Design Process Recommends
I've never read a book before that captures the journey of going from meh to amazing when building a product. This book does it. Part Apple / Steve Jobs pron, part memoir, and part product insights, this book is a great read on how the iPhone came to be and how they solved really hard problems. For anyone that remarks "Apple isn't what it used to be," this book helps you see what made the difference then.
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The Mesh Liked
If you're interested in understanding the collaborative consumption movement (ie- car sharing, AirBnb, city bike sharing, etc), this book gives a great overview of the trends and opportunities.
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Practically Radical Liked
Those who stick to the status quo will be left with average success at best. This book, by the one of the founders of Fast Company magazine, makes the case for this with some thought-provoking examples and stories.
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