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9 books in this topic

Product Management and Growth Books for Startups

Product and growth books cover the loop at the centre of every startup: deciding what to build, getting people to use it and turning early users into a growing base. They range from product discovery (Inspired, Escaping the Build Trap) to growth channels and network effects (Traction, The Cold Start Problem).

Read a product book before you hire your first product manager, and a growth book once you have a product that keeps the users it already has.

The oldest book here is Inspired (2008); the newest is The Cold Start Problem (2021).

Blitzscaling

Reid Hoffman and Chris Yeh

LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and Chris Yeh explain how some companies grow from startup to giant at extreme speed, and when racing for scale is worth the chaos it causes.

First published 2018

The Cold Start Problem

Andrew Chen

A field guide to network effects from a venture investor and former Uber growth leader. Chen explains how marketplaces and social products get from an empty room to a network that grows itself.

First published 2021

Escaping the Build Trap

Melissa Perri

A guide for companies stuck shipping feature after feature without results. Perri shows how product management, strategy and company structure must change to focus on outcomes.

First published 2018

Explosive Growth

Cliff Lerner

A candid growth memoir from the founder of Snap Interactive. Lerner shares how his dating app grew to 100 million users on Facebook, what went wrong and the frameworks he took away.

First published 2017

Hacking Growth

Sean Ellis and Morgan Brown

The playbook from the person who coined the term growth hacker. Ellis and Brown show how cross-functional teams run rapid experiments to win, activate, keep and monetise customers.

First published 2017

Hooked

Nir Eyal and Ryan Hoover

A short guide to building products people return to without being reminded. Eyal breaks habit formation into a four-step loop and asks founders to check whether they use it ethically.

First published 2013

Inspired

Marty Cagan

The standard text on modern product management. Cagan shows how the best tech companies discover what to build, test ideas quickly and run product teams around outcomes instead of feature lists.

First published 2008

The Lean Product Playbook

Dan Olsen

A hands-on manual for reaching product-market fit. Olsen turns lean startup ideas into a six-step process, with tools for choosing customers, ranking needs and testing prototypes.

First published 2015

Traction

Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares

A practical guide to finding customers. The DuckDuckGo founder and Justin Mares cover 19 channels and give a simple method for testing them so you find the one that moves your startup.

First published 2014

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Other startup book topics

Startup methodsLean Startup, customer development, design sprints and business model tools.Customer validationCustomer interviews, experiments and proof that people will pay.StrategyWhere to compete, how to win and how platforms and monopolies work.Disruption and technologyDisruption theory, AI-era companies, DevOps and creative confidence.Founder storiesMemoirs and histories that show what building a company feels like.Leadership and managementHiring, goals, culture and leading a team through hard calls.Mindset and habitsHabits, decision-making, resilience and designing a working life.Money and fundingCash flow, term sheets, investors and selling your company.Marketing and salesPositioning, messaging, word of mouth and building a sales process.Women and inclusive foundersAdvice, stories and money talk for women and underrepresented founders.Business skillsHow a business works, negotiation, persuasion and startup ecosystems.

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