Top Books for SaaS Product Managers and Product Entrepreneurs
Brendan Andrade
Must Read
These three books cover the three keys to successful products: idea validation (Mom Test), positioning (Obviously Awesome), and marketing (Traction). Start here if you’re a new product manager or first time founder.
- Obviously Awesome by April Dunford A step by step guide on positioning - how to make your product stand out and drive sales through putting it in the right context for your customers. Knowing the product’s correct context can shape strategy and product vision.
- The Mom Test by Rob Fitzpatrick Three rules for customer conversations that teaches you how to properly tell if your business idea is worth pursuing. This is the top book to read and apply before you write a line of code or spend a dollar on development.
- Traction: How Any Startup Can Achieve Explosive Customer Growth by Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares Learn a repeatable process to picking the right marketing channels for your business. Includes starting advice for nineteen different channel options.
Other Good Stuff
- Business Model Generation by Alexander Osterwalder
- Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey Moore
- The Effective Executive by Peter Drucker
- How Google Works by Eric Schmidt and Jonathan Rosenberg
- How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie
- Inspired by Marty Cagan
- The Lean Startup by Eric Ries
- Measure What Matters by John Doerr
- The One Minute Manager by Kenneth Blanchard and Spencer Johnson
- Rework: Change The Way You Work Forever by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson
- The First 90 Days by Michael D. Watkins
- The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz
- The Mythical Man Month by Frederick P. Brooks Jr.
- Trust Me, I’m Lying by Ryan Holiday
- Zero to One by Peter Thiel and Blake Masters
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