I’ve been having a lot of fun (and finding an eager audience) sharing my notes with my new team at Fin Analytics. By extension, I’ve now cleaned up and made four new summaries ready to publish. To download any of the summaries, just hit up my library. The links below will redirect to the actual books (all of which I recommend, otherwise I wouldn’t bother summarizing them).
Escaping the Build Trap, by Melissa Perri
This was a recent focus as I reflected on my experience as a Product Manager to-date. It has already helped me level up my own approach to building products, and I’m sure it will help you too. Here’s my blurb:
This one is Recommended for anyone in a product company. Excellent picture of what it means for a company to be “product led.” Covers all critical dimensions, from how to set (and frame) strategy in such a way as to enable product teams to pursue outcomes, how to approach the product development process, and much more. Argues that many companies fall into a trap of measuring progress based on output, where they’re actually looking for outcomes.
How to Measure Anything, by Douglass Hubbard
I was inspired to revisit my rough notes on this by Jack Dempsey, the head of engineering over here at Fin. We work pretty extensively with helping operations teams measure what was previously intangible processes, so it’s highly relevant to our work. Here’s my blurb:
Details how to think about measurement to reduce uncertainty for important decisions. Valuable tools on calibrating our own confidence, identifying the most important things to measure, and using valid sampling & modeling to improve our understanding of the world. Fascinating detail on Monte Carlo methods, how to apply Bayesian inversion to tackle tricky estimation, and much more.
Zero to One, by Peter Thiel
Having just joined a Series A startup, this classic (and quick read) from Peter Thiel is always fun to revisit. Here’s my blurb:
Compelling book about how to think about working in technology. Interesting counterintuitive perspectives on various topics, like the value of competition (it sucks, seek monopoly power), developing your own definite optimism about the world, the value of secrets, when to start your own company versus work in someone else’s, and more.
Inspired, by Marty Cagan
These notes were cleaned-up recently as I’ve started helping a few friends break into product management. Knowing the language of the field is a must-have, and there’s no better person to learn from than Marty Cagan. Here’s my blurb:
Succinct overview of Product Management as a discipline. This book serves almost as a “glossary” for anyone wanting to know the product context for terminology like “Discovery” and “Opportunity Assessment” and “Story Map Technique.” Provides a great sense for what good versus bad product management looks like.