The Founder Bookshelf

Books founders recommend to each other. Browse by topic or by where you are as you grow, mark what you've read, and add what's next.

10 books on Marketing & Growth for finding pmf

  1. Competing Against Luck cover

    Clayton M. Christensen with Taddy Hall, Karen Dillon, and David S. Duncan

    Customers do not buy products, they hire them to do a job.

    Christensen and co-authors lay out the Jobs to Be Done theory: people hire products and services to make progress in specific circumstances of their lives. By...

  2. Everybody Writes cover

    Ann Handley

    In a content-flooded world, clear writing is your competitive edge.

    A practical handbook for producing high-quality marketing content across every channel. Handley argues that in the digital age everyone is a writer, and the quality of...

  3. Growth Hacker Marketing cover

    Ryan Holiday

    A short primer on marketing as product-driven, testable growth.

    A concise introduction to the growth hacker mindset, arguing that the line between product and marketing has blurred. Holiday walks through a simple sequence: achieve...

  4. Hacking Growth cover

    Sean Ellis and Morgan Brown

    Run a fast, data-driven experiment engine to drive breakout growth.

    Ellis and Brown lay out the operating system for growth teams: a rapid, cross-functional experimentation process that pulls together product, marketing, data, and...

  5. Lean Analytics cover

    Alistair Croll and Benjamin Yoskovitz

    Find the one metric that matters at each stage of your startup.

    Part of the Lean Series, this book gives founders a framework for choosing and tracking the metrics that actually move a startup forward. Croll and Yoskovitz introduce...

  6. Poor Economics cover

    Abhijit V. Banerjee and Esther Duflo

    Fighting poverty by testing what actually works.

    Poor Economics draws on years of randomized controlled trials to examine how the world's poor actually make decisions about health, education, savings, and risk....

  7. Scientific Advertising cover

    Claude C. Hopkins

    Treat advertising as a measurable, testable science.

    A foundational 1923 text arguing that advertising should be judged by measurable results, not opinion or art. Hopkins champions testing, tracking, coupons, and sales...

  8. Tested Advertising Methods cover

    John Caples

    Test everything; the audience decides what works.

    A foundational text on direct-response advertising built on rigorous split-testing of real campaigns. Caples shows that small changes, especially to headlines, can...

  9. Traction cover

    Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares

    Most startups fail from lack of customers, not lack of product.

    Weinberg and Mares lay out nineteen traction channels, from SEO and content marketing to community building and unconventional PR, that startups can use to grow. They...

  10. Zag cover
    Zag

    Marty Neumeier

    When everybody zigs, zag.

    Neumeier's central thesis is radical differentiation: when everyone else zigs, the winning brand zags. The book offers a 17-step checklist for finding and executing a...

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