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
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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....
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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...
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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...
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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...
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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...
Questions, answered
What books do founders recommend?
Founders on the eChai network recommend titles like Competing Against Luck, Everybody Writes, and Growth Hacker Marketing. The bookshelf ranks books by how many founders have read them.
Where can I find a startup reading list?
The eChai founder bookshelf is a curated, founder-recommended reading list you can browse by topic (fundraising, product, hiring) and by stage.
How is the bookshelf ordered?
By recommendation: the more founders mark a book read, the higher it ranks. You can also sort by newest or A to Z.
