Books Recommended by Irina Marinescu
Read the interview: Irina Marinescu
6 books recommended by Irina Marinescu
Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products
by Nir Eyal
Already a classic about how to build successful products. Also, retention is a priority goal for any Product Manager, but you can't have retention if you are not setting a good engagement rate. It was a great starting point for me as part of my first startup and continues to help me today as acquired knowledge about user behavior.
Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus: How Growth Became the Enemy of Prosperity
Even before building a tech product we need to prove it is capable of continuous growth. This book gave me a bigger perspective about the place of growth and tech products in the context of a sustainable economy of a highly connected world.
Shantaram
I am always eager to learn how people think and form friendships, how they deal with life's challenges and still remain human. This book delivers that and even more! Shantaram takes you on an incredible journey and you return a changed person.
Badass: Making Users Awesome
by Kathy Sierra
My favorite business book has to be by far Badass: Making Users Awesome by Kathy Sierra. It talks about building sustainable products by placing the customers’ success and user experience first instead of leaving all the work to the Sales and Marketing departments. [Badass] puts… Read the full quote
My favorite business book has to be by far Badass: Making Users Awesome by Kathy Sierra. It talks about building sustainable products by placing the customers’ success and user experience first instead of leaving all the work to the Sales and Marketing departments.
[Badass] puts the focus where it should when building products - on the customer. I’ve recently read a report talking about how the lifecycle of features has shortened significantly from 8-10 years to ~ 2 years after which users are not willing to pay anymore. It all comes back to the users, the real people, with real lives and how a certain product or service helps them feel better.
Manage Your Day-to-Day: Build Your Routine, Find Your Focus, and Sharpen Your Creative Mind (The 99U Book Series)
by 99U
Product Managers can easily fill an entire day with work and never get to do any meaningful strategy thinking or feature viability research etc. Emails and meetings can quickly get out of hand. This book doesn’t provide a magical never-heard-of recipe, but its structure, the… Read the full quote
Product Managers can easily fill an entire day with work and never get to do any meaningful strategy thinking or feature viability research etc. Emails and meetings can quickly get out of hand. This book doesn’t provide a magical never-heard-of recipe, but its structure, the clear message, and actionable takeaways will do the trick. It helps to return to it from time to time.
One advice I found to work well for me is Unnecessary Creation from Manage Your Day-to-Day. Though aimed at creative jobs, it helped me exercise my skills, find new tools and improve my stream of thought.
Disrupted: My Misadventure in the Start-Up Bubble
by Dan Lyons
The book starts like a punch in the gut, but the story and the reality dose of this book are something that we all need from time to time in the Tech Startup Age. It helped me look beyond the excitement of working on new… Read the full quote
The book starts like a punch in the gut, but the story and the reality dose of this book are something that we all need from time to time in the Tech Startup Age. It helped me look beyond the excitement of working on new projects as a goal in itself and keep at least one foot on the ground. Plus the writing is extraordinary!