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Dan Olsen's Top Book Recommendations

Want to know what books Dan Olsen recommends? We've researched interviews, social media posts, podcasts, and articles to build a comprehensive list of Dan Olsen's favorite book recommendations of all time. At Shortform, we know books. Our book guides are the best in the world. Learn why.

1

Scaling Lean: Mastering the Key Metrics for Startup Growth

Ash Maurya

4.5
A hands-on guide to the metrics that matter most to young tech startups.

In the early stages of a tech startup's life, it's hard to decipher the meaningful
metrics from the distractions. How do you know if your product is working? Is it
the number of new signups? Average amount of time spent on the site? Revenue,
even if you don't have a revenue model yet?

In Scaling Lean, serial entrepreneur and autho
Eris Ries portraitAsh Maurya portraitDan Olsen portrait Recommended by Eris Ries, Ash Maurya, and Dan Olsen.
The Lean Product Playbook: How to Innovate with Minimum Viable Products and Rapid Customer Feedback book cover2

The Lean Product Playbook: How to Innovate with Minimum Viable Products and Rapid Customer Feedback

Dan Olsen

4.5
The missing manual on how to apply Lean Startup to build products that customers love"The Lean Product Playbook" is a practical guide to building products that customers love. Whether you work at a startup or a large, established company, we all know that building great products is hard. Most new products fail. This book helps improve your chances of building successful products through clear, ste
Nir Eyal portraitKen Norton portraitDan Olsen portrait Recommended by Nir Eyal, Ken Norton, Dan Olsen, and 2 others.
Hacking Growth: How Today's Fastest-Growing Companies Drive Breakout Success book cover3

Hacking Growth: How Today's Fastest-Growing Companies Drive Breakout Success

Sean Ellis, Morgan Brown

4.4
Preview Summary
The definitive playbook by the pioneers of Growth Hacking, one of the hottest business methodologies in Silicon Valley and beyond.

It seems hard to believe today, but there was a time when Airbnb was the best-kept secret of travel hackers and couch surfers, Pinterest was a niche web site frequented only by bakers and crafters, LinkedIn was an exclusive network for C-suite executives and top-level
Nir Eyal portraitEric Ries portraitAnnabell Satterfield portrait Recommended by Nir Eyal, Eric Ries, Annabell Satterfield, and 6 others.
Nir Eyal portrait
Nir Eyal

Author/Hooked

It used to be that designers and engineers were responsible for developing new products, data teams were responsible for number-crunching reports, and marketers were responsible for acquiring and monetizing as many customers as possible. But today’s companies can’t afford to be slowed down by organizational silos. Here, growth-hacking pioneers Ellis and Brown show how to break down those traditional barriers and marry powerful data analysis, technical know-how, and marketing savvy to quickly devise and test ways to fuel breakout growth. [source]

Eric Ries portrait
Eric Ries

Founder/Long-Term Stock Exchange

In an increasingly erratic business landscape where new competition can emerge overnight, customers’ loyalties can shift unexpectedly, and markets are constantly being disrupted, finding growth solutions fast is crucial for survival. Hacking Growth provides a compelling answer to this urgent need for speed, offering companies a methodology for finding and optimizing new strategies to increase their market share and quickly. [source]

Annabell Satterfield portrait
Annabell Satterfield

Hacking Growth is the definitive guide to building authentic, sustainable, compounding growth for your company. If you want to know how proven growth practitioners at fast-growing companies do what they do-- pick up this book. [source]

4

UX Strategy: How to Devise Innovative Digital Products That People Want

Jaime Levy

4.3
How do you bridge the large knowledge gap between user experience design and business strategy? This practical book introduces lightweight strategy tools and techniques that will help both your design team and your client come to a shared understanding of the digital product you want to build.

With this step-by-step guide, you'll learn how to achieve online success by focusing on customer discovery
Dan Olsen portrait Recommended by Dan Olsen and 1 others.
Do You Talk Funny?: 7 Comedy Habits to Become a Better (and Funnier) Public Speaker book cover5

Do You Talk Funny?: 7 Comedy Habits to Become a Better (and Funnier) Public Speaker

David Nihill

4.3
Public speaking can be terrifying. For David Nihill, the idea of standing in front of an audience was scarier than cliff jumping into a thorny pit of spiders and mothers-in-law. Without a parachute or advanced weaponry. Something had to change.

In what doesn't sound like the best plan ever, David decided to overcome his fears by pretending to be an accomplished comedian called "Irish Dave" for one
Dan Olsen portraitNeal O'Gorman portrait Recommended by Dan Olsen and Neal O'Gorman.
6

Hello, My Name Is Awesome: How to Create Brand Names That Stick

Alexandra Watkins

4.4
Every year, 6 million companies and more than 100,000 products are launched. They all need an awesome name, but many (such as Xobni, Svbtle, and Doostang) look like the results of a drunken Scrabble game. In this entertaining and engaging book, ace naming consultant Alexandra Watkins explains how anyone--even noncreative types--can create memorable and buzz-worthy brand names. No degree in linguis
Dan Olsen portraitDouglas Burdett portrait Recommended by Dan Olsen and Douglas Burdett.
7

Radical Focus: Achieving Your Most Important Goals with Objectives and Key Results

Christina Wodtke

4.1
"This book is useful, actionable, and actually fun to read! If you want to get your team aligned around real, measurable goals, Radical Focus will teach you how to do it quickly and clearly." - Laura Klein, Principal, Users Know

An actionable business book in the form of a fable.

Radical Focus tackles the OKR movement and better goal setting through the powerful story of Hanna and Jack's strugglin
Dan Olsen portraitLaura Klein portrait Recommended by Dan Olsen and Laura Klein.
8

mobilized: An Insider's Guide to the Business and Future of Connected Technology

SC Moatti

3.8
Mobilized
An Insider's Guide to the Business and Future of Connected Technology
Mobile technology has now become such an integral part of how we live that, for many people, losing a cell phone is like losing a limb. Everybody knows mobile is the future, and every business wants in, but what are the elements of mobile success? SC Moatti, a Silicon Valley veteran, has created a unique Mobile Formula
Dan Olsen portrait Recommended by Dan Olsen.
UX for Lean Startups book cover9

UX for Lean Startups

Laura Klein

4.2
Great user experiences (UX) are essential for products today, but designing one can be a lengthy and expensive process. With this practical, hands-on book, you’ll learn how to do it faster and smarter using Lean UX techniques. UX expert Laura Klein shows you what it takes to gather valuable input from customers, build something they’ll truly love, and reduce the time it takes to get your product t
Dan Olsen portraitLaura Klein portraitSteve Krug portrait Recommended by Dan Olsen, Laura Klein, Steve Krug, and 1 others.
10

Pretotype It: Make sure you are building The Right It before you build It right

Alberto Savoia

4.5
This Is Embarrassing

This is not a “proper book.”

Writing and editing a proper book on the subject of pretotyping would take months. I would love to write that book, but at this time I have no indication that such a book would be worth writing. Most books fail in the market, and most of them fail not because they are poorly written or edited, but because there aren’t enough people interested in them
Dan Olsen portrait Recommended by Dan Olsen.
11

Quiet Influence: The Introvert's Guide to Making a Difference

Jennifer B. Kahnweiler

4.1
Introverts Do It Quietly

Introverts may feel powerless in a world where extroverts seem to rule, but there’s more than one way to have some sway. Jennifer Kahnweiler proves introverts can be highly effective influencers when, instead of trying to act like extroverts, they use their natural strengths to make a difference. Kahnweiler identifies six unique strengths of introverts and includes a Quiet
Dan Olsen portrait Recommended by Dan Olsen.
12

Product Leadership: How Top Product Managers Launch Awesome Products and Build Successful Teams

Richard Banfield, Martin Eriksson, Nate Walkingshaw

4.0
In today's lightning-fast technology world, good product management is critical to maintaining a competitive advantage. Yet, managing human beings and navigating complex product roadmaps is no easy task, and it's rare to find a product leader who can steward a digital product from concept to launch without a couple of major hiccups. Why do some product leaders succeed while others don't?

This insig
Dan Olsen portrait Recommended by Dan Olsen and 1 others.
What Customers Want: Using Outcome-Driven Innovation to Create Breakthrough Products and Services: Using Outcome-Driven Innovation to Create Breakthrough Products and Services book cover13

What Customers Want: Using Outcome-Driven Innovation to Create Breakthrough Products and Services: Using Outcome-Driven Innovation to Create Breakthrough Products and Services

Anthony Ulwick

4.3
A world-renowned innovation guru explains practices that result in breakthrough innovations

"Ulwick's outcome-driven programs bring discipline and predictability to the often random process of innovation."


-Clayton Christensen For years, companies have accepted the underlying principles that define the customer-driven paradigm--that is, using customer "requirements" to guide growth and innovation. B
Dan Olsen portraitRick Faleschini portrait Recommended by Dan Olsen and Rick Faleschini.
14

Massive: The Missing Particle That Sparked the Greatest Hunt in Science

Ian Sample

4.3
The biggest science story of our time, Massive spans four decades, weaving together the personal narratives and international rivalries behind the search for the "God" particle, or Higgs boson. A story of grand ambition, intense competition, clashing egos, and occasionally spectacular failures, Massive is the first book that reveals the science, culture, and politics behind the biggest unanswered
Dan Olsen portrait Recommended by Dan Olsen.
15

The CSS Detective Guide: Tricks for Solving Tough CSS Mysteries

Denise R. Jacobs

3.8
One of the toughest challenges novice CSS developers face is when seemingly perfect code doesn't translate into a perfectly rendered browser page--and with all the different browsers available today, this happens all too often. The CSS Detective Guide aims to help, by teaching real world troubleshooting skills. You'll learn how to track clues, analyze the evidence, and get to the truth behind CSS
Dan Olsen portrait Recommended by Dan Olsen.