Growth 101

Which books to read if you are starting a career in Growth?

10 books to read for a career in Growth, comprehensively covering all the skills.

Startup fundamentals

  • Zero To One by Peter Thiel & Blake Masters A great intro to the counter-intuitive world of startups: Why competition is for losers; Why 10x innovation matters more; Why power law dominates everything. This book is a perfect Startup 101.
  • The Lean Startup by Eric Ries This book is to Growth what Agile methodology is to the world of software. Introduces build-measure-learn loop as the experimentation framework. And, why ‘validated learning’, and NOT tracking output numbers like users or revenue, is the right goal in startups.

Growth & Digital Distribution Frameworks

  • Hacking Growth by Sean Ellis & Morgan Brown Not about fads and tactics, truly fundamental. Introduces the concept of testing PMF before growing. Goes into best practices of each part of AARRR framework.
  • Traction by Gabriel Weinberg & Justin Mares Introduces a comprehensive list & best practices for all ‘Traction channels’. Introduces ‘bullseye’ framework to test channel ideas.

Marketing

  • Influence by Robert Cialdini A ‘how the world works’ guide. Lays down a neat framework of all the modes of persuasion. The single most important book for me while working on campaign and content planning.
  • 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing by Al ries & Jack Trout Hit-and-miss book at times, but a lot of invaluable wisdom. Especially about dynamics of category and brand. A toss-up between this & ‘The CEO factory’ by Sudhir Sitapati.

Analytics

  • Data Science for Business by Foster Provost & Tom Fawcett Covers important analytics concepts but from an applied lens of business problems.

Conversion Optimisation & User Lifecycle

  • Don’t Make Me Think by Steve Krug A great intro to user experience, for generalists. A lot of great advice we intuitively get but conveniently ignore in our own projects.‍
  • Hooked by Nir Eyal Great starter on concepts of habit loop, variable rewards, and so on. And in the context of customer engagement rather than self-help.

Managing people & processes

  • High Output Management by Andrew Grove If ‘Influence’ is the ‘how the world works’ guide, this is THE ‘how companies (should) work’ guide. I am ready to budge on my position on other books, but not on this one. Should be mandatory reading, imo, when people are promoted to manager for the first time.

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