Episode · Lenny's Podcast · 2025-03-30
Lenny Rachitsky & Ryan Singer: books mentioned on Lenny's Podcast
A better way to plan, build, and ship products | Ryan Singer (creator of “Shape Up,” early employee at 37signals)
Ryan Singer is one of the earliest employees and the former Head of Strategy at 37signals (the makers of Basecamp), where he spent nearly two decades refining a product development approach that helped the company build super-successful products with small teams.
Ryan Singer recommended Competing Against Luck by Clayton M. Christensen and others, and discussed Shape Up by Ryan Singer.
Books mentioned, in the order they came up
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Shape Up
Discussed“you know I mean the book came out in 2019 and uh it's just I've been hearing more and more like oh we we know somebody who's trying it or we're hearing it when we go talk to other companies”
Where to get it
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Competing Against Luck
Recommended“if if if you're really curious about the general Spirit of jobs to be done then competing against luck is a really good intro that's the one that Clayton Chris uh Klay Christensen wrote uh with a lot of uh uh I think I think I think there's a lot of stuff that Bob worked on”
Where to get it
Other mentions in this episode (4) — ad reads, self-promotion and passing references, never counted
Plugged Shape Up
“Ryan was one of the first few hires at 37 signals and and through his experience of building Base Cam and a 17 years of building products at 37 signals he wrote a book called shape up which shares a very different approach to building software”
Plugged Shape Up
“well I mean that came as a surprise to me you know uh I mean when I wrote the book I had been in base camp at that time I think 15 years and uh uh I actually didn't even know the outside world”
Passing Shape Up
“and then so for example like on the book you know on the it's it says Shape Up and there's a base camp logo on the bottom not a 37 signals logo you know but then they since uh went back uh uh so it's 37 signals again”
Passing Shape Up
“where can folks find the book find you if they want to work with you anything else that you want to share and how can listeners be useful to you”