Episode · Lenny's Podcast · 2024-11-03
Lenny Rachitsky & Alistair Croll: books mentioned on Lenny's Podcast
Just evil enough: Subversive marketing strategies for startups | Alistair Croll (author, advisor, entrepreneur)
Alistair Croll is the co-author of the best-selling book Lean Analytics and a longtime product manager, entrepreneur, and startup advisor. He was also instrumental in my starting a company, funding it, and helping us exit to Airbnb as part of his Year One Labs incubator.
Lenny Rachitsky discussed Just Evil Enough by Alistair Croll. Alistair Croll recommended The Unaccountability Machine by Dan Davies, The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt, and Made to stick by Chip Heath and others, and discussed Lean Analytics by Alistair Croll and others and The Lean Startup by Eric Ries.
Books mentioned, in the order they came up
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Just Evil Enough
Discussed“you helped me with my startup back in the day and when I heard you were writing a new book especially one called just evil enough I knew that I had to have you on here to talk about it”
Where to get it
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Lean Analytics
Discussed“and it was built on this new idea called The Lean Startup uh Ben yoskovitz I think what the other founders with whom I wrote lean analytics had fallen in love with this new le you know Lean Startup methodology”
Where to get it
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The Lean Startup
Discussed“this new book from Eric reeze uh that said that the goal wasn't to lock yourself away in a garage for a year and build something nobody wanted you should get out of the room and test it and so on”
Where to get it
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The Unaccountability Machine
Recommended“Dan Davies has a book called the unaccountability machine that I have literally made an entire conference theme out of this year uh it's fantastic”
Where to get it
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The Righteous Mind
Recommended“Jonathan Heights The Righteous Mind which really made me lose faith in reason and rationality”
Where to get it
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Made to stick
Recommended“and I gotta say the best marketing textbook ever is Dan and Chip Heath's made to stick”
Where to get it
Other mentions in this episode (6) — ad reads, self-promotion and passing references, never counted
Passing Lean Analytics
“Alis is the author of lean analytics which was one of the most influential early books on how to use data in helping you build your startup”
Plugged Just Evil Enough
“and lucky for us Alistair is about to release a new book that I am very excited about it's called just evil enough”
Passing Lean Analytics
“I've worked with a ton of startups thanks to lean analytics which I'm sure we'll get into a bit um and the product managers are in in many cases missing the point”
Plugged Just Evil Enough
“and so my co-author Emily and I it turns out we'd both been obsessed with this stuff for the last 10 years and so we met and started comparing notes”
Plugged Just Evil Enough
“well they should all buy the book obviously I mean it's dumb not to ask um you can go to buy dojust evil.com”
Plugged Just Evil Enough
“and how can listeners be useful to you uh buy. jevil enough.com if they want to pre-order the book”