Toolkit

Here’s a list of all the things that I consider MUST-HAVES, be they books, tools, people or anything else that you should be paying attention to.

Books

  • Hooked by Nir Eyal. Excellent read on how to keep people coming back to your product
  • Just Enough Research by Erika Hall. Probably the best hands-on, tactical manual on how to properly do user and other kinds of product research
  • The Alliance by Reid Hoffman. A great look at the workplace of the future, and how to think about the new relationship between employee and employer
  • Drive by Dan Pink
  • The Fourth Turning by William Strauss and Neil Howe. Thorough exploration of Western history through the lens of inter-generational relationships. Must-read for understanding the times we live in

People and Sites

These are my first-reads in my daily feed

  • Tom Tunguz – Partner at Redpoint Ventures, expert in the world of SaaS economics and overall trends in technology
  • First Round Review – Consistently among the best articles on practical problems facing technology companies
  • Fred Wilson – Fred always has interesting things to say about new companies, trends and the market in tech
  • Code as Craft – The Etsy tech blog. Some of this is very technical, some is more high level
  • Seth Godin – I’ve been reading Seth’s blog for probably 5 years now, every day. There’s no one better

Project management:

  • Trello
  • Github
  • Pivotal Tracker

Communication

  • Slack
  • Skype
  • Google Hangouts
  • Spark App for iPhone (since they killed Mailbox)
  • Fantastical for Mac and iPhone
  • Join.Me
  • Jing

Personal Productivity

  • Evernote
  • Google Drive
  • Spotify
  • Post-It Notes
  • Whiteboards

Software Development

  • Sublime Text
  • Intellij IDEA

Domain Management

  • Namecheap