Oct 12, 2020
On My Shelf with Casey Winters — Chief Product Officer at Eventbrite (California)
About me
I like helping companies scale. I am currently the Chief Product Officer at Eventbrite and build courses on product and growth at Reforge. I used to lead the growth teams at Pinterest and Grubhub. I have advised many companies such as Airbnb, Canva, Reddit, Hipcamp, Tinder, Pocket, Ritual, and Mercari.
On my shelf
The Goal
A Process of Ongoing Improvement
by Eliyahu M. Goldratt & Jeff Cox
My opinion
This is the best book about conversion optimization, and it’s not about conversion optimization. Finding bottlenecks and solving them is the most leveraged activity someone in product can do.
“This theory provided a persuasive solution for factories struggling with production delays and low revenues.” — Harvard Business Review
362 pages, North River Press 2014
Thinking, Fast And Slow
by Daniel Kahneman
My opinion
This book is the best examination of how humans actually think and make decisions. This is critical to understand to build products people will try and continue to use.
499 pages, Farrar, Straus and Giroux 2013
The Black Swan
The Impact of the Highly Improbable
by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
My opinion
In all of Nassim’s books, Nassim helps you understand how important rare events are, how the way humans actually behave may be superior to economic models of how people should behave, and how to use data and make decisions in better ways than a textbook would teach.
444 pages, Random House Trade Paperbacks 2010
Profit from the Core
A Return to Growth in Turbulent Times
by Chris Zook & James Allen
My opinion
This book, and its sequel Beyond the Core, highlight the best ways to think about product and company investment. Most companies invest too much in new products and not enough in leveraging the growth inherent in their core product and their core competencies as a company.
192 pages, Harvard Business Review Press 2010
Our series “On my shelf” features product people from all over the world who are passionate about reading and sharing their best book recommendations with the community. If you want to join the movement and share your reading list with others send us a message. Let’s get better together 📚.
