Synopses & Reviews
Two successful startup founders offer a comprehensive overview of the various ways startups can achieve strong, sustainable growth, and a guide to choosing the ones that will make the differencce.
Why do so many startups fail? According to entrepreneurs Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares, most failed startups dont get off the ground not because of a bad product, but because they dont have enough customers. They make the fatal mistake of putting all their effort into perfecting their product at the cost of reaching out to potential users. Instead, they should be putting half their resources into getting traction. TRACTION is the essential guide for any startup looking to stay ahead of the curve and start building a user base early in the game. The book offers no one-size-fits-all solution: every startup is unique, so no single method is guaranteed to generate traction. Instead, the authors identify nineteen different traction channels from viral marketing to trade shows, offer insights on how to exploit each one to its fullest potential, and provide a framework to test various channels and identify the best one for any startup. Drawing on advice from more than 40 successful startup founders and marketers, from Wikipedias Jimmy Wales to American Apparels Ryan Holiday, TRACTION is a comprehensive textbook for marketing your way to growth.
Review
Voted one of the best business books of the year by Goodreads readers. "With concrete advice and tales from the product-development trenches, this is a thoughtful discussion of how to create something that users never knew they couldnt live without."
—Publisher's Weekly
“A must read for everyone who cares about driving customer engagement."
—Eric Ries, author of The Lean Startup
“The book everyone in Silicon Valley is talking about.”
—Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, founder of The Next Web
“Hooked gives you the blueprint for the next generation of products. Read Hooked or the company that replaces you will.”
—Matt Mullenweg, Founder of Wordpress
“The most high bandwidth, high octane, and valuable presentation I have ever seen on this subject.”
—Rory Sutherland, Vice-Chairman, Ogilvy and Mather
"You'll read this. Then you'll hope your competition isn't reading this. It's that good."
—Stephen P. Anderson, Author of Seductive Interaction Design
"Nir's work is an essential crib sheet for any startup looking to understand user psychology.”
—Dave McClure, Founder 500 Startups
"When it comes to driving engagement and building habits, Hooked is an excellent guide into the mind of the user."
—Andrew Chen, Technology Writer and Investor
“Ive learned a great deal from Nir, and you will too. Hell help you design habits to benefit your users, and your company.”
—Dr. Stephen Wendel, author Designing for Behavior Change
Review
"This is a must-have, essential book if you want to be good at growth."
—Aaron Ginn, Growth at StumbleUpon
"Traction is an absolute must. The Bullseye Framework Gabe and Justin layout is probably the greatest tool in my catalog over the past year. Whether you are a seasoned entrepreneur or just getting started, Traction offers a framework that creates efficiency, clarity, and focus. With startups as crazy as they are, I strongly encourage you to take the time to make your life a little easier. Traction is equal to and should be read alongside The Lean Startup."
—Adam Kearney, Founder and CEO, Saunter
"Traction is a critical guide for entrepreneurs looking to grow and scale their businesses."
—Patrick Vlaskovits, bestselling author of The Lean Entrepreneur
"I've read quite a few books about startups over the years, and apparently this was the only one worth keeping."
—Chris Stucchio, Data Scientist
"Traction belongs on every startup founders bookshelf. Im buying copies for the CEOs of my current Angel Investments."
—Kevin Dewalt, Angel Investor
Synopsis
How do successful companies create products people cant put down? Why do some products capture widespread attention while others flop? What makes us engage with certain products out of sheer habit? Is there a pattern underlying how technologies hook us?
Nir Eyal answers these questions (and many more) by explaining the Hook Modela four-step process embedded into the products of many successful companies to subtly encourage customer behavior. Through consecutive hook cycles,” these products reach their ultimate goal of bringing users back again and again without depending on costly advertising or aggressive messaging.
Hooked is based on Eyals years of research, consulting, and practical experience. He wrote the book he wished had been available to him as a start-up foundernot abstract theory, but a how-to guide for building better products. Hooked is written for product managers, designers, marketers, start-up founders, and anyone who seeks to understand how products influence our behavior.
Eyal provides readers with:
Practical insights to create user habits that stick.
Actionable steps for building products people love. Fascinating examples from the iPhone to Twitter, Pinterest to the Bible App, and many other habit-forming products.
About the Author
Nir Eyal spent years in the video gaming and advertising industries where he learned, applied, and at times rejected, techniques described in
Hooked to motivate and influence users. He has taught courses on applied consumer psychology at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design, and is a frequent speaker at industry conferences and at Fortune 500 companies. His writing on technology, psychology, and business appears in the
Harvard Business Review,
The Atlantic,
TechCrunch, and
Psychology Today.
To learn more or to get in touch with Nir, visit nirandfar.com