Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don't Have All the Facts

Annie Duke

This is a book about making decisions when the facts are incomplete and the outcome is partly luck. I’m reading it as the Western side of my East versus West note.

Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products

Nir Eyal with Ryan Hoover

I read this while working on Liart.io during LOCUS. The useful part for me was not treating attention as magic. It gave me language for feedback loops, triggers, rewards, and why people come back to products.

The Mom Test

Rob Fitzpatrick

This book made customer conversations feel less mystical. The main idea I took from it was to ask about real behavior and past actions instead of asking people to validate my idea.

Zero to One

Peter Thiel with Blake Masters

This pushed me to think about what kind of company is worth building, not just what kind of product can be built. I read it early, when I was still trying to understand startups from first principles.

Persuasion: The Art of Influencing

James Borg

This connected directly to how I thought about the door-to-door sales experience: trust cues, reciprocity, framing, contrast, and why a person can feel pulled toward a decision faster than they realize.

Talking to Humans

Giff Constable

I read this around the same phase as The Mom Test. It helped me think about customer discovery as a real skill, not just a vague instruction to “talk to users.”

Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making

Tony Fadell

I read this for a more practical view of building: taste, teams, deadlines, judgment, and the messy work of making something useful enough that people actually care.

The Lean Startup

Eric Ries

I read this while trying to understand how to turn building into learning. The part that stayed with me was being honest about whether an experiment actually taught anything.

Autobiography of a Yogi

Paramahansa Yogananda

I read this as a spiritual autobiography. It is very different from the startup and product books on this shelf.

The Book of Man

Osho

I read this during the period when I was reading several Osho books.

The Book of Woman

Osho

I read this during the period when I was reading several Osho books.

From Sex to Superconsciousness

Osho

I read this during the period when I was reading several Osho books.

Fear

Osho

I read this during the period when I was reading several Osho books.