I grow up without mentor, yet find mentor in the darkest of all places – inside books. Most of my mentors help me to better navigate this place called earth through their thoughts and generosity.

I seek to be the mentor I don’t have to the next upcoming folks who would be kind enough to flip a book, or be curious enough to search through the internet for questions.

The list below is my direct north, you can’t go wrong with them.

• Bret Victor – Magic Ink
• Lombardo C. Todd – Product Roadmaps Relaunched: How to Set Direction while Embracing Uncertainty
• Cockburn Alistair – Writing Effective Use Cases
• Edward Tufte – The visual display of quantitative information
• Coelho Paulo – The Alchemist
• Robert B. Cialdini – Influence, the psychology of persuasion
• Pressfield Steven – The war of art
• Easterly William – The White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good
• Haruki Murakami – The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle: A Novel
• Graham Paul – Hackers and Painters
• Wiseman Liz – Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter
• McLuhan Marshall – Understanding Media: The extension of man
• Sun Tzu – The art of war
• Slywotzky Adrian – The art of profitability
• Munari Bruno – Design as Art
• Brunson Russell – DotCom Secrets: The Underground Playbook for Growing Your Company Online
• McCloud Scott – Understanding Comics: The Invisible Art
• Roam Dan – Blah Blah Blah: What To Do When Words Don’t Work (I’ve been coming back to Dan’s work over and over again)
• Donald C. Gause – Are Your Lights On?: How to Figure Out What the Problem Really Is
• May Rollo – Man’s Search for Himself
• S.I. Hayakawa – Language in Thought and Action: Fifth Edition
• Baxter Robbie Kellman – The Membership Economy: Find Your Super Users, Master the Forever Transaction, and Build Recurring Revenue
• Alexander Christopher – The Timeless Way of Building
• Campbell Joseph – The Hero with a Thousand Faces (The Collected Works of Joseph Campbell)
• Sierra Kathy – Badass: Making Users Awesome
• McKeown Greg – Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less
• Eliyahu M. Goldratt – The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement
• Gitomer Jeffrey – Little Red Book of Selling: 12.5 Principles of Sales Greatness
• Seth Godin
• Eugene Schwartz
• Mel Conway
• Nobl