Kill the HiPPO in the wild


Hello!

Forgive me in advance for a self-congratulatory email today.

It's one week since launching Kill the HiPPO, and it has been a great ride so far. The first week has been about reviews and photos.

The first reviews have started appearing on Amazon:

People have been sharing photos on social media when their copy arrived in the mail. It's such a thrill each time I see one of these photos!

Here's Rand Fishkin (founder of Spark Toro and author of Lost and Founder) and Yohay Elam (founder of TouchBase) sharing photos on LinkedIn. I think my co-author Siew Ann was particularly thrilled with Rand's comments:

“If you’re a SaaS founder like me, this is a great frickin book. And look! *shows the book’s slimness* Quite an easy read.”

In his 2025 letter, Dan Wang wrote:

“I’ve learned that books produce an invitation to all sorts of conversations, both closed and open. A physical book, bound and printed, has a totemic quality. It’s funny that PDFs sometimes circulate better than web-optimized pages; there’s something about strict formatting that establishes authority.”

It's amazing that in just one week, I'm already experiencing this ‘totemic quality.’ I've received invites to:

  • write on a German-language product management blog about Kill the HiPPO
  • chat on a podcast about Kill the HiPPO

What can you do to help?

Writing a review is the #1 way you can help me right now. If you do buy and read Kill the HiPPO, please leave a review on Amazon!

Until next time,

Steve McLeod
​​killthehippo.com​

PS: Next week I'll be writing about why we didn't discuss AI at all in the book.

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