Michael Schoelkopf

I am Director Product at NavVis and live in Munich. I like to explore different hobbies and learn new things.

Currently (Q2, 2026), I am interested in

• the fundamentals for living fit and healthy (sleep, nutrition, exercise),
• experimenting with vibe coding,
• playing Age of Empires 2 and FC26,
• learning about RC cars.
• ...

Books

Some books I found worth reading

Product Management

• Inspired Marty Cagan, 2017The bible of modern product management.
• The Principles of Product Development Flow Donald G. Reinertsen, 2009Understand queues, capacity utilization, cycle time, cost of delay.
• Continuous Discovery Habits Teresa Torres, 2021Discover products that create customer value and business value.
• Badass: Making Users Awesome Kathy Sierra, 2015People don't care how awesome your product is. They themselves want to be awesome.
• Product Roadmaps Relaunched C. Todd Lombardo & Bruce McCarthy, 2017How to build and maintain product roadmaps.
• User Story Mapping Jeff Patton, 2014Have meaningful conversations about what to build and why.
• Cracking the PM Interview Gayle Laakmann McDowell, 2013What top firms expect from a Product Manager.

Leadership

• Transformed Marty Cagan, 2023How to move from a feature factory to an empowered product organization.
• Empowered Marty Cagan, 2020How to lead in product management.
• Good Strategy Bad Strategy Richard P. Rumelt, 2011A good strategy acknowledges the challenges and provides an approach to overcome them.
• Team Topologies Matthew Skelton & Manuel Pais, 2019Organizing business and technology teams for fast flow.
• Thanks for the Feedback Douglas Stone & Sheila Heen, 2014How to receive feedback well — even when it's wrong, unfair, or poorly delivered.

Entrepreneurship

• The Lean Startup Eric Ries, 2011Build, measure, learn.
• Running Lean Ash Maurya, 2010How to start a business, based on the fundamental principles of lean startup.
• The Startup Owner's Manual Steve Blank & Bob Dorf, 2012Customer discovery, customer validation, customer creation, company building.
• Business Model Generation Alex Osterwalder, 2010Define your business model.
• Value Proposition Design Alex Osterwalder, 2014How to achieve product-market fit.
• Testing Business Ideas Alex Osterwalder, 2019How to continuously test your assumptions.
• The Mom Test Rob Fitzpatrick, 2013How to conduct user interviews.

Design

• The Design of Everyday Things Don Norman, 1988Basic design principles explained.
• Don't Make Me Think Steve Krug, 2000Intuitive navigation and information design.

Agile

• Kanban David J. Anderson, 2010Understand the Kanban methodology.

Tech

• Think Python Allen B. Downey, 2015Learn to think like a computer scientist.
• Accelerate Nicole Forsgren, Jez Humble & Gene Kim, 2018The science of lean software and DevOps: building and scaling high-performing technology organizations.

Learning

• Make It Stick Peter C. Brown, 2014The science of successful learning.

Habits

• Actionable Gamification Yu-Kai Chou, 2019Beyond points, badges, and leaderboards.
• Hooked Nir Eyal, 2014How to build habit-forming products.
• Atomic Habits James Clear, 2018An easy and proven way to build good habits and break bad ones.

Experiments

Some of the vibe coding experiments I have done, mainly AI generated — I only did a shallow review of the data so don't trust it blindly.

• This Website A minimal personal site — pure HTML/CSS, no JavaScript, auto-deployed via GitHub Actions. Built entirely with Claude Code. Most time went into debugging the deployment pipeline: SSH auth failures, wrong server credentials, and Uberspace serving the domain from an unexpected legacy folder. HTML · CSS · 382 lines · Manual: ~4h · With Claude: ~4h · ~700k tokens
• Dev Setup How I build and deploy prototype apps — what's automatic, what's manual.
• AoE2 Coach A training coach for Age of Empires 2. Analyze your game before diving into ranked play — build order, hotkeys, idle time in dark and feudal age. React · TypeScript · Vite · Claude API · ~3,800 lines · Manual: ~30h · With Claude: ~6h · 159M tokens, 91% cache reads
• Football Tactics A digital tactics board for planning formations and saving play scenes. HTML · CSS · JavaScript (single file) · ~700 lines · Manual: ~6h · With Claude: ~2h · ~150k tokens
• World Cup 2026 A prediction game for the 2026 FIFA World Cup. React · Vite · ~215 lines · Manual: ~3h · With Claude: ~1h · ~100k tokens
• Claude on Mobile This page was created entirely from a mobile phone — no laptop, no terminal. Claude Code runs as a web app; you type a plain-text instruction and Claude edits the files, commits, and pushes.
• RC Cars A comparison of Traxxas and Arrma RTR cars — helping decide which to buy first.