Great Resources if You’re (Thinking About) Starting a Company
My favorite articles, books, and eLearnings if you're an early or aspiring entrepreneur
The founder journey is incredibly challenging. It requires an immense belief in yourself, a willingness to live off your savings, and a tremendous amount of rejection.
Further, there is often lots of conflicting advice on how to effectively get from 0 to 1 (especially in the early days). Some examples of these conflicts include:
Raise money first vs. launch an MVP first
Build a product with no-code tools to attract a great co-founder vs. attract a great co-founder so you don’t waste time on no-code tools
Do vs. don’t try to create momentum with investors
Share a lofty vision vs. share honestly why you’re building the product
Fortunately, there is a lot of great content out there, so I decided to share some of my favorites. If you’re thinking about starting a company, I’d encourage you to check out these resources!
1. Y-Combinator (YC) Startup School (link)
In my opinion, this is the #1 place to start. YC is one of the most prestigious firms when it comes to early-stage startup investing, having invested in Airbnb, Coinbase, Dropbox, Stripe, Instacart, and so many other phenomenal companies. They’ve been generous enough to put together 20+ hours worth of videos and reading, with topics like “How to Get and Evaluate Startup Ideas,” “Building Your Founding Team,” and “Planning an MVP.” If nothing else, go through the YC Startup School!
2. Do Things that Don’t Scale (Paul Graham, link)
You’ll see Paul Graham’s name a lot on this list. He’s a prolific investor who founded Viaweb and co-founded Y-Combinator, and he’s a phenomenal storyteller. In this article, he talks about how, early on within a startup, you need to do anything possible to find and engage users. He also reminds us: early-stage startups are incredibly fragile, and that’s normal; don’t be discouraged by the initial challenges you face as a founder!
Other important lessons from this article:
Startups often succeed because founders make them succeed. Waiting passively for users to come won't work; founders need to actively recruit users.
Build something that solves your own problems, and then to find early users, you’ll only need to recruit your peers.
Startups can benefit from initially targeting a deliberately narrow market to achieve critical mass quickly.
“The Big Launch” doesn’t work. Founders often think that what they’re building is so great that everyone will want it (why else would you dedicate many years of your life to building this product?). Instead, find users who love your product and keep delighting them.
3. How Superhuman Built an Engine to Find Product Market Fit (Rahul Vohra, link)
Rahul Vohra, the founder and CEO of Superhuman, wrote a great article about Product/Market fit. In it, he shares that PM-fit is when 1) customers are buying the product rapidly, 2) usage is growing, and 3) customers would be very disappointed if they could no longer use the product (his best metric: 40% of users would be “very disappointed” if they couldn’t use the product anymore).
He then shares a process to optimize PM-fit, including segmenting your users, analyzing feedback, and doubling down on what users love. The process worked for Superhuman, and it seems highly repeatable for any startup. The article is both extremely data-driven and highly analytical; if that’s your thing, check it out!
4. The Mom Test (Rob Fitzpatrick, link)
There’s a saying in Silicon Valley: “Fail Fast and Cheap.” What this means is: embrace a strategy of quickly testing new ideas/products, and figure out whether they’re successful as quickly and as cheaply as possible. This book does a great job of sharing tips to conduct effective customer interviews, so you don’t spend a lot of time building something that may not be successful. Some key takeaways below:
Never pitch your product during an interview! People will want to provide encouragement and tell you “That’s a great idea!” while thinking “Wow, I can’t believe you’re working on that. I’d never use it!” Thus, ask open-ended questions and avoid asking leading questions. Your goal here is to uncover interviewees’ honest & unbiased answers.
Ask about specific instances where they encountered the problem you’re trying to solve, and learn about their past behavior; don’t ask “what they might do” in the future. (Note: people will often say things they think you want to hear, so make sure you’re digging into their answers and truly understanding what they’ve done in the past.)
Keep asking “why” to understand their underlying motivations, which will provide deeper insights into their needs and behaviors.
5. How to Pitch Your Company (Michael Seibel, link)
This is one of the shortest pieces, but I love its simplicity. It gives seven simple questions that you should get really good at answering in order to pitch your company.
Specifically, I love this quote: “Too many people spend too much energy trying to make their idea sound impressive. It’s ok to keep it simple. Actually, it’s preferable. You want to explain what you do in the simplest language possible.” Your goal with a pitch is to have an investor (or friend, or Uber driver) ask a follow-up question.
6. How to Make Wealth (Paul Graham, link)
I’ll start off this one by disagreeing with something Graham says: he suggests that startups offer a way to “get rich quick.” Personally, I think there are plenty of better ways to find a higher, risk-adjusted salary. Further, for every 10 startups, approximately 8-9 of them fail, and very few are home runs. If you’re trying to make a lot of money (and want high certainty that it’ll happen), I suggest a different path!
That said, there are a few other key takeaways from this article that I find compelling:
Startups allow individuals to compress their entire working life into a few years of intense effort. By working hard and efficiently, an individual can be significantly more productive than in a traditional corporate job, potentially creating millions of dollars worth of value.
By his estimates, a software engineer making $80k per year at a large corporate job could 1) work 2x harder, 2) be 3x more efficient by focusing, 3) be 2x more efficient due to no middle management, and 4) is 3x smarter than they need to be in their corporate job. Thus, he estimates that they’re 36x more valuable than $80k per year, and thus can output ~$3M worth of work. Bold claim, but definitely an interesting take!
Graham debunks the misconception that wealth is fixed and that one person's gain comes at the expense of others. In reality, wealth can be created and expanded, benefiting society as a whole.
7 . Fundraising (Ryan Breslow, here)
This is a short book you can likely get through in 2-3 hours! Ryan Breslow is the co-founder of Bolt and is described as not only a founder, but a scientist who “can explain every step [of the fundraising process] and has A/B tested each one.”
In this book, he shares tips for building relationships with investors, crafting your pitch, and closing the deal. Further, he provides helpful email templates and other advice for being patient, persistent, and grateful. It’s an easy read; I’d highly recommend it!
8. How to Raise Money (Paul Graham, here)
Before you kick off a fundraise, read this article. It reminds us that 1) fundraising is hard, 2) FOMO is real, 3) you should avoid fundraising unless you need to raise money, and 4) as a founder, assume “no” until you have a clear “yes.”
There are plenty of other takeaways, so this one is worth a full read!
9. Y Combinator Startup Library
Many of the articles I shared came from Y-Combinator. It’s definitely worth checking out their library, here.
10. Other Founders
It cannot go without saying: learning from other founders is invaluable. Despite all of the literature online, you’ll end up having dozens of questions, along with constant self-doubt and overwhelm. Therefore, look for other founders who are at your stage or ahead of you, so that you can trade war stories, have (and be) a shoulder to lean on, and share learnings/best practices.
Therefore, an offering: If you’re an early-stage entrepreneur — or are thinking you may want to start a company —, feel free to reach out!
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Are there any resources that I didn’t share that you’d recommend? Leave a comment below!