Resources

The Idea

(vision, problem to solve, product details, value & growth hypotheses, etc...)

• How to generate startup ideas - i.e. solve problems, scratch your own itch, provide value, consider growth potential, be aware of good ideas that seem like bad ideas (and vice versa), and ideas that investors are looking for.
• Brainstorming for New Startup Ideas: A Framework to Spur Creative Thinking - includes drilling into validating and scoring your different ideas.
• How to Start a Startup - Build something that users will love. (here's a video on the same topic)

Overview Statement

(boiling down vision, problem, and solution)

• How to boil down vision and mission into an overview statement for your new business - provide yourself (and your team/advisors) a concise "why/how/what" paragraph.

The Market

(competition, “why now”, addressable market)

• How to evaluate a market for your potential startup - market size (TAM/SAM/SOM), competition, regulatory, why now, etc..
• How can a startup company best evaluate market size and find the market data? - Fantastic Quora thread.
• Surplus > Volume - "Just because a market has billions of dollars of gross transaction volume doesn’t mean that it has billions of dollars of unallocated purchasing capacity sloshing around in it."

Customer Personas

(segments / profiles / personas)

• How to identify “ideal” early customers - empathy, influencers, biography, and prep for running tests to confirm you know who your customers are.
• How to Create Detailed Buyer Personas for Your Business - includes a free persona template.
• Customer Segmentation - a guide to best practices from a marketing perspective, focused on the B2B space, but applicable for all founders.

The Team

• How to compose a co-founder team - landing a team that will join you is a critical validation step. Also, are you the CEO? What talent do you need? What makes a good co-founder?
• Team and Execution - Relevant YC startup class video.
• How to find a co-founder - notable advice from Guy Kawasaki on the topic.
• What a CEO Does - "A CEO does only three things. Sets the overall vision and strategy of the company and communicates it to all stakeholders. Recruits, hires, and retains the very best talent for the company. Makes sure there is always enough cash in the bank."

Surveys & Interviews

• How to maximize learning from pre-launch customer surveys and interviews - including example questions and facing the brutal facts of your results.
• Validating your Decisions Using Surveys - deep dive into learning best practices and more examples of helpful questions to ask.
• How to Interview your Customers - practical setup for what to do (and what NOT to do).

Advisors

• How (and when) to select advisors for your new venture - Timing, formalizing the relationship, equity conversations, etc...
• Startup Advisors - When, Who and How - Who to choose, when/how to choose them.
• How to Score an Advisor When Your Startup Has No Money - quick read, scrappy techniques.

Experiments

• How to conduct free and low-cost experiments to validate your new business idea - low hanging fruit, building community, validating with data, etc...
• The Lean Startup / Principles - quick summary of Eric Ries' book.
• 10 Experiments to Test Your Startup Hypothesis - solid inbound and outbound marketing tips to land validation.

The Roadmap

• Startups: How to set a realistic timeline when building a software product - agile methods, practical tips, good advice about velocity.

Overview Story

• Building a new web product: How to best setup engineers AND creatives for a win - a collection of rough user stories so the engineers know what to build and creatives have direction about product UX.

Funnel Stages & KPIs

• Data-driven startups: How to design and build smart funnels within your product - be ready for user acquisition and engagement so you're not flying blind.
• Optimizing your Customer Acquisition Funnel - practical tips about what to do about funnel blockages and how to keep things running smoothly at all points.
• Diligence at Social Capital (Series) - critical read for founders, especially of customer-facing apps, to get smart (and honest) about accounting and user engagement metrics
• Simple KPIs For Running Your Company Like A Fast Paced Tech Startup - diving into specific KPIs like churn, NPS, LTV, CAC, etc..

UI Spec

• Why Writing a User Interface Spec (UI Spec) is Critical for Startup Teams - specific example of a view-by-view, node-by-node description of what the user interface should look like

Tech Stack Decisions

• Five questions to ask when choosing a technology stack for your startup - in short: business objectives, validation, team skills, talent pool, and a supportive community.
• Seven reasons why a Rails 5, Redux, React, and React Native stack is fantastic for new startups - closer look at the specific stack that we recommend for those more neutral/undecided on the subject.

Data Architecture

• How to architect data flow and storage in a new startup - a broader look at the data that startups often forget to include in their systems and reporting.

UX Flow Chart

• How to create a user experience flow chart - recommended tools and structure so it's clear for both UI designers and web developers.

Brand Foundations

• How to build a brand foundation for your new startup - a practical guide for coming up with brand personas, values, and moodboards.
• Uncover Your Brand Personality in 10 Minutes or Less - guide/quiz format to help you come up with a voice and character for your brand, including setting the foundations for how you will think about visually communicating the brand to the outside world.
• 24 pro tips for creating inspirational mood boards - concepts, perspective, approach, etc... A moodboard is used to generate ideas about how to think about visually communicating your brand.
• 16 great tools for creating mood boards - practical list of ways of getting the job done (beyond just a Google image search).

Name

• How to name a startup - simple step-by-step guide for ensuring you are approaching the task of naming your company comprehensively without wasting time.
• How To Name A Startup: The S.M.A.R.T. Checklist - don't overthink it. Stick to a name that is simple, memorable, available, repurposeable, and timeless.
• How to pick the perfect name for your business or startup - helpful naming framework and questions to ask yourself and your team.

Logo

• How to design a logo - Straight-to-the-point guide for working with a team to get it done.
• How to work with a visual designer to quickly produce a logo - step-by-step example of the iteration process with your team.
• How to Create a Logo - solid video and article from entrepreneur.com about how to get the job done.

Financial Stuff

• Startup Financial Modeling, Part 1: What is a Financial Model? - introduction to the why and what of financial modeling. Describes why founders should build their financial models from scratch. Series will provide a step-by-step "how to" with a detailed example.
• Startup Financial Modeling, Part 2: Start with your assumptions - diving into the construction of your assumptions tab.
• Startup Financial Modeling, Part 3: The income statement and custom detail tabs - step-by-step tutorial on how to start building more tabs of your financial model.
• Startup Financial Modeling, Part 4: The Balance Sheet, Cash Flow, and Unit Economics - final installment of the series, diving into important drivers of your business.
• How to Build a 5-Year Financial Model - Marketing, Sales, COGS, Payroll, Income Statement, Balance Sheet, Statement of Cash Flows.
• Financial Models: What Are They and How To Build One For Your Business - video explaining the idea and basic approach

Legal Stuff

• A simple guide to legal and finance operations for new startup founders - lawyers, accountants, contracts, intellectual property, and other important operations considerations.
• 10 Big Legal Mistakes Made By Startups - Good (and very important) intro article around the basic topics for founders to be aware of.
• The Top 7 Legal Documents for Every Startup - quick overview of what you should have (and yes, you should get these from own own legal counsel, not the Internet).

Style Tiles

• Serve customers faster: An introduction to rapid design prototyping with Style Tiles - brief overview of what StyleTiles are and why/how you should use them as a startup team.
• styletil.es - The why/how/what of all-things Style Tiles. "Style Tiles are a design deliverable consisting of fonts, colors and interface elements that communicate the essence of a visual brand for the web."
• The web designer's guide to style tiles - quick overview of what you should have (and yes, you should get these from own own legal counsel, not the Internet).

Wireframes

• How to build wireframes and mockups to validate your business idea - practical guide for teams that have done their homework first and developed a written outline of their UX
• How to build and iterate wireframes for modern app development - step by step example of the process of going through revisions with your visual designer and team.
• Top 5 online wireframing tools for startups - solid set of recommended tools (paid and free).

Mockups

• How to work with a visual designer to efficiently build mockups for your app - step-by-step example of the revision process (goal is to do as few as possible here).
• 7 best practices for creating mockups - including a deeper dive into practical Photoshop tips.

Prototype

• When to start writing code for your Minimum Viable Product - insight into tech stack and operations considerations, including how to think about the proper timing to coordinate work from designers, engineers, and/or product decision-makers.
• While we recommend building your prototype within the web (or mobile) development framework of choice, of course; often prototyping tools can be helpful to get a feel of the user experience before you start writing code
• Rapid prototyping tools for front end devs - "Some great looking tools for rapid prototyping. With these tools you can quickly get your designs on to multiple devices."
• The 7 Best Prototyping Tools for UI and UX Designers in 2016 - including a deeper dive into practical Photoshop tips.

Private Alpha & Coming Soon Page

We recommend that your "private alpha" just be on your staging server for your internal team and advisors to test. This can happen while you have a coming soon page up to let your friends (and potentially a ton of people) know about what you're going to launch.

• The art and science of private alpha testing - how to navigate the types of users to let in and how to incorporate feedback (including how to widen the circle after product iterations).
• How to optimize your “coming soon” page to acquire customers virally - generating buzz, queuing systems, admitting strategic users into your private alpha (if at all), and focusing on delighting customers.
• 18 Fantastic Coming Soon Pages and What Makes Them Great - a quick commentary walk-though that helps point out the key principles to include on your own landing pages.
• Best practices for coming soon launch pages - guiding principles, examples, and helpful tips.

Private & Public Beta

• How to transition from private to public beta - while most people think of "launch" as one big spectacle, in reality it takes multiple waves of releases and public marketing campaigns to get a product off the ground. Reaching an inflection point in growth, if it ever happens, takes a ton of work and a massive amount of luck.
• 10 Tips To Improve Customer Experience During A Beta Test - a great look at high-touch, human-to-human example to ensure founders are listening to customers.
• How to Run a User Interview - another helpful Ycombinator video that's super applicable for your private beta stage
• The 11 step launch marketing plan - from brand strategy to crowdsourcing campaigns and speaking engagements, this is a great set of topics to discuss the game plan with your team.
• Launch like Steve Jobs: 7 Ways to Build Buzz for Your Next Product Launch - this is most applicable to mass-market B2C plays, but the principles in here are gold for all founders.
• Hacking Kickstarter: How to Raise $100,000 in 10 Days - We've posted this here because it applies to all types of product launches (also includes successful templates, e-mails, etc...)

Product & Growth Iterations

• The five common mistakes founders make after a product launch - how to avoid being tone deaf, talking to the wrong people, losing focus, neglecting the team, and ignoring the financial model (or failing to build one at all).
• Building Product, Talking to Users, and Growing - fantastic video lecture from the Ycombinator crew. Adora Cheung, Founder of Homejoy, dives into how to iterate your product and successfully build your business.
• 9 Ways to Keep Sales Strong After Your Product Launch - simple (but super helpful) advice for when the buzz dies down.
• The Art of Product Marketing - Rand Fishkin's presentation on the strategies that make up product marketing and potential channels/opportunities to consider.

Exploring Product-Market Fit

• How do you define Product-Market Fit? - fantastic Quroa thread on the topic from various angles. Models, definitions, personal experiences, etc...
• How to Build Products Users Love - (video) upping the passion of your user base, get them invested in your startup's success.
• Growth - Ycombinator video lecture from the VP of growth at Facebook (Alex Schultz).
• Scale-up Leadership Lessons I’ve Learned Over 9 Years as HubSpot’s CEO - critical lessons about how to navigate internal and external ups and downs in startup life as you grow.

When/if to raise money

• When Should Startups Set Out to Raise Money? - solid article from the Wall Street Journal; advice that many founders unfortunately tend to avoid.
• 5 Clever Ways to Raise Money for Your Startup Without Making an Investor Pitch - Open your own wallet first, sign up strategic partners early on, bootstrap, non-dilutive capital, match capital to milestones, open a line of credit
• How to Raise Money For Your Startup - includes a simple illustration that gets the key points across nicely.

The Pitch

• Why do some startups get funded? - What makes for the best pitch, and how the process works.
• Investor pitch deck and communication strategies: pre-seed and seed - deck order details and differences between your first two likely rounds after a friends and family round.
• Pitch Deck: Complete Guide to a Pitch Presentation - tons of resources to dive into the nuances of what you should put together.
• The best startup pitch desks - more examples, including Facebook's early deck.

Closing Your First Round

• How to close your first investor - simple (but not easy) three-step approach to persuade the first investor to take the leap with you.
• How to raise and spend "friends & family" money most efficiently for your startup.
• Raising your first outside round: How to navigate accelerators, angel investors, and venture capitalists.
• How to close an Angel round - helpful conversation transcript with tons of great points to keep in mind.
• How to Close Investors: Stop Pitching and Start Growing Revenue - what to do when you're getting too many "maybe" answers and investors aren't committing.

Communicating with Investors

• The Entrepreneur's Ultimate Tip List for Communicating With Investors - meetings, tempo, one-on-ones, reporting, how to conduct conference calls, and what to expect regarding your investors use of social media to keep up.
• Investor pitch deck and communication strategies: pre-seed and seed - understanding the nuances between pre-seed and seed pitches, and how to best find and communicate with investors.
• Mastering the lost art of communicating with investors - there are some very practical reasons why you don't want to ignore your investors.
• How To Communicate with your Investors between Board Meetings - going agile, leveraging intros, positioning progress correctly in a way that is helpful for your investor team.
• Good investors will be on your side - helpful reminder that investors are human beings; that even seemingly troublesome investors can be helpful if approached the right way.