12 Tips for Early Customer Development Interviews

Giff Constable

12 pieces of advice around qualitative “customer development” conversations. It is better to learn, as it will remain a constant in your startup life.

16 Definitions on the Economics of VC

Scott Kupor

The basic mechanics of how the VC industry works often remains opaque. This post is an attempt to clear some of that opacity, by defining some basic terms.

4 mistakes entrepreneurs make when building an MVP

Rashan Dixon

By minimizing entrepreneurs’ upfront investment and generating feedback, MVPs prevent costly, emotion-driven mistakes.

500 Startups pitch deck

HubSpot

A visual example of what a pitch deck should include according to 500 Startups.

7 essentials for strong company branding

Carly Stec

Brand strategy: the combined components of your company's character that make it identifiable. Here are 7 essential steps to build an effective brand strategy.

A four step guide to evaluating startup and new venture ideas

Nima Torabi

A brief guide on how to sense if a new startup idea has the potential to stick and grow.

A fundraising survival guide

Paul Graham

Fundraising is the second most difficult activity for a startup, and also probably the second biggest cause of death

A guide to matchmaking sites for Co-Founders

Andrea Huspeni

If you cannot find a co-founder among family and friends, you might consider having a look at specific websites.

A guide to personal productivity

Marc Andreessen

Productivity porn: techniques, tactics and tricks to maximize personal productivity: to get s**t done.

A guide to seed fundraising

Geoff Ralston

The initial capital raised by a company is typically called “seed” capital. This brief guide is a summary of what startup founders need to know about raising the seed funds critical to getting their company off the ground.

All about Network Effects

Anu Hariharan

A network effect occurs when a product or a service becomes more valuable to its users as more people use it. It is especially relevant for software based solutions.

Before the startup

Paul Graham

Just few things to keep in mind before starting a startup. This is intended for college students, but much of it is applicable to potential founders at other ages.

Biggest mistakes first-time founders make

Michael Seibel

Top 3: Solving a problem you don't care about; Helping users you don't care about; Not having transparent conversations with your cofounder.

Branding For Startups

Failory

Here is a framework that will enable you to create meaningful branding for startups. Branding is not a one time activity, but an ongoing one.

Building an engineering team

Harj Taggar, Ammon Bartram

YC Partners Harj Taggar and Ammon Bartram, discuss a topic startups often struggle with most: finding and hiring the key engineers who will build your product.

Building culture

Tim Brady

YC Partner Tim Brady covers the importance of building a strong and coherent culture early and shares six things that you can do now to help you create a solid foundation for your startup.

Buyer Persona template

HubSpot

Buyer personas are fictional, generalized representations of your ideal customers. They help you understand your customers and market your product/service.

Dennis Crowley top 5 pieces of advice for entrepreneurs

Dennis Crowley

Dennis Crowley, Co-founder & CEO of Foursquare, shares his 5 most important advice. Guess what? Stop sketching and start building is the first on the list.

Dilution

Sam Altman

Increased investment supply led to higher company valuations (i.e. prices) and therefore higher raised capital by companies. Although people raise more money at higher valuations, they still end up selling much more of the company.

Founders at Work: Stories of Startups' Early Days

Jessica Livingstone

Founders at Work: Stories of Startups' Early Days is a collection of interviews with founders of famous technology companies about what happened in the very earliest days. What was it like when they were just a couple friends with an idea?

Generating startup ideas and improving existing ones

Abdo Riani

A person can get thousand ideas, but the point is that the value of an idea comes in the proof. Only a few are those who seek the proof; so, execute.

Go-To-Market template

Sparklehood

Here are some points you should follow to design an effective go to market strategy.

Hiring employee #1 at a startup: expectation vs. reality

Dharmesh Shah

When hiring your first employee, rarely things go as you expected.

Hiring tips from Pebble Watch founder Eric Migicovsky

Eric Migicovsky

Pebble Founder and Y Combinator Partner Eric Migicovsky shares advice on qualities to look for when hiring for your employees.

How and why to start a startup

Sam Altman, Dustin Moskowitz

Why to start a startup and the 4 key components of starting a startup: Idea, Product, Team and Execution.

How do you convince someone to join your startup?

Dalton Caldwell

Dalton Caldwell, Y Combinator partner and founder of imeem and Mixed Media Labs, on how to convince someone to join your startup.

How to Work Together

Kevin Hale

YC Partner Kevin Hale talks about the importance of building a successful working relationship with your cofounders, and setting up processes to optimize for the strengths of your team.

How to ask for advice

Aaron Harris

Asking for and taking advice is nos as easy as it seems. It does not only depend on the quality of the person giving advice, but also on how good you are at giving context. Keep this in mind during your sessions with mentors.

How to build a minimum viable product

Oleksandr Sh.

The majority of startups collapse because the market doesn’t need them. To understand what customers need from your product, you should develop a minimum viable product.

How to build your Seed Round pitch deck

Aaron Harris

This is how a pitch deck should look like and include according to Y Combinator.

How to create a minimum viable product for an App

Tom Bilyeu

This video focuses on how to create an MVP for tech solutions.

How to design a better pitch deck

Kevin Hale

This will be your new mantra: "I make it legible. I make it simple. I make it obvious".

How to do a startup in India

Failory

A complete guide on how to start a startup in India covering all the steps: ideas generation, networking, partnership and legal aspects, building your product/service and eventually, how growing it.

How to find the right Co-Founder

Harj Taggar

Arguably the most important part of starting a company is finding the right co-founder. Here is how to do it.

How to get and test ideas

Michael Seibel

Y Combinator Partner Michael Seibel on getting and testing startup ideas.

How to get media coverage for your startup

Dharmesh Shah

Getting your startup covered can really help you to get the product out there, especially if you can't rely on a huge personal network.

How to get startup ideas

Jared Friedman

YC partner talks about how to get startup ideas, whether you have one or not.

How to get users and grow

Gustaf Alströmer

YC Partner Gustaf Alströmer, who was previously a growth expert at Airbnb, describes strategies for scaling your user base.

How to know if you should try to raise venture capital

Sergei Revzin, Vadim Revzin

Here are some basic guidelines to understand whether you are ready to fundraise or not in the hope to avoid wasting time.

How to launch a startup without coding

Tal Raviv

This is for all of you who have a great idea but no technical skills to develop it. Well, there is a way around it, do not give up.

How to make sense of conflicting startup advice

Mark Suster

Founders get advice from online blogs, mentors, friends... and often is conflicting. What should a founder do?

How to split equity among Co-Founders

Michael Seibel

Equity should be split equally because all the work is ahead of you.

How to win as a first-round founder

Drew Houston

A manifesto from Dropbox co-founder Drew Houston: 6 strategies which helped him make it happen.

Leslie’s Compass: a framework for Go-To-Market strategy

Firstround

Your GTM strategy will depend on whether your startup is marketing or sales intensive.

Marketing Plan Template

Slidebean

A Marketing Template will become a go-to document during the most critical stages of your company. It will help you to coordinate your efforts and your ideas to achieve your company’s growth goals.

Mastering product experience (in SaaS) with product-led strategy

Aptrinsic

How to use your product to acquire, retain, and grow your user base.

Must know startup statistics

Embroker

To some, startups still represent a mythical world. Here are some statistics about startup success, failure, fundraising and more. Is this going to help you to build your startup? Probably not, but it still good to have a more realistic picture.

PR and content for growth

Kat Manalac, Craig Cannon

YC partners describe the most effective ways to use PR and content to help your companies find more users.

Pitch deck outline: what to include in a startup pitch deck

Caya

A pitch deck can make or break your company: when done correctly, pitch decks can really go the whole nine yards.

Positioning Your Startup is Vital - Here’s How to Nail It

Firstround

At its core, positioning is a statement, and it becomes essential o everything that follows: from aligning team, hiring, to communicate your values.

Pricing strategy: how to price your product

Jason Quey

Smart cofounders know the best way to design a product and pricing strategy is around the customer’s needs and values.

Pricing your product

Sequoia

Pricing is as much an art as it is a science, one that relies as much on marketing and psychology as it does on classical economics.

Process and leverage in fundraising

Aaron Harris

Fundraising leverage generally comes down to effectively using an investor’s fear of missing out on an outlier company. The trick, then, is convincing investors that your company will be one of those outliers.

Ready to make the jump from Seed to Series A?

Matt Preuss

Outside of the essentials, like finding product-market fit, scaling revenue, and building a repeatable customer acquisition process, there are plenty of other important things to consider as you get ready to raise a Series A. Here are 3 of them.

Realistic startup fundraising timeline

Steve Nitzschner

Sometimes founders think that they will get funding after a month, but here is a more realistic timeline. Make sure your expectations are not too high: fundraising takes a long time and effort.

Sales Plan Template

HubSpot

This tool was built for you to outline your company’s sales strategy. Included are sections common in most sales plans, as well as prompts for you to fill out your company’s tactics and information.

Scaling A Business: Steps To Ensure Profitability

Karen Faith

Scaling basics you need to be aware of when you have at least a growth of >20% in team size or turnover for >2 years, and at least a team size of >10

Sequoia Capital pitch deck

Slidebean

A visual example of what a pitch deck should include according to Sequoia Capital.

Start with WHY

Anya Parikh

This book is about an occurring pattern, a way of thinking, acting, and communicating. The crux of the book lies in understanding your organisation's WHY and how that is the key to success.

StartUp: A show about what it’s really like to start a business.

Gimlet

Ever wondered how it is to be an entrepreneur? This is a series bout what it's really like to start a business.

Startup Funding – A comprehensive guide for Entrepreneurs

Arnab Ray

A 3 parts guide to fundraising: prerequisites of funding, sources of funding and the process of funding.

Startup MVP development - from idea to getting traffic!

Failory

A complete guide starting from building MVP to get traffic and traction.

Startup Mistakes: First-Hand Lessons from 80+ Failed Startups

Failory

This article analyses the most common mistakes startups do and the main reasons they failed. Marketing is top of the list.

Startup Pricing 101

Kevin Hale

YC Partner Kevin Hale goes over the fundamentals of pricing and monetization, how it affects your customer acquisition strategy, and how to optimize it through a few rules of thumb.

Startup hiring guide: how to build a winning team

Cobloom

As your startup begins to grow beyond its founding team, every new hire fundamentally changes the company DNA, and it becomes increasingly important to take a strategic, systematic approach to hiring:

Startup pitch decks

Airtable

Here are some early stage pitch decks of impressive companies which made it.

Startups described in 13 sentences

Paul Graham

Paul Graham gives 13 entrepreneur to entrepreneur pieces of advice to other startups, being the most important one "it's better to make a few people really happy than to make a lot of people semi-happy".

Talking to Humans: Success starts with understanding your customers

Giff Constable

A practical guide to the qualitative side of customer development. This book will teach you how to structure and run effective customer interviews, find candidates, and turn learnings into action.

The Founder's Dilemmas: Anticipating and Avoiding the Pitfalls That Can Sink a Startup

Noam Wasserman

Early stage decisions are extremely important and help you build the foundation of your company. Noam Wasserman reveals the common pitfalls founders face and how to avoid them.

The Four Steps to the Epiphany: Successful Strategies for Products that Win

Steve Blank

The book offers the practical and proven four-step Customer Development process the book covers topics such as: rapid iteration, customer feedback, testing your assumptions.

The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers

Ben Horowitz

Ben Horowitz, cofounder of Andreessen Horowitz and one of Silicon Valley's most respected and experienced entrepreneurs, offers essential advice on building and running a startup.

The Illusions of Entrepreneurship: The Costly Myths That Entrepreneurs, Investors, and Policy Makers Live By

Scott A. Shane

This book shows that the reality of entrepreneurship is decidedly different from the myths that have come to surround it. This book provides accurate, useful information about who becomes an entrepreneur and why, how businesses are started, which factors lead to success, and which predict a likely failure.

The Mentors

Sergei & Vadim Revzin

This podcast seeks to uncover how successful people build their businesses and careers from day one through never before heard stories of how people get started, even when they have nothing.

The Mom Test

Anya Parikh

Struggling to learn from client conversations and uncovering the truth in order to make your business successful necessitates digging deep and putting in the effort. Talking to customers is difficult, and this book will teach you how to properly communicate with them and how to learn from them.

The only thing that matters

Marc Andreessen

What's most dangerous: a bad team, a weak product, or a poor market? There are different views.

The psychology of entrepreneurial misjudgment

Marc Andreessen

Key forms of human behavior that lead to misjudgment and error. Think of it as a practitioner's summary of human psychology and behavioral economics as observed in the real world.

The psychology of pricing

Jory MacKay

How to pick the right pricing model for your company. Every price is a guess, but it needs to be an educated one.

The real Product-Market-Fit

Michael Seibel

Understanding when you’ve really found product/market fit becomes critical to avoid starting hiring, burning cash etc. without even knowing what needs to be built.

Toy markets

Aaron Harris

Many wildly successful startups started in markets so small they looked like toys. However, a founder should always try to build something for a big market if they do not want to be stopped by investors.

Types of startup funding rounds

Marcin Laczynski

Just a description of all startup funding rounds to keep in mind.

VC Interview Questions

Funden

Curated list of 363 questions that VCs and investors ask Startup Founders. Even if you are not trying to fundraise, these questions still make you think.

What a Go-To-Market strategy for startups should look like

Jason Quey

What should a smart founder like you do before you reach product-market fit? Invest in a go-to-market strategy. ‍

What are the best ways to think of ideas for a startup?

Dan Lewis

There are three primary paths to a new startup idea: the spontaneous idea, the insider idea, the deliberate idea.

What startups are really like

Paul Graham

Before starting a startup, you can only have a broad idea of how it will be like. Paul Graham took feedback from founders about what surprised them the most after building a startup.

What we learned from designing 200 pitch decks

Geoff Whiting

How to design an effective pitch deck, including old lessons and new trends.

Where to find a Co-Founder

Vadim Lidich

Running a company is stressful enough, but running a company by yourself will certainly put you on the path of emotional distress and eventual burnout. No, you need a trusted partner, during both peacetime and at war.

Why a killer Go-to-Market always wins over a great product

Jasna Klemenc Puntar

Having the best product will not work if you do not have the right access to the market.

Why not to do a startup?

Marc Andreessen

Entrepreneurship is appealing on paper, but it seems that the "why not" are more than the "why yes". Still want to do it?

Why we choose profit

Jason Fried

Being financially independent or depending on fundraising? Jason Fried of Basecamp lists all the reasons why he chose profits.

YC's essential startup advice

Geoff Ralston, Michael Seibel

YC partners share their essential startup advice, summarized in a pocket guide. Again, which is the first one? LAUNCH NOW!

Zero to One Notes on Start-Ups, or How to Build the Future

Peter Thiel, Blake Masters

The great secret of our time is that there are still uncharted frontiers to explore and new inventions to create. "Zero to One" shows how we can find singular ways to create those new things.

a16z Podcast: Pricing, Pricing, Pricing

Mark Cranney, Martin Casado, and Scott Kupor

How should startups go about raising prices - or more specifically, creating value- for their products?