Post: #1

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If you are interested in tech startups you need to look at this right now:

https://startupclass.co/

Y Combinator has taken a ton of material that they consider to be instrumental to building a tech startup and put it into an easily digestible course. It features people such as Peter Thiel, Dustin Moskowitz, Paul Graham, Justin Kan, Reid Hoffman, and many more.

You can think of this like that book "The Personal MBA" in that it is a compilation of top reading and video resources that are laid out in a sequential order that roughly follows the stages of growth of startups.

As you can see, there are many themes covered such as finding partners, finding product-market fit, company culture, management, funding, and a range of other topics.

This is a great resource. If you are serious about startups you should go through this entire thing.


"Opportunities multiply as they are seized."

Sun Tzu, Art of War.

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Post: #2

Thanks, I'd be interested if you could put together a list of courses like that or groups or workshops. Difficult to figure out what is legit and what is hype.

Post: #3

(10-25-2014 10:12 PM)berserk Wrote:  Thanks, I'd be interested if you could put together a list of courses like that or groups or workshops. Difficult to figure out what is legit and what is hype.

Sure.

If you have a general idea for a startup....a gut feeling that (group of people) would benefit from (some web app or mobile app) but you are totally clueless on what to do...

....you are craving some sort of structure and framework to test your ideas and incrementally improve on them and move in the right direction....

...you should take Steve Blank's Lean Launchpad course.

https://www.udacity.com/course/ep245

The startup class by Y Combinator I posted above is a collection of interesting and useful articles and videos that will give you tips but no coherent framework to actually execute.

In contrast, this Lean Launchpad course will give you a framework called the "Business Model Canvas" to actually execute on your ideas, test it with early users, and iterate rapidly based on user feedback.



This way, you don't dick around and waste $10K and 6 months of your life building products that nobody wants, as I've stupidly done in the past.

You should take this if you approximately fit the following sort of profile:

-You are working a day job but want to start testing a startup idea on the side

-You intuitively know a customer demographic really well because you belong to that group (mountainbike riders, surgeons, day traders, salsa dancers, software engineers, etc) and you are inherently familiar with the types of problems and challenges they constantly face

-You have an idea for a potential solution to this problem or challenge

-You want to test whether your solution will actually work without having to spend that much money and time

Unless you are Jobs/Woz and you just built the Apple 2, you will find that your first business plan usually will not be what ultimately finds success in the marketplace.

Having said that, the purpose is to build a crappy but viable first version of a product just so that you can put it in the hands of users and see how they react. Then you will change your (airless bike tires, smart scalpel, finance software, dancer social network, github killer) in such a way that your early adopters love it.

That is an extremely rough but approximate explanation of how "Lean Launchpad", and the bigger movement called "Lean Startup", operates in principle.

You should also download the ebook or audiobook for "Lean Startup" by Eric Ries and go through it.

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Post: #4

YMG,
Good to see you post here again my friend!
That startupclass.co is a goldmine! Briefly skimmed through it and bookmarked that link. Thanks for sharing it!

Bought the Lean Startup after one of your recommendations a couple years back but never got around to actually reading it. I'll bring it with me and read it on the plane back to Asia next month!

Got any more similar recent book recommendations?

Cheers!

Post: #5

If you want to combine entrepreneurship and international game efforts, you should look into Start Up Chile, it's a 24 week program in Santiago where you get mentoring, office space and funding, it's open to international applicants as the Chilean govt will sponsor you for a visa

http://www.startupchile.org

Post: #6

(10-25-2014 11:18 PM)Vacancier Permanent Wrote:  YMG,
Good to see you post here again my friend!
That startupclass.co is a goldmine! Briefly skimmed through it and bookmarked that link. Thanks for sharing it!

Bought the Lean Startup after one of your recommendations a couple years back but never got around to actually reading it. I'll bring it with me and read it on the plane back to Asia next month!

Got any more similar recent book recommendations?

Cheers!

Some more book recommendations:

How to Build a Billion Dollar App - written by the founder of Hailo, the taxi app from London. Just what it sounds like - it lays out the typical progression of billion dollar startups like instagram, airbnb, uber - from conception until acquisition or IPO - and the various things that are happening as they scale and go through rounds of funding. The chapters are broken up in terms of financing rounds, actually - conception, bootstrapping, angel, series A, series B, etc

Traction - a startup guide to getting customers - the title says it all - how to gain traction by getting users to come on board and then stay on board.

Pitch Anything (almost like pickup for business, frame control is a huge topic)
- this is an entertaining book. The audiobook is also really good.

Venture Deals - be smarter than your lawyer and venture capitalist
- for a book about law and finance, this book was surprisingly entertaining and interesting. Worth a read for being able to know your way around term sheets and venture capitalists.

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Frankly, if you are just seeing all of these resources for the first time and dont know where to start and have no ideas for startups, then IMO you should definitely start with Y Combinator's Startup Class.

If you already have an idea for a startup and you feel like you can build the product and know users you can test it on, you should start with Steve Blank's Lean Launchpad.



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Post: #7

(10-25-2014 11:35 PM)LouEvilSlugger Wrote:  If you want to combine entrepreneurship and international game efforts, you should look into Start Up Chile, it's a 24 week program in Santiago where you get mentoring, office space and funding, it's open to international applicants as the Chilean govt will sponsor you for a visa

http://www.startupchile.org

^^^ I've heard good things about this.

Post: #8

Right now in Auckland they just launched a program called LightningLab. If you get accepting you get 18 grand, 12 weeks, and 6 of the countries best business mentors to make that shit fly. Wish I was sticking around to enter in. Startups are a tough biz.

@VacancierPermanent, have a look at Zero to One by Peter Thiel.

Post: #9

Another good free program is:

Stanford Business: Scaling Up Your Venture Without Screwing Up

https://novoed.com/scaling-up-your-ventu...crewing-up

Post: #10

LouES,
I've also heard some very positive things about this programme. Have you applied to it or know anyone who has?

How about you YMG?

I'm very intrigued by this programme...

Great list of books amigo! I'll check them out! Merci!

(10-25-2014 11:35 PM)LouEvilSlugger Wrote:  If you want to combine entrepreneurship and international game efforts, you should look into Start Up Chile, it's a 24 week program in Santiago where you get mentoring, office space and funding, it's open to international applicants as the Chilean govt will sponsor you for a visa

http://www.startupchile.org

Post: #11

Y Combinator startup lectures.
You can view all of them here at there youtube channel.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxIJaCM...mmQgGFsnCg




Lecture 1 - How to Start a Startup

Post: #12

(10-26-2014 12:55 AM)Vacancier Permanent Wrote:  LouES,
I've also heard some very positive things about this programme. Have you applied to it or know anyone who has?

How about you YMG?

I'm very intrigued by this programme...

Great list of books amigo! I'll check them out! Merci!

(10-25-2014 11:35 PM)LouEvilSlugger Wrote:  If you want to combine entrepreneurship and international game efforts, you should look into Start Up Chile, it's a 24 week program in Santiago where you get mentoring, office space and funding, it's open to international applicants as the Chilean govt will sponsor you for a visa

http://www.startupchile.org

Given my business interests, Chile would not be a good destination for me to pursue. I have easier access to financing in Asia and the United States.

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Post: #13

Great find ymg, thanks for sharing.

Post: #14

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These courses are low budget in terms of production but highly valuable in terms of content:

https://learn.growhack.com/

Definitely worth checking out. Highly effective strategies for user onboard, growth hacking, and general startup marketing strategies.

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Post: #15

Thanks for posting the links. I have some issues with Y Combinator, but they are mostly due to sour grapes, and I'm sure their material is interesting and instructive. Will set aside some time to watch. The issue I have is that they are exclusively for quite young founders. Of course they will deny this, for legal reasons, but your chance of being accepted if you are much beyond your mid-20's is so close to zero you may as well say it is zero. Paul Graham has said some things publicly about this, which was probably a bad idea, but the gist is that he thinks that older founders have nothing to offer. I find this not only insulting, but also consider it factually wrong, though of course I am not someone who used to run the world's most successful business incubator....

PS: Of course I realise that the chance for ANYONE to be accepted on their program is close to zero. At any rate less than 1%. It's just that their intake almost never has any founders at all far beyond mid-20's. They are quite clearly "biased" against older founders.

PPS: Another interesting fact about them is that most of the actual ideas/companies that come out of their program are extremely generic. e.g. You don't often see new genuinely innovative hardware. Most of the companies look like Air BnB, which is one of their more successful ventures. That's great, and I have a lot of respect for Air BnB, but they were not really all that innovative. They just turned a process that was scattered across many websites like Craigslist etc, and developed a centralised market for trading accommodation space. And of course the escrow accounts and insurance that put renters and owners at ease. This is hardly earth shattering. In their case it is very true that ideas aren't all that valuable, because most of the ideas that are implemented, including the wildly successful ones are fairly generic. The ability of the founders to implement is much more important than the idea. For products and ideas that are genuinely innovative the calculus changes a little....

Post: #16

Here are some good Paul Graham essays:

http://paulgraham.com/fr.html

http://paulgraham.com/ds.html

http://paulgraham.com/startupideas.html

The rest of them can be found here:

http://paulgraham.com/articles.html

Post: #17

(10-29-2014 01:16 AM)youngmobileglobal Wrote:  Here are some good Paul Graham essays:

http://paulgraham.com/fr.html

http://paulgraham.com/ds.html

http://paulgraham.com/startupideas.html

The rest of them can be found here:

http://paulgraham.com/articles.html

Very informative. Had read the "Don't Scale" (2nd link) before but reread it now. For what it's worth I strongly suggest anyone thinking of starting a start-up read this article. Quite counter-intuitive, but a lot (maybe most) good advice is. The gist is: When starting out don't think that you will be able to scale your business. This is your ultimate goal, and should be pursued in parallel, but initially most of what you do to build things up will not be scaleable at all. Gaining new users/customers is more on a 1:1 ratio initially by fighting hard for each one, and not 1:1000 where you just offer something to the market and people flock to it because it's so great. The way I read his article Graham is saying that that is possible later, but pretty much never happens at the outset. No matter how good your product.

Post: #18

Thanks for this. I've recently taken my project to the next level and will be looking for a co-founder in the next few weeks. Though I am debating about starting to look now than later (the project isn't at the point where I want it to be advertised or looked at by people yet)

This is the hardest thing to do for me at this point.

Post: #19

(08-18-2015 08:52 PM)SnowHugger Wrote:  Thanks for this. I've recently taken my project to the next level and will be looking for a co-founder in the next few weeks. Though I am debating about starting to look now than later (the project isn't at the point where I want it to be advertised or looked at by people yet)

This is the hardest thing to do for me at this point.

I suggest you check out Angel List for this. This has been a great resource for me to find technical talent who are also actively seeking cofounder or early startup employee positions.

Steps for recruiting on Angel List:

1. Set up a company page for your startup, deck it out with as many details as possible such as screenshots of your product (if you have one), a pitch deck, any PR, etc - then also create a few specific positions like CTO, VP Operations, VP Marketing, or whatever other roles you need filled. In the beginning, you'll probably just need a full stack engineer to be CTO.

2. Hit "recruiting" and then reach out for cofounders and technical people - you can search by location, former employer, US authorization for work visa, skill sets, and a number of other qualifiers

3. Reach out to people who fit the profile and send them a short blurb that talks about why your project is challenging, unique, and can change the world in a unique way. Engineers are being bombarded by offers all the time but usually only respond positively when the venture/startup is tackling something they actually want to solve and be a part of - after all, they'll be doing most of the work in building the product

4. Interview the people who respond back to you and see if you are a good fit. Discuss with them how they would implement the project. If possible, pay them a bit of money to do a short project together whereby they create wireframes/mockups of what they imagine the product to ideally look like and how the users would flow through it. This will give you a sense of how they think and if your visions are aligned.

5. Do a background check and due diligence on your partner. Someone recently tried to lie to me by saying that he was a former engineer at Apple. I forced him to provide references to me from his time at Apple and he had to admit that he lied about it. Check their linkedin profile and other online presence. If they don't have a clear online presence and also can't provide you with references, they are probably shady/lying and you should move on.

Post: #20

(08-18-2015 08:52 PM)SnowHugger Wrote:  Thanks for this. I've recently taken my project to the next level and will be looking for a co-founder in the next few weeks. Though I am debating about starting to look now than later (the project isn't at the point where I want it to be advertised or looked at by people yet)

This is the hardest thing to do for me at this point.

What is the general feeling about bringing in an outsider as a co-founder? i.e The co-founders really don't know each other. I'd think long term friends or colleagues would make the best co-founders.

I suspect that the real founder would never really accept the second person as a genuine co-founder.

Having said that I find myself in the same position. Either go it alone, team up with an old friend who would mostly act in a managing, rather than creative, capacity, or look for a qualified outsider.

And if you're looking for funding apparently no one will even speak to you if you are a sole founder....

Post: #21

(08-19-2015 11:54 AM)Bad Hussar Wrote:  

(08-18-2015 08:52 PM)SnowHugger Wrote:  Thanks for this. I've recently taken my project to the next level and will be looking for a co-founder in the next few weeks. Though I am debating about starting to look now than later (the project isn't at the point where I want it to be advertised or looked at by people yet)

This is the hardest thing to do for me at this point.

What is the general feeling about bringing in an outsider as a co-founder? i.e The co-founders really don't know each other. I'd think long term friends or colleagues would make the best co-founders.

I suspect that the real founder would never really accept the second person as a genuine co-founder.

Having said that I find myself in the same position. Either go it alone, team up with an old friend who would mostly act in a managing, rather than creative, capacity, or look for a qualified outsider.

And if you're looking for funding apparently no one will even speak to you if you are a sole founder....

This is exactly why I'm looking for a co-founder. Most of the accelerator don't mess with a single founder. My friends are more financially savvy than passionate about my idea, which isn't a bad thing and I might end up with one of them.

Also looking at whether to register the business name now or later.

Post: #22

I would be wary of starting a business with someone I have never worked with. My partner would have to be a former co-worker or classmate.

Post: #23

signed up, thanks for this

Post: #24

Thanks this is a great link. Like always I am amazed at the content that people
post here.