Thoughts and tools for the startup

January 6, 2014 11:46 AM

The internet is full of mediocre, self-aggrandizing, or plain bad advice about how to found and manage a startup, but there some really useful collections out there. The annual collection of best links by Tom Eisenmann of Harvard (also: 2012, 2011, 2010) is very good, as is the 30 best posts by First Round Capital, and the many readings available in Stanford's E145 class. On an ongoing basis, the Startup Management blog is a good place to look, plus, inside, there are...

Some more of my favorites, by area:

Ideas and Names
Some basic thoughts on where good startup ideas come from
David Kelly's guide to design thinking and problem solving
Coming up with names by Karl Ulrich from Wharton

Compensation and Equity
A really nice interactive graph on how much people are paid for different startup jobs
Thoughts on dividing equity
Greylock's guide for startup CEOs on running recruiting

Pitching and Sales
A template startup pitch deck
An annotated pitch deck from the founder of LinkedIn
A good infographic (who knew?) with data on how to run a sales process, and this on lead generation

Raising Money
How to meet investors
Feld's articles on term sheet terms, which were turned into a very nice book
Ideal first round funding terms

Software and tools
10 good tools for startups
A downloadable spreadsheet for financials for a startup (excel) and here are the instructions. And here is a valuation spreadsheet, and instructions

Most of these are oriented towards high-growth internet startups, but there are some good links to material useful for other companies as well. I've avoided much on trendy (if important) topics like lean startups, but there is a good set of readings on that as well.

posted by blahblahblah (6 comments total)

I've been clicking most of those links but I'm not seeing any "10 step plan to become the next Facebook"? If anyone has anything like that, it would be quite welcome!
posted by Riton at 2:50 PM on January 6, 2014

I can't emphasize how important things like naming your company are. I was asked to consult for an early stage startup that had chosen the name XYZ.com despite there being another company whose name was XZ.com. Neither they nor their attorney considered this to be a pressing problem. Due to that and a number of other red flags I declined their job offer. It just boggles the mind how people get this kind of fundamental stuff wrong. It does not bode well for execution in other parts of the business.
posted by dfriedman at 3:15 PM on January 6, 2014

This is a great post. I'm impressed by the ratio of favorites to comments.
posted by lkc at 4:44 PM on January 6, 2014 [2 favorites]

I'm impressed by the ratio of favorites to comments.

Me too. Oh wait, did I mess it up?
posted by swift at 5:32 PM on January 6, 2014

This is a great post and I'll spend the next weeks reading all the articles. Startup Management seems like an interesting curator of startup information.
posted by Foci for Analysis at 9:38 AM on January 7, 2014

Thanks for this - lots of great resources. Steve Blank's site also has a huge list, but the quality of it varies.
posted by motdiem2 at 5:42 AM on January 9, 2014