Resources
for
Founders
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It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more. This is Pitch Deck Teardowns on TechCrunch. Click here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1DiK1zKO526m--_jiNgwLYoA-A7d2N2WvOp-MgiIviII/edit?gid=0#gid=0
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It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a company. Here are common issues a founder will face for those of you DYI leaders out there. Click here https://docs.google.com/document/d/18FiJbYn53fTtPmphfdCKT2TMWH-8Y2L-MLqDk-MFV4s/edit
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The infamous Paul Graham essay for startups---
"When I talk to a startup that's been operating for more than 8 or 9 months, the first thing I want to know is almost always the same. Assuming their expenses remain constant and their revenue growth is what it has been over the last several months, do they make it to profitability on the money they have left? Or to put it more dramatically, by default do they live or die?...."
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Get a Coach, you need to scale yourself and your leadership team as quickly as your company.
Invest in People Ops
Read widely. See Books on SCALE list below.
Everyone needs-- The 3M Technique!
3 Minutes of Music, Movement, and Mindfulness at least 3 times a day. Minimum.Get your Sleep Shit in Order if it isn't already.
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For those of us who are lucky enough + have worked our asses off to have an exit (or more)... we typically don't just sit on a beach and become fat whales. The builder in us never really dies.
What is your legacy?
What will your impact be with all of your hard won lessons, mistakes, wins? -
Resources for recruiting diverse tech talent for startups!
Recommended READING:
McKinsey : Mining for Tech Talent Gold
LinkedIn : A Black Engineers Take on Why Diversity Matters in Startups
CodeAcademy : 6 Black Professional Organizations Empowering BIPOC in Tech
11 DIVERSE TALENT SOURCING ORGS
Go-To-Market Frameworks
Launch Strategy
By Pratik Mehta.
How do you maximize your launch success & bring order in the chaos? Launching a product requires collaboration & coordination with multiple stakeholders at all times
GTM Template
By the Product Folks.
Early-stage startups often experiment with many marketing methods then find that a few are most productive for them. What is your hypothesis about the three marketing methods that will prove most productive, once you achieve product-market fit?
Marketing Plan by Michael Taylor
By Michael Taylor
We’re going deep on tracking and analytics setup, SEO, paid advertising, CRM, landing page optimization, virality and even branding. This is what you should expect your marketing lead to deliver.
Guide to GTM metrics 2.0
By Kyle Polar.
Say goodbye to MQLs, say hello to unified GTM metrics. There might have been a time when marketing generated pipeline and sales closed it. But that’s not the world we live in now.
Product Vision Board
By Roman Pichler.
Creating and managing a successful product requires a lot of time and energy. In order to be fully committed, you have to be convinced that what you are doing is right and have a clear vision of where to take your product.
How Google Builds Vision
By Google.
Vision is everything about what drives our work. Core values, purpose, mission and strategy are all part of our vision.
Don’t reinvent the wheel
Startup 𝗙𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗿𝗮𝗶𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗴
1. Startup Pitch Deck GPT, https://lnkd.in/dMiV5BKw - JME
2. Data Room template, https://lnkd.in/dvYqaR6b - Creandum
3. Story Branding, https://lnkd.in/dSq7S7_w - Donald Miller
4. The Idea Maze, https://lnkd.in/dq4Jhiem - Balajis Srinivasan
5. Fundraising guides by Y Combinator, https://lnkd.in/d3DR69E9
6. Fundraising wisdom by Firstround, https://lnkd.in/dffZY_it
7. Deck Template by Creandum, https://lnkd.in/ddXTr-iM
8. Business Plan by Sequoia, https://lnkd.in/d9heZXPf
9. Front Series A Deck, https://lnkd.in/demVpb97
10. SaaS Fundraising Playbook by IVP, https://lnkd.in/d-2GEaT5
Startup 𝗠𝗲𝘁𝗿𝗶𝗰𝘀
1. Operational efficiency metrics Iconiq, https://lnkd.in/dHj5M2VX
2. B2B benchmark metrics - a16z, https://lnkd.in/dycet96d
3. What is good retention, https://lnkd.in/dqKnANu2 - Lenny Rachitsky
4. Top 5 SaaS metrics VCs look at, https://lnkd.in/d6SyugQ4 - Jon Ma
5. Cohort analysis template SaaS, https://lnkd.in/dSkNGWqH - Point9
Startup 𝗘𝗾𝘂𝗶𝘁𝘆 & 𝗖𝗼𝗺𝗽𝗲𝗻𝘀𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻
1. Equity grants per round - Balderton, https://lnkd.in/dFT4GiFX
2. Founder’s compensation, https://lnkd.in/dX99tED4 - Creandum
3. Option Plan Tool - Index, https://lnkd.in/dzKRG5Zw
Startup Governance / 𝗕𝗼𝗮𝗿𝗱 𝗠𝗮𝗻𝗮𝗴𝗲𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁
1. Lessons from Keith Rabois, https://lnkd.in/dRXqGj63
2. The Art of Board Membership, https://lnkd.in/daFw3BEp
3. How to run a board - Samuel Gil, https://lnkd.in/d762Wr_d
Source: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ivanlandabaso/
Founder Mental Health Statistics
The numbers of mental health for entrepreneurs.
1. 72% of founders struggle with mental health.
2. 37% suffer from anxiety.
3. 36% experience burnout.
4. 10% have panic attacks.
5. 54% of founders are very stressed about their businesses, with fear of failure being the main stressor.
6. 81% of founders hide their stress, fears and challenges from others, and more than half hide their stress from their co-founders.
7. 77% of founders refuse to seek professional help. Younger founders hold greater stigma seeking help. Male founders hold 2x stigma for seeking help female.
8. More than 50% of founders lose sleep since founding their companies, and that number skyrockets in step with the amount of money raised.
9. 47% of founders exercise less (when they need it most for mental health) than they did before founding their companies.
10. Founders spend 60% less time with spouses, 58% less time with kids, and 73% less time with friends/family, and the avg. level of loneliness is 7.6 /10.
11. 93% of founders would do it all again, even in light of so many forms of suffering.
According to a study by Michael Freeman, entrepreneurs are 50 percent more likely to report having a mental health condition, with some specific conditions being incredibly prevalent amongst founders. Founders are:
· 2X more likely to suffer from depression
· 6X more likely to suffer from ADHD
· 3X more likely to suffer from substance abuse
· 10X more likely to suffer from bi-polar disorder
· 2X more likely to have psychiatric hospitalization
· 2X more likely to have suicidal thoughts
Addressing the ongoing mental health catastrophe in entrepreneurship is a moral imperative, and for wise investors, it should be a function of doing business. Venture capitalists make their living off the blood, sweat and tears of founders. It is through their passion and efforts that we succeed or fail. We can either choose to see founders purely as a means to an end (generating returns) or we can see them as the whole people they are.“
TechCrunch– a must-read article.
Startup Hiring Guide: for rapid growth from 5 - 50
A startup hiring guide is invaluable for rapid growth. It provides a roadmap for attracting top talent, creating effective job descriptions, developing a robust hiring process, and building a strong employer brand. It's a strategic tool that can significantly enhance a startup's ability to scale and succeed.
“I meet too many founders who’ve read 27 blog posts on landing page optimization but make it up as they go along in interviews. Startup literature urgently needs more guides to headhunting and fewer how-to’s on the email etiquette of VC introductions.”
— Nikos Moraitakis, Workable CEO
The hardest thing you’ve not been told
The Series A crunch may be tough but the talent crunch is brutal. We talk to high-growth startups every day and we keep hearing versions of “compared to recruiting, fundraising was easy”. Just like fundraising, it’s very competitive. It takes time, preparation and selling, and getting it wrong can slow down or kill your startup. It’s the hardest thing to get right. It doesn’t get the attention it deserves.
You need to be a hiring obsessive
Whether it’s two founders talking to an angel investor, a team of 10 making something from nothing, or a high-growth company with 50 staff, team quality is the single best predictor of success. If you can get great people then everything else becomes so much easier.
Growth hacks versus talent hacks
Silicon Valley has figured out how to build great products and turn them into successful business models. Methodologies have emerged like Lean Startup, agile product development and growth hacking. They function as roadmaps for the non-experts and inspire conversation and innovation in those fields. In comparison hiring practices have remained in the dark ages.
Getting from 5 to 50 and beyond
Your first five hires pretty much picked themselves but in getting from 5 to 50 you will need the best tools and analytics, and you will need to be systematic. It’s about more than ping pong tables and bicycle racks. We’ve spent the time to curate the best thinking on everything from employer branding and headhunting to every step in the interview process, whether you’re building a distributed team or you’ve got an office. We’ve thrown in ideas, tricks, talent hacks and real life examples from great companies. The result is this startup hiring guide that offers some structure when hiring for rapid growth from 5 to 50. It’s a starting point. And my aim is to get all of us to talk about hiring.
READ MORE >> https://resources.workable.com/tutorial/the-startup-hiring-guide-your-playbook-for-rapid-growth
Referrals for Founders & Small Business Owners
BUSINESS Credit Card: Capital One
CONTRACTOR Insurance: Gig Easy
DESIGN: DesignTeam.co
BANKING, INVOICES, ACCOUNTING: Mercury Bank
Public Relations for Startups:
My Tech Stack:
Accounting /Invoicing - Xero
Website - Squarespace
CRM/ Marketing - Hubspot
STARTUP Law:
GENERAL Ops: Of All Trades
Wealth Advisor: Willow Grove Advisors
MARKETING: The Marketing Dad
STORYTELLING: Norah Goldman
Investor News: Visible
Business Insurance: Vouch
TAX Strategy: Kempton Accounting
Product Advisors: Holder Advisor & Associates
LIST OF LISTS OF VENTURE CAPITALISTS & ANGEL INVESTORS
𝗩𝗖𝘀 𝗯𝘆 𝗦𝘁𝗮𝗴𝗲:
⬪ Pre-Seed: https://lnkd.in/gnxYgFF8
⬪ Seed: https://lnkd.in/g7rntFQa
⬪ Seed & Series A: https://lnkd.in/gU_PZwra
⬪ Below 200 Million: https://lnkd.in/g4QhNsjV
𝗩𝗖𝘀 𝗯𝘆 𝗟𝗼𝗰𝗮𝘁𝗶𝗼𝗻:
⬪ US VCs: https://lnkd.in/gDcKfxwD
⬪ NYC VCs: https://lnkd.in/gMKTstBz
⬪ European VCs: https://lnkd.in/gZC4qqxW
⬪ UK VCs: https://lnkd.in/gkPYUKH3
⬪ French VCs: https://lnkd.in/g2bHpUYd
⬪ Spanish VCs: https://lnkd.in/gBD_7rRY
⬪ Baltic VCs: https://lnkd.in/gx2iHdDS
⬪ Australian VCs: https://lnkd.in/gbFnpmRX
⬪ Indian VCs: https://lnkd.in/durcuiUw
⬪ Singapore VCs: https://mapofthemoney.com/
𝗩𝗖𝘀 𝗯𝘆 𝗜𝗻𝗱𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗿𝘆:
⬪ Climate VCs: https://lnkd.in/d__3NqRC
⬪ Deep Tech VCs: https://lnkd.in/gqTqjKJu
⬪ HealthTech VCs: https://lnkd.in/gMWDprYC
⬪ Consumer VCs: https://lnkd.in/ganPEBgV
⬪ FinTech VCs: https://lnkd.in/gWFADRuP
𝗔𝗻𝗴𝗲𝗹𝘀:
⬪ US Founders Investing: https://lnkd.in/gHtZZY2y
⬪ SaaS Angels: https://lnkd.in/g3z9sBAE
⬪ US Women: https://lnkd.in/gd4JefpG
⬪ Global Women: https://lnkd.in/gYAW3avh
⬪ Australia: https://lnkd.in/gxYmwaTb
⬪ Africa: https://lnkd.in/g3z-cx6z
⬪ Middle East: https://lnkd.in/ghZ5PeQF
𝗔𝗰𝗰𝗲𝗹𝗲𝗿𝗮𝘁𝗼𝗿𝘀:
⬪ Every Accelerator: https://lnkd.in/dncseAmE
This is Duke. He believes you can do hard things.
Duke is a rescue pup of several mystery breeds. He is extroverted and will do all his tricks for treats. He says hello to every human & dog on walks and give you a good lean in hug or lick on the eyeball. Nothing makes him happier than a beach frolic and a nap. More Duke here. Duke is a big fan of Sequoia Humane Society.