Startup Resources
📕 The best videos, podcasts, articles, threads, and books for startups.
I've spent 15 years leading growth and operations at venture-backed startups in Seattle, Boston, San Francisco, and Atlanta.
These are the best resources I’ve found to drive others’ desperation-induced focus.
| Title | People | Topic | Type |
|---|---|---|---|
| Something Like Fire | Michael J. Totten | Artificial Intelligence | Article |
| AI is not a feature | Ben McRedmond | Artificial Intelligence | Article |
| Three paths in the tech industry: founder, executive, or employee | Michael Seibel | Career | Article |
| How to announce a funding round | Tiffany Spencer | Communication | Article |
| It’s okay that your startup doesn’t have a communications strategy | Ashley Mayer | Communication | Article |
| The Lean Startup | Eric Ries | Culture | Book |
| Rework | Jason Fried, David Heinemeier Hansson | Culture | Book |
| Deep Work | Cal Newport | Culture | Book |
| ‘Give Away Your Legos’ and Other Commandments for Scaling Startups | Molly Graham | Culture | Article |
| How Mark Zuckerberg Led Facebook’s War to Crush Google Plus | Antonio García Martínez | Culture | Article |
| Play for the Front of the Jersey | Ravi Gupta | Culture | Article |
| Bad Blood | John Carreyrou | Culture | Book |
| The Hard Thing About Hard Things | Ben Horowitz | Culture | Book |
| How High-Performing Teams Avoid Injury | Laura Simon | Culture | Podcast Episode |
| Quit and join that risky tech startup? | Gary Tann | Culture | Podcast Episode |
| Why Amazon Makes No Profit | Jeff Bezos | Culture | Podcast Episode |
| 4 Behaviors of Great Founders | Julian Shapiro | Culture | Twitter Thread |
| Reflections on Our IPO — the First with a Female Founder/CEO, COO and CFO | Jennifer Hyman | Exits | Article |
| Startup Equity Expectations: New Car, New House, New Life | David Cummings | Exits | Article |
| How VCs Become Assholes | Omri Drory | Fundraising | Article |
| Raising money takes 6-9 months | Dave Payne | Fundraising | Article |
| Some Advice Before You Hit the Fund Raising Trail | Mark Suster | Fundraising | Article |
| Step-by-Step Fundraising Tactics from the NYC Legend Who Raised $750M | First Round | Fundraising | Article |
| Building Your Board | Glenn Kelman | Fundraising | Podcast Episode |
| How to Raise Money | Marc Andreessen, Ron Conway, Parker Conrad | Fundraising | Podcast Episode |
| How to Approach Investors | Steve Walsh | Fundraising | Article |
| How to convince investors | Paul Graham | Fundraising | Article |
| The Most Important Question For Founders is "Why?" | Ben Yoskovitz | Getting Started | Article |
| What is -1 to 0? A Philosophy of Ideation. | Ruchi Sanghvi | Getting Started | Article |
| 1,000 True Fans | Kevin Kelly | Getting Started | Article |
| Desperation-Induced Focus | Ravi Gupta | Getting Started | Article |
| Don’t Edit Your Imagination | Brian Chesky | Getting Started | Article |
| How to Be Great? Just Be Good, Repeatably | Steph Smith | Getting Started | Article |
| How to Start a Startup | Paul Graham | Getting Started | Article |
| Six Principles for Making New Things | Paul Graham | Getting Started | Article |
| Startups are an act of desperation | Elad Gil | Getting Started | Article |
| The idea maze | Chris Dixon | Getting Started | Article |
| How to Start a Hard Tech Startup | Sam Altman | Getting Started | Podcast Episode |
| Stop Chasing Money, Chase Wealth | Garry Tan | Getting Started | Podcast Episode |
| What Sets Successful Startup Accelerators Apart | Susan Cohen | Getting Started | Article |
| Speed x AI | James Currier | Growth | Article |
| High Growth Handbook | Elad Gil | Growth / Marketing | Book |
| Shoe Dog | Phil Knight | Growth / Marketing | Book |
| Super Pumped | Mike Issac | Growth / Marketing | Book |
| Hooked | Nir Eyal, Ryan Hoover | Growth / Marketing | Book |
| Blitzscaling | Reid Hoffman, Chris Yeh, Bill Gates | Growth / Marketing | Book |
| Do You Have Product Market Fit? | Casey Winters | Growth / Marketing | Podcast Episode |
| How Morning Brew Got Its First 10,000 Subsribers | Austin Rief |
Growth / Marketing | Twitter Thread |
| Peanut Butter Versus a Lightning Strike | Darryl Dickens | Growth / Marketing | Article |
| Distribution | Ben Horowitz | Growth / Marketing | Article |
| Growing a startup | Julian Shapiro | Growth / Marketing | Article |
| Why the worst users come from referral programs, free trials, coupons, and gamification at andrewchen | Andrew Chen | Growth / Marketing | Article |
| Competition Is for Losers | Peter Thiel | Growth / Marketing | Article |
| Growth Loops are the New Funnels | Brian Balfour, Casey Winters, Kevin Kwok, and Andrew Chen | Growth / Marketing | Article |
| Growth Wins | Brian Balfour, Casey Winters, Kevin Kwok | Growth / Marketing | Article |
| Retention Is The Silent Killer | Brian Balfour | Growth / Marketing | Article |
| The Law of Shitty Clickthroughs | Andrew Chen | Growth / Marketing | Article |
| Going from Zero to One | Peter Thiel | Growth / Marketing | Podcast Episode |
| Growth | Alex Schultz | Growth / Marketing | Podcast Episode |
| How to Get Users and Grow | Alex Schultz | Growth / Marketing | Podcast Episode |
| How to Talk to Users | Eric Migicovsky | Growth / Marketing | Podcast Episode |
| Launching Airbnb and the Challenges of Scale | Brian Chesky | Growth / Marketing | Podcast Episode |
| Why product-led growth is the future | Elena Verna and Lenny Rachitsky | Growth / Marketing | Podcast Episode |
| My Billion Dollar Mistake | Hiten Shah | Hard Lessons | Article |
| Reflecting on My Failure to Build a Billion-Dollar Company | Sahil Lavingia | Hard Lessons | Article |
| The 18 Mistakes That Kill Startups | Paul Graham | Hard Lessons | Article |
| What is -1 to 0? A Philosophy of Ideation. | Ruchi Sanghvi | Ideation | Article |
| Creativity, Inc | Ed Catmull, Amy Wallace | Innovation | Book |
| Crossing the Chasm | Geoffrey A. Moore | Innovation | Book |
| Founders at Work | Jessica Livingston | Innovation | Book |
| Zero to One | Peter Thiel | Innovation | Book |
| Conflict Avoidance is Dishonesty | Sarah Guo | Leadership | Article |
| Stop Preparing For The Last Disaster | Farnam Street | Leadership | Article |
| The Best-Case Outcomes Are Statistical Outliers | Farnam Street | Leadership | Article |
| The No-Stats All-Star | Michael Lewis | Leadership | Article |
| Transparent Optimism | Casey Winters | Leadership | Article |
| The Effective Executive | Peter F. Drucker | Leadership | Book |
| Trillion Dollar Coach | Eric Schmidt, Jonathan Rosenberg, Alan Eagle | Leadership | Book |
| How to Win Friends & Influence People | Dale Carnegie | Leadership | Book |
| The Five Dysfunctions of a Team | Patrick Lencioni | Leadership | Book |
| Steve Jobs’ Insult Response | Steve Johbs | Leadership | Podcast Episode |
| The Electricity Metaphor | Jeff Bezos | Leadership | Podcast Episode |
| Lies that Losers Tell | Ben Horowitz | Leadership | Article |
| Your Small Imprecise Ask Is a Big Waste of Their Time | Stay SaaSy | Management | Article |
| High Output Management | Andy Grove | Management | Book |
| How to Set KPIs and Goals | Adora Cheung | Metrics | Video |
| Benchmarks of option plans | Index Ventures | Operations | Article |
| The Role of Timing in Recruiting Talent | David Cummings | People | Article |
| Tools of Titans | Timothy Ferriss | Problem Solving | Book |
| Building Product | Michael Seibel | Product | Podcast Episode |
| Building Consumer Social Apps | Nikita Bier | Product | Twitter Thread |
| How to prioritize features | Emmett Shear | Product | Article |
| Tools of Titans | Tim Ferriss | Productivity | Book |
| Lessons scaling from 10 to 20 people | Joseph Walla | Scaling | Article |
| Productivity | Sam Altman | Scaling | Article |
| Tech debt is not a burden, it's a strategic lever for success | Matt Greenberg, Keya Patel | Scaling | Article |
| The Biggest Problem With Mediocre VPs? They Spend All The Money | Jason Lemkin | Scaling | Article |
| VP of Finance: The Non-Obvious | Matt Turck | Scaling | Article |
| Tips for SEO | Eric Siu | SEO | Twitter Thread |
| The ultimate guide to SEO | Lenny's Rachitsky, Ethan Smith | SEO | Video |
| Climbing the wrong hill | Chris Dixon | Strategy | Article |
| 2,851 Miles | Bill Gurley | Success | Podcast Episode |
| Success | Warren Buffett, Bill Gates | Success | Podcast Episode |
| Should You Just Give Up? | Joshua Rothman | Success | Article |
| High Agency People | Shreyas Doshi |
Team | Twitter Thread |