Everyday, dozens of articles are published to help startup founders succeed. Entrepreneurs are overwhelmed by the amount of — often conflicting — lessons, ideas and advices they receive. It makes it hard to move forward and avoid decision-paralysis.
Having founded 2 startups (Flagback and HireVoice) and spent more than a year researching B2B Customer Development to write Lean B2B, I had to read a lot of blog posts, books and tweets.
Form my research (and the last few years working with startups), here are some of the most valuable posts I found; the go-to articles I re-read from time to time.
- All the Startup Advice You Read is Wrong by Evan Williams — Great way to start this list. This post reminds entrepreneurs to take all startup advice with a grain of salt.
- The Only Thing That Matters by Marc Andreessen — Part of Andreessen’s Guide to Startups, this post simplifies the goal for the early days of a startup to its true minimum.
- Ten Questions Before you Start Something New by Chris Lema — This post provides a good framework to evaluate a business idea before investing time, money and sweat.
- Don’t Build a Sexy Startup by Jordan Skole— This post teaches you to see the opportunities around you. On the topic, read How to Turn a Full-time Job Into a B2B Business Opportunity.
- Minimize your Time to Product/Market Fit by Andrew Chen — This post makes entrepreneurs accountable for their runway and time to product/market fit; important concepts.
- Startup Metrics for Pirates: AARRR!!! by Dave McClure — Beyond the analytics framework, the AARRR model is the best simplification of what a startup does (Acquire-Activate-Retain-Generate Referrals-Generate Revenue).
- Do Things that Don’t Scale by Paul Graham — Possibly the most important post on this list. Reminds entrepreneurs to perfect their core offering before trying to scale.
- The Unprofitable SaaS Business Model Trap by Jason Cohen — Great post on the importance of profitability, revenue and focusing on the right things for a SaaS startup.
- SaaS Startup Strategy | Three SaaS Sales Models by Joel York — This post helps startups understand their natural distribution model. It also keeps entrepreneurs from hiring sales when it’s not a good idea.
- The Long, Slow SaaS Ramp of Death based on a talk by Gail Goodman — Dispels false ideas around success and introduces the importance of measuring your business from the customer view (inward), not from the metrics.
- Camels and Rubber Duckies by Joel Spolsky— Thorough pricing lesson filled with insights by a software veteran. A bit of an old post, but still very relevant.
- The Next Feature Fallacy by Andrew Chen—This post challenges the misconception that adding features automatically increases user adoption or engagement.
- Pivot, Don’t Jump to a New Vision by Eric Ries— Not Ries’s most popular post, but it’s a good reminder of what a pivot really is and how to go about pivoting a startup.
Trust me, you’ll be a better entrepreneur for reading these posts.
Enjoy.
P.S. Anything missing?
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