Founder’s Field Guide | Readings & Miscellany
11 min readSep 7, 2016
Over the past several years, I’ve compiled a set of entrepreneurship-related resources to use in the class that I teach at Yale SOM, Founder’s Practicum. The resources + tools cover a range of topics — from early stage financing to building a team to design to branding.
This list is in no way comprehensive — it simply includes things that I’ve come across in the course of my research that I thought might be useful for other founders who are launching new ventures. It is a living document, so things are added occasionally to provide additional context or removed if they seem less relevant. If you have any suggestions for readings to add, please add them in the comments. The gender and ethnic diversity of the authors (and, therefore, the perspectives) is not where I’d like it to be. So if you have any good recommendations for readings by female or ethnically diverse authors in particular, please comment or send me an email at jennifer.mcfadden@yale.edu.*
Otherwise, enjoy.
Before you start
Articles/videos:
- How to Start a Startup by Paul Graham
- Why not to Start a Startup by Paul Graham
- Strategy Letter 1: Ben & Jerry’s vs. Amazon by Joel Spolsky
- Entrepreneur’s Anonymous by The Economist
- Top 5 Pieces of Advice for Founders by Dennis Crowley
- How to launch a startup without writing a line of code by Dharmesh Shaw
- Lessons Learned from Bill Gross’ 35 IPOs/Exits and 40 Failures by Howard Morgan
- Building Great Founding Teams by Steve Blank
- Forming Startup Founder Teams by Evangelos Simoudis
- Founder’s Agreements by David Touve
- The Idea Maze by Chris Dixon
- Ten Rules for Web Startups by Evan Williams
- It’s Not a Lottery Ticket, It’s a Company by Phin Barnes
- How to Make Sense of Conflicting Startup Advice by Mark Suster
- Looking for Love in All the Wrong Places by Steve Blank
- Listening to Shame by Brene Brown (first 7 minutes)
Deep Dives:
- Product Strategy for High-Tech Companies by Michael E. McGrath
- The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz
- The Founder’s Dilemmas by Noam Wasserman (particularly Part II: Founding Team Dilemmas)
- Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future by Peter Thiel
Getting Started
Articles/videos:
- Why the Lean Startup Changes Everything by Steve Blank
- Generation Flux’s Secret Weapon by Robert Safian
- The Management Framework that Propelled LinkedIn to a $20 Billion Business by First Round Review
- 10 Laws of Cloud Computing by Bessemer Venture Partners
- Build Products by Christina Cacioppo
- Year End Round Up by Alexis Lloyd (list of interesting tech-related links by @nytlabs; great for idea generation)
- 10 Things That Changed How I Thought About Building Things by Brendan Baker (curated list of other resources)
Deep Dives:
- Founders at Work by Jessica Livingston
- Getting Real: The Smarter, Faster, Easier Way to Build a Successful Web Application by 37 Signals
- Evernote: Growth Options in January 2011 by Hiam Mendelson (Stanford GSB Case)
- Disciplined Entrepreneurship by Bill Aulet
Product/Market Fit
Articles/videos:
- How to Launch a Product without Writing any Code by Tal Raviv
- How to be a Founder Worth Coding For by Dan Sullivan and Galen Sanford (video)
- 8 Essential Questions You Need to Ask About Your Business Model by Alex Osterwalder
- Product/Market Fit by Marc Andreesen
- Be Socratic by Brad Feld (Focus on the Five Why’s, which we’re likely to ask you!)
- AngelList Pivoted Four Times to Get it Right
- When Has a Consumer Startup Hit Product/Market Fit by Andrew Chen
- Minimum Viable Product: A Guide by Eric Ries (video)
- Know Your Customer’s “Jobs to be Done” by Clayton M. Christensen, Taddy Hall, Karen Dillon, and David S. Duncan
Deep Dives:
- Lean Startup by Eric Ries
- Business Model Canvas by Alex Osterwalder
- Running Lean by Ash Mayura
Talking to Customers
Articles/videos:
- Customer Development: How to Develop your Customers like you Develop your Product by Venture Hacks
- Retooling Early Stage Product Development by Steve Blank (podcast)
- How to Run a User Interview by Emmett Shear
- 12 Tips for Early Customer Development Interviews by Giff Constable
- Lean Product Manager by Dan Olsen (video)
Deep Dives:
- Talking to Humans by Giff Constable
- Four Steps to the Epiphany by Steve Blank
- The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Customer Development by Brant Cooper and Patrick Vlaskovitz
Tools:
- A Few Good Online Survey Tools by Eric Leland
Competitive Strategy
Articles/Videos:
- What Happened When Marissa Mayer Tried to Be Steve Jobs by Nicholas Carlson
- How Competition Strengthens Startups by Andrew Burke and Stephanie Hussels
- Multi-Sided Platforms by Andrei Hagiu and Julian Wright
Deep Dives:
- The Innovator’s Dilemma & The Innovator’s Solution by Clayton Christensen
- Competitive Strategy by Michael Porter (it’s a classic for a reason and surprising useful for startup comp strat)
Developing a Revenue Model
Readings:
- Web and Mobile Revenue Model Hackpad
- Revenue Models: Data by Fred Wilson
- Revenue Models: Peer-to-Peer by Fred Wilson
- Revenue Models: Licensing by Fred Wilson
- Revenue Models: Commerce by Fred Wilson
- Revenue Models: Transaction Processing by Fred Wilson
- Revenue Models: Advertising by Fred Wilson
- Revenue Models: Gaming by Fred Wilson
- Revenue Models: Mobile by Fred Wilson
- Freemium and Freeconomics by Fred Wilson
- How to Get Good at Making Money by Jason Fried
- What is Business Model by Andrea Ovans
Deep Dives:
- Lean Startup by Eric Ries
- Business Model Canvas by Alex Osterwalder
Pricing Your Product
Readings:
- The Sequoia Guide to Pricing by Sequoia Capital
- How to Price and Sell Your Startup’s Product by Tomasz Tunguz
- Freemium Software: A Guide for Startups by IVP
- Don’t Leave Money on the Table with this Crash Course in Pricing by First Round Review
- Making Freemium Work by Vineet Kumar/HBR
- Is it Time to Rethink Your Pricing Strategy by Andreas Hinterhuber and Stephan Liozu
- When Customers Help Set Prices
- Pricing, Pricing, Pricing podcast by Mark Cranney, Martin Casado, and Scott Kupor of Andreesen Horowitz
- Pricing Free podcast by Mark Cranney, Martin Casado, and Scott Kupor of Andreesen Horowitz
Deep Dives:
- The Dynamic Effects of Bundling as a Product Strategy by Vineet Kumar and Timothy Derdenger
Building a Brand
Readings:
- This Startup Cracked a $2.4 Billion Market with Branding by First Round Review
- Finding Your Brand’s Identity by Ana Bianchi
- Creating Your Logo Design by Ana Bianchi
- Neil Blumenthal: 3 Lessons Learned from Building Warby Parker by Neil Blumenthal (video)
- Jeff Raider, Harry’s and Warby Parker (podcast)
- How to Name Your Startup by Gimlet Media (podcast)
- Positioning Your Startup is Vital — Here’s How to Nail It by First Round Review
Deep Dives:
- Positioning: The Battle for Your Mind by Al Ries and Jack Trout
- Brand Thinking by Debbie Millman
- Crossing the Chasm and Inside the Tornado by Geoffrey Moore
- Designing Brand Identity by Alina Wheeler
Case Study|Rapha:
- Rapha: Building a Brand Through Creativity by Angus Montgomery
- When Branding Means Living Life by Karen Summerson (video)
- Brands: Rapha by Manufacture Magazine
- On Passion, Obsession and Why Your Brand Should Take Sides by Jocelyn Glei
Case Study|Asana:
- Circling Ourselves: The Story Behind Asana’s Rebrand by Micah Daigle
- Finding Clarity and Energy: Learnings from Redesigning Asana by Vanessa Koch
Design
Readings:
- A Beginner’s Guide to Pairing Fonts by Ian Yates
Deep Dives:
- The Design of Everyday Things by Donald Norman
- The Shape of Design by Frank Chimero
- Hack Design (Online, weekly design course)
Tools:
Typography:
Color:
Photos/Images:
UI/UX
Readings:
- Complete Beginner’s Guide to Interaction Design by UX Booth
- Google Design Sprint by Jake Knapp
- Startups This is How Design Works
- Writing First Design by Jonas Downey
- The Making of Tiiny by Kevin Rose
- Why You Need a Prototype and How to Build One by Ximena Vengoechea
- User Research Quick and Dirty by Michael Margolis (video)
- 9 Basic Principles of Responsive Web Design by Sandijs Ruluks
- Usability 101: Introduction to Usability by Jakob Nielsen
Deep Dives:
- Lean UX by Jeff Gothelf
- Smashing UX Design by Jesmond Allen
- Don’t Make Me Think by Steve Krug
- On Web Typography by Jason Santa Maria
- UX Project Checklist
Tools:
- Sketch (wireframing)
- InvisionApp (clickable wireframes)
- Balsamiq (wireframing)
- Unsplash (free stock photos)
- Pinterest (bookmarking site to pull together inspiration)
- Experiment Mixtape prototyping exercise by Stanford d.School
- Keynote (wireframing//great if you’re already familiar with Keynote)
Social Media & Content Marketing
Readings:
- Email Marketing Field Guide, How to Avoid Spam Filters, and Common Rookie Mistakes by Mailchimp
- Hubspot Email Marketing Strategy by Hubspot
- The Marketers Guide to Transactional Email by Kissmetrics
- Blog Topic Generator by Hubspot
- The Anatomy of a Perfect Social Media Post by Stephanie Frasco
- Marketer’s Guide to Instagram by Kissmetrics
- 25 Brands That Are Killing it on Instagram by Meredith Lepore
- How to Share to Social Media if You Don’t Have Time by Kevan Lee
- 39 Blogging Tools to Help You Work Faster, Write Better and Land More Readers by Kevan Lee
- The Seven Deadly Sins of Startup Marketing by Jennifer Aaker and Andy Smith
Deep Dives:
- The Elements of Content Strategy by Erin Kissane
- Viral Marketing for the Real World by Duncan J. Watts, Jonah Peretti, and Michael Frumin
- How Stories Drive Growth: Brit + Co. by Jennifer Aaker and Deborah Schifrin (Case Study, Stanford GSB)
- How Stories Drive Growth: Skype by Jennifer Aaker and Deborah Schifrin (Case Study, Stanford GSB)
Tools:
- Hootsuite (social media scheduling)
- Mailchimp (email)
- SailThru (email)
- TinyLetter (email)
Public Relations
Articles/videos:
- How do you Get Media Coverage for Your Startup by Dharmesh Shah
- Startups and the Media by Wade Roush (video)
Tools:
Analytics
Readings:
- Analytics 3.0: Measurable Business Impact from Analytics and Big Data by Harvard Business Review
- Startup Metrics for Pirates by Dave McClure (video)
- Cohort Analysis by Rick Klau
- The Beginners Guide to Conversion Rate Optimization
- Vanity Metrics vs. Actionable Methods by Eric Ries
- Lean Analytics by Ken Norton (video)
Deep Dives:
- Lean Analytics: Use Data to Build a Better Startup Faster by Alistair Croll et. al.
Tools:
Customer Acquisition
Readings:
- Your First 100 AdWords Conversions by Google Ventures (video)
- How to Create a Customer Acquisition Plan for Startups by Ryan Gum
- Using Keyword Planner to Get Keyword Ideas and Traffic Forecasts by Google
- Diligence at Social Capital: Part 1 by Jonathan Hsu
- Diligence at Social Capital: Part 2 by Jonathan Hsu
- Diligence at Social Capital: Part 3 by Jonathan Hsu
- Understanding Customer Acquisition Costs by Rob Moffat
Deeper Dive:
- Traction: A Startup Guide to Getting Customers by Gabriel Weinberg
Tools:
- Optimizely (A/B Testing)
- Unbounce (A/B Testing)
- Visual Website Optimizer (A/B Testing)
Startup Sales
Readings:
- The Science of Building a Scalable Sales Team by Rick Klau
- Your Product Demo Sucks Because It’s Focused on Your Product by First Round Review
- Building a Sales and Marketing Machine by David Skok
- The Science of Building a Scalable Sales Team by Google Ventures
- On Selling by Mark Suster
- The 39 Best Pieces of Sales Advice You’ll Hear this Year by Wiley Cirelli
- How to Sell Enterprise Customers by Todd Vollmer
- Looking to Scale Your Sales: Seven Bullets to Dodge by
Deeper Dive:
- Aligning Strategy and Sales by Frank V. Cespedes
- To Sell is Human by Dan Pink
- The Sales Acceleration Formula by Mark Roberge
**Watch Death of a Salesman and Glengarry Glen Ross
Business/Partnership Development
Articles/videos:
- Partnerships for Startups Part 1 and Part 2 by Tom Tunguz
- Who Ya Gonna Call: A Tale of Two Announcements by John O’Farrell
- Startup Business Development 101 by Holger Luedorf
Building a Company Culture
Readings:
- How Dave Goldberg of SurveyMonkey Built a Billion $ Business and Still gets Home by 5:30 by Dave Goldberg (video)
- A Company that Profits as it Pampers Workers
- Unconscious Bias @ Work by Google Ventures (video)
- Culture by Reed Hastings
- Radical Candor by Kim Scott (video)
- Culture Eats Strategy for Breakfast by Bill Aulet
- Integrated Approaches to Constant Personal Learning, Improvement and Maturity by Josephine Wong, Daniel Szuc and Michael Davis-Burchat
Deep Dives:
- High Output Management by Andy Grove
- The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon by Brad Stone
Building a Strong Team
Readings:
- A Primer for Startups and Job Seekers to BOTH win the Talent War by Tammy Han
- How to Hire a Product Manager by Ken Norton
- Hiring a Designer: Hunting for the Unicorn by Braden Kowitz
- How Top Startups Pay Designers by Daniel Burka
- Hiring a Designer: How to Review Portfolios by Chad Thornton
- How to Operate by Keith Rabois (video)
- The New Science of Building Great Teams by Alex “Sandy” Pentland
Hiring Technical Talent
Readings:
- Why you can’t find a Technical Co-Founder by Elizabeth Yin
- Why you can’t find a Technical Co-Founder: Part II by Elizabeth Yin
- Moneyball Startup Recruiting by Victor Wong
- How Etsy Grew their Number of Female Engineers by Almost 500% in One Year by First Round Review (video)
- How to Hire a Developer
- http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/FieldGuidetoDevelopers.html
- http://blog.learningbyshipping.com/2015/04/07/hiring-your-first-product-manager/
Sourcing
Readings:
- Strategic Sourcing from Periphery to Core by Mark Gottfredson, Rudy Puryear, and Stephen Phillips
Fundraising
Readings:
- What I Wish I Knew Before Pitching LinkedIn to VCs by Reid Hoffman
- LinkedIn Pitch Deck by Reid Hoffman
- This Week in Venture Capital with Mark Suster (video)
- The “Too Rich to Succeed” Challenge Facing Startups by Knowledge@Wharton
- Moz’s $18 Million Venture Financing: Our Story, Metrics and Future by Rand Fishkin
- How to Bootstrap by Spencer Fry
- Fundraising Panel at Female Founders Conference 2014 by Y Combinator
- How Much Funding is Too Little? Too Much? by Marc Andreesen
- The Secret History of Silicon Valley by Steve Blank
Deep Dive:
- Venture Deals: Be Smarter than your Lawyer and Venture Capitalist by Brad Feld
- Mastering the VC Game by Jeffrey Bussgang
- The Business of Venture Capital: Insights from Leading Practitioners on the Art of Raising a Fund, Deal Structuring, Value Creation, and Exit Strategies by Mahendra Ramsinghani
- Raising Venture Capital for the Serious Entrepreneur by Dermot Berkery
- What Every Angel Investor Wants You to Know: An Insider Reveals How to Get Smart Funding for Your Billion Dollar Idea by Brian S. Cohen
When Things Go Wrong
Readings:
- ArsDigita: From Startup to Bust by Philip Greenspun
- The Psychological Price of Entrepreneurship by Jessica Bruder
- In 30 Days, My Startup will be Dead
- How Startups Should Die by Jason Freedman
- My Startup Failed and this is What it Feels Like by Nikki Durkin
- When Should I Sell or Shut Down My Startup? by Wilson Sonsini + Jason Calcanis
Deep Dive:
HBS Cases + Readings on Entrepreneurship and Lean Startup
- Dropbox: “It Just Works” by Thomas R. Eisenmann, Michael Pao and Lauren Barley
- Customer Discovery and Validation for Entrepreneurs by Frank V. Cespedes, Thomas Eisenmann and Steven G. Blank
- Customer Visits for Entrepreneurs by Frank Cespedes
- Aardvark by Thomas R. Eisenmann
- Rent the Runway by Thomas R. Eisenmann
*Having spent a good deal of time going through the canonical set of readings in entrepreneurship, I’ve recognized a distinct lack of female voices in the mix. All the more reason for me to stop procrastinating and start writing again. So expect to see some original material here soon!
