50 Best Hands On Resources For Startups & Entrepreneurs — Collected In 9 Years In More Than 4 Ventures
Here’s a list of resources to help you with fundraising, email pitches, startup and pitch decks, events, PR, user acquisition and many more things around “being a founder and wearing many hats”. The list is broad and will be updated at least once a month. I’m only adding resources I’ve tested or read and used in any of my current or previous ventures.
Some paragraphs include my very personal advises for moving from idea to company. This list is also part of my mentor job at Google Launchpad.
Another reason why I assembled this list are the startups I founded and co-founded: Compass.To and Kindlynow.com in New York, Holyo.com, Little Bird in Berlin (among many others). All these ventures are still in operation, most of them are profitable, some are VC backed, some made their own way to a break-even, following a bootstrap approach.
Back in 2002 I didn’t consider myself an entrepreneur. I was 24 and turned the company I founded when I was 17 into a legal entity. With all the hassle, pain, responsibility of having employees and renouncing my personal salery for many years. I wished that there was a list like this. A list I could browse through and learn from people who experienced equal challenges:
These are the resources to understand or solve your questions
- Run a Startup, be a Founder, and a great Co-Founder
- Fundraising — Angel, Seed, Series A
- Startup advice
- How to value your Startup
- Pitch — for Investors, Family, Friends, Employees
- Pitch decks, pitch decks, pitch decks
- Newsletter resources
- The podcasts you need
- Investor relationships
- Events to consider
- User acquisition (especially the first 20–1,000 Users)
- Customer segmentation
- Value Proposition Design (and why you need it)
- Lean startup tools
- Do it yourself
- Product testing, usability test frameworks
- Growth
- Team, podcasts and so on…
Founders.
7 Ways Founders Demonstrate They Can Run A Startup
relevant for: first time entrepreneurs and co-founders)
In my experience, there are many “hands-on” attributes that every entrepreneur must demonstrate if he or she hopes to succeed in building a new business. My first years at 2012 founded Compass.to were embossed by the ability to execute first ideas, adapt and pivot. And we haven’t done this well in the first place.
Although that list will never be finished, it’s a great way to reflect your personal character and attributes.
If I could add a 8th way: My advise for every single entrepreneur would be to teach yourself to become the best presenter this world has seen. And no, there’re no exceptions! You’ll need presentation skills — at every stage, no matter if you’re CEO, COO or, as I am, a CXO.
Founders Need To Become Storytellers And Future Language Users
(relevant for: early stage)
Chris Sacca, a Silicon Valley investor and founder of Lowercase Capital, can smell if a founder is worth an investment. Find his five most valuable advises here.
Ben Horrowitz Best Startup Advice: Don’t Follow Your Passion
(relevant for: over-estimating CEOs, founders)
“Don’t follow your passion. What you take out of the world… is much less important than what you put into the world. Follow your contribution instead. Find the thing you’re great at, put that into the world, contribute to others, help the world be better.”
Turning Problems Into Challenges
(relevant for: Early and Seed)
Sorry, there’s no link since it’s my own opinion.
It happens from time to time — in a Startup almost every week. Moments filled with issues and challenges that make you go boom and fire yourself from the chosen entrepreneurial world. Things like people who quit, heavy DDoS server attacks, finance issues and so on.
All these problems occur for just one reason — to work through them!
After almost 15 years as entrepreneur I smile when a problem/challenge occurs. It’s simply better to have this challenge now rather than in your Series A or B. It will simply make you a better founder and your team will salute you.
Coaching: This guy makes founders cry
In my past 15+ experience as a serial founder, I was this close to a nervous breakdown or total emotional lightning strike.
The mentors I collected and build relationships with over years helped me to overcome such experiences.
Nevertheless I can tell you that this is a normal behavior.
Read this story about coaching entrepreneurs, founders, makers.
Become Student And Then Master Of Everything You Don’t Know
In the past 18+ years of entrepreneurship I learned something about the things I don’t know: There’s no such thing!
Whenever there’s something that is critical to your success then start studying this topic to become master.
At Compass.to, I didn’t know anything about radio tech three years ago. Now I’m holding speeches, pioneering a new technology and Qualcomm sends us around the globe to mentor.
When we started Holyo.com, my co-founder and I had a vague idea about mCommerce and payment — in 2016 it became Europe’s fastest growing platform for digital goods and the fastest checkout process in the market.
Your Pitch.
It’s helpful to conceptualize “pitching”, i.e., delivering or presenting a business idea to an audience (typically comprising one or more investors), as involving three key stages or elements. It’s even more important to think through and concept all the stages. Once an investor is hooked, you need to have your assets in place. Otherwise you risk to lose time (equal losing the investor).
A great read is Josiah Humphrey’s Medium article “how to pitch your app”!
Yes, Investors Do Email Pitches Too. Six Strategies
(relevant for: Seed Stage, Startups with Buzz, Advice)
If you are in the mood to take money from investors and if you did well in your Seed or Series A, then there’s a chance that investors will be cold-emailing you. They just have to do the same thing at their end: Getting the most interesting startups out of their box and sign a deal.
Here are six strategies how investors might reach out to you.
I found this interesting because it helped me to understand each party.
Guide: How to Raise A Seed Round
(relevant for: unexperienced Seed Stager who haven’t raised a round yet)
You’ll need a little patience to read through this article but it’s worth it. It’s Y Combinators flow and very Silicon Valley like. In general, my experience was almost similar.
Legal Basics: How To Structure Seed Rounds
(relevant for: Seed Round, Legal)
If you do a Seed round at about $1 million, then read the comments carefully! A general advise from my end: Make sure to know what it means to get a “Convertible note with a 20% kicker for your early guys putting in $150k.” — if you have no glue, then read and learn this!
7 Okay Advices For Your VC Pitch
(relevant for: Seed Stage, Advise)
Running a startup is an intense experience. I’ve never been employed. For me, being entrepreneural, it’s my natural habitat. Therefore I think I can judge Martin Zwilling’s post on Venture Beat: 5 of these advices are okay. Don’t take them too serious! In general they provide you with a great running order for a pitch at an investor’s office.
The Simplicity Of A Pitch, “Berlin” As An Example (YouTube) And How To Practice
(relevant for: Early/Seed Stage)
If Berlin would be a startup, this would be their pitch to investors. It’s a great joke but it’s really that simple! Keep exactly this pace, flow and content structure when you pitch to investors.
Most important: Practice, practice, practice! Before my pitch got fluent, I practiced around 70–100x. In front of a mirror. However, after some months, I learned there are better ways to practice:
Instead use a video camera. It’s a much more “real-life” gauge of how you’re doing as a presenter. Whereas the “mirror practice” presents a “close up” that no audience will ever see, a video camera is a much better proxy for how the audience will actually see you. Reserve the mirror for a quick final check of your makeup, teeth, and wardrobe before you hit the stage.
Your Fundraising Visit To Silicon Alley
Danielle Morrill, CEO and cofounder of Mattermark, shared her insights of visiting venture capital firms in the Valley. Morrill laid out advice to founders, providing tips on everything from parking advice at Khosla Ventures and the best places to meet (and not to meet) with VCs, to the importance of having a pitch deck and being nice to executive assistants.
How To End A Pitch Meeting With Investors? What You Should Never Do
(relevant for: Early, Seed, Series A)
I found myself in a VC pitch situation for a venture in an early stage (where I’m an active shareholder), somewhere in London. If you receive a “we’ll have to pass on your venture.”, you should always be reminded, that there‘ll be other meetings. Maybe with the same group that is now telling you that they’re interested! Please pay attention to the comments. They’re awesome!
And if you ask me for an advice what not to do under every circumstance: Then it’s resisting to tell more. A mistake I made in 10 of 50 pitches (still). Read Founder Collective’s and Micah Rosenbloom’s post here.
Pitchdecks
The following represents the ten defining of the pitch decks examined:
Honestly? To create a pitch deck, you truly have to consider yourself being crazy, an artist, a genius and copy cat at the same time. Here’s how:
It’s Okay To Copy Airbnb’s Pitch Deck To Get Better
(relevant for: Angel, Seed, Series A)
This is how I started with upgrading my first pitch deck. I looked for examples and adapted the existing pitch deck about twelve times within two years. There’s also one thing for real: Your deck will never be finished. The minute you pitch or send this out to investors, you’ll have to changed the deck again.
Another lesson I learned: Never add a date to your deck. It will look outdated the minute an investor receives it or forwards it to their limited partners.
And here’s a startup called Applyifi from New Delhi that is creating and assessing your deck. I haven’t tried it yet. Please share if you did.
The Perfect Pitch Deck: VCs spend av. 3:44 reading them
They discovered that companies needed an average of 40 investor meetings and took a little over 12 weeks to close a round. Investors don’t look at pitch decks for very long — just an average of 3 minutes and 44 seconds.
These are the categories investors take a longer look at:
Why this is helpful? Well, we restructured the pitch deck we usually sent via email. It was a 6 minute read, Now it’s 3:35.
The full DocSend study can be found here.
Oh and Pitchenvy.com is another great pitchdeck gallery.
5 Minimalistic But Successful Pitchdeck Examples (Links Below)
(relevant for: Early, Seed Stage)
Airbnb’s Seed Stage pitchdeck
Buffer’s Seed Stage deck
BuzzFeed’s first deck from 2008
LinkedIn’s Series B deck form 2004
Square’s ugly but successful early deck
Front’s SaaS Deck for Series A
How To Create A Minimalistic Pitch Deck, By Guy Kawasaki
(relevant for: all stages)
Be careful, Guy Kawasaki’s approach works for Sillicon Valley startups and probably not for east cost startups. However, this is a collection of six tips about the art of pitching. It’s intended to help you evangelize your company to potential investors, employees, customers, and partners in the shortest and most effective way.
Winning Pitch Deck
(relevant for: early stage)
The tea behind BaseTemplates.com created a selection of pitch decks to work with. Here’s their approach in a “table of content”:
This helpful guide should walk you through the basics, introducing the concept of the pitch deck, its advantages and uses, as well as providing advice and support on planning, design, pitching and choosing investors.
Dear CEO, please spent 90% Of Your Time Working On A Deck!
(relevent for Early, Seed Rounds)
I‘m often asked how much time I spent working out investor decks. The truth is that I literally never stop working on a deck. I build a dozen decks for our portfolio companies and my own companies. Sometimes over a period of 3–4 months.
In other words, as Mathilde Collin from Frontapp.com just explained: “I spent 90% of my days working on the deck, gathering data, making projections and constantly iterating based on investor feedback.” Here’s her deck on Slideshare.
Addressing TAM, SAM, SOM With This Example
(relevant for Early Stage and PreSeed)
Estimates regarding the company’s addressable market are mandatory for almost all fundraising decks. Often times these numbers and the sources drift on the line of being simply incorrect, not specific enough or sometimes even fake news.
Christoph Janz outlined his approach to TAM, SAM and SOM with examples and a “comprehensible bottom-up TAM estimate”. Some advises like the “fake drama” in graphs shoud be carefully considered. The folks from Geckoboard helped with a “how to graph design” poster (free download).
Investors
Investor Relations: Status Via Email Every Two Weeks, Email Template
(relevant for: Seed to Series B)
About 70% of the startups I work with send monthly updates; 15% send updates less frequently (every 2–3 months or not at all). And this rings the alarm bell at every investor. I heard one saying that if there’s no newsletter, the trust falls to 20% per se.
Why You Have To Deal With Rejections…
(relevant for: All stages)
…Bryan Chesky from Airbnb.com had to do the same.
Cheat Sheet For Marketplace Startups
(relevant: Seed to Series A)
A lot of young founders I talk to express a desire for more clarity in what VCs and investors are looking for in exchange for putting money into a company, so it’s nice to see at least one no-nonsense representation of exactly that. Here’s the Google Sheet version of the link above — made by early-stage firm Version One and Point Nine Capital.
Podcast: From Seed Stage To Series A — What Investors Want To See
(relevant for: Angel, Seed stage)
There’s a lot of confusion among seed founders as to the right approach. This TWIST podcast by Jason Calacanis features Pear.vc partner Mar Hershenson as she gives an instructive talk about turning seed startups in series A companies.
She explains the importance of planing,, executing and iterating an Ops-plan, which metrics are predictors of success and why it’s effective to communicate with data.
Emailing Investors — How To Start A Conversation
(relevant for: Any stage)
As an angel investor, I often get email pitches. As a startup founder, I often have to write emails. And I always try to master both worlds. Here’s my personal playbook how to deal with the conversations:
1. Dating: Treat every investor (and founder) as if you’d date a shy person, someone you have to win to believe to go for lunch or have coffee with you.
2. Conversation: Don’t start with the dating process. Start with a conversation first.
3. Keep it short: Try to find out if your startup is within the investor’s field of expertise or interest. My first email (if it’s a cold email outreach) is not longer than 80–90 words (or 460 characters). remember, it’s an intro to start a conversation.
4. Founder email introduction: Shaun Abrahamson dropped a great Medium post about the “norms around interactions and conversations” — with great examples for founder intro emails to connect you with their investors/contacts.
5. Double opt-in and reputation: If you ask someone for the favor to introduce you to an investor, make sure, he/she got the okay to introduce you. Second, remind yourself that you’re ruining someone’s reputation if you don’t show up to the meeting. I personally keep track of who is giving bad intros.
Revenue
Revenue is Not Revenue is Not Revenue. Question investors ask and things you should consider when working on your revenue stream: Is it one product line or multiple? Do 20% of your users make 80% of the revenue or do the top 3 customers represent 80% of the revenue? (This is called “revenue concentration” and the more concentrated your revenue the higher the risk that your revenue could decline in the future.).
Is the revenue dependent on a concentrated set of distribution partners or platforms that put future revenue at risk? etc.
Look at the following graph. You’ll notice that although both companies have the same revenue every year, Company 1 has much higher gross margins than Company 2 because the cost of sales (COGS) is much lower.
Read the rest of the story at “Both Sides Of The Table”.
Fred Wilson’s View On Profit Vs Growth In A Startup
(relevant for: Any Stage)
It’s more relevant for fundraising these days than it ever was.
Mr Wilson does not get tired of sharing his views on the startup world, especially anything about unicorns and revenue.
What I learned form following him on Twitter and his blog was that when he puts out a thought, this thought is mostly connected to one of his portfolio companies. Revenue or profit — what’s your goal?
Measuring: Saas Metrics 2.0
(relevant for: Series A)
In the latest Google Launchpad I was asked what investors want to see in software-eat-world kind of startups, aka SaaS models.
ForEntrepreneurs.com made a great contribution about the very typical an achievable metrics (link in headline). The same article also hosts a downloadable Excel spreadsheet.
The Hubspot metrics, recently posted in Forbes, are a great and healthy example of how software should be measured and that entrepreneurs should “prize customer experience above all else”.
Valuation
How To Valuate Your Startup
(relevant for: Angel and Seed)
When it comes to valuations, me and my co-founder had a hard time at Little Bird, a child care software and market leader in Europe. The questions came in every form at almost every time when we met with investors:
What is an unreleased or even far developed technology worth? What if there’s pre-revenue but this revenue is not repeatable because it’s coming from another companies R&D department? There are many „whats“ and „ifs“. These two resources helped to understand valuation.
One advice: the gazillion valuations you hear about on TechCrunch and Business Insider are exceptions. Very rare. So unless you’re not working with Google’s ex-execs on a killer technology that will disrupt payment, you’re unlikely in the gazillion ballpark. Early stage startup (before doing a seed round) is expected to be valued at $3–5MN.
Valley veteran Peter Thiel is following a more simple valuation math.
Customers & Users — Your First 100
Moments — A Customer Segmentation By Google
(relevant for: every stage)
Consumer behavior and expectations have forever changed. It was always a tough work for us to segment our users here at Compass.to. Especially because we’re kind of a two sided startup with developers and mobile consumers as target group. The „Google Moments“ have helped me to understand and kickoff a process here.
Customer Development (by Steve Blank)
(relevant for: Seed Stage, Series A Founders)
Yes, you understood correctly. Also your early and ongoing userbase can be developed. Steve Blank’s Customer Development helped us at Compass.to to find our first users base. It’s a mess to digg through but it’s worth it!
Here’s another presentation on Slideshare to get an early overview.
BetaList Is Good To Acquire Your First 20 Users
(relevant for: very early, Angel Stage)
So put your startup on this list. Don’t pay, it’s not worth it (we posted Compass.to beta in summer 2015 and gained 20 new subscribers).
How Startups Like Dropbox & Airbnb Acquired Their First Users
(relevent for: Early Stages)
Dropbox created a waitlist, Foursquare went city-by-city, Quora asked and answered first 1000 questions by themselves, Groupon had a local MVP in just one area, Tinder had 50 users in one place and then 5,000 and Airbnb used another platform (Craigslist) to acquire its first users and spammed everyone with a home.
Hierarchy Of Engagement
(relevant for: Seed, Series A)
Think of user engagement as the fuel powering products. The best products take that fuel and propel the product (and with it, the company) forward.
This framework by Greylock’s Sarah Tavel helps you form a product roadmap — the essence of every young startup.
Growth Frameworks From Google, Facebook, Twitter
(relevant for: Series A)
Andy Johns gives insights about Wealthfront’s, Facebook’s and other startup’s growth formulas. Great source to learn and start structuring teams.
Product Testing, Usability
While co-founding several companies, I’m always doomed to run the first product developments before a full team kicks in. I’ve been learing valuable lessons from fails to successes. Here are the most important take aways when it comes to releasing your first or beta product.
I’m always asked when to test a product. Let’s assume you’ve got an app or hardware product. When is the best time to test this? Well, the answer is simpler than thought: Test earlier than you initially think! People and especially the Product Owners tend to relaease an almost perfect product. WRONG! I’m trying to get out the product the minute ONE specific and main use case is fulfilled. Don’t worry about the design. The use case is important.
Here’s a good resource from Becca Selah about when to test a product/idea and how to build a rough framework for Product Usability Testing.
Growth
Dropbox’ Global Expansion Plan & Strategy
(relevant for: Series A, Growth Stage)
This Playbook of Dropbox’ expansion plans helped me to understand and foresee next strategic steps. It’s probably not relevant for a Seed stage but it gives insights how a plan should be developed and what investors need to know. My take-away:
A lot of the early discussions we had at Dropbox about overall growth strategy were around an almost rhetorical question about what’s the number of users you could have by geography. At Dropbox we used some mix of broadband and mobile user numbers (publicly available data you can find online) to give us a rough sense of the opportunity in a given market.”
User Growth Calculation (and Templates)
(relevant for: Seed to Series A)
Daniel Clough posted a great article how to built a User Growth Model for their App (including an Excel growth template).
Media Relationships
The Media List Startups Are Looking For
(relevant for: Angel, Seed)
We just used this resource, which might come in handy as you pursue press coverage for your startup.
Please allow one advice: A press outreach is not the hardest thing to do. To test the waters you don’t need a PR agency in the first place. With some great spirit you can do the first „Hello World“ outreach on your own by pitching/emailing your first 20 media contacts. It’s never too early to learn.
Pitching To The Press (via TechDay)
(relevant for: Early & Seed)
I’m often asked by beta startups when to reach out to journalists.
There’s a simple rule: Don’t shout when you’re not ready. In contrast to raising early awareness with investors, reach out to jorunalists when your service is accessible.
I’ve often (pre)build a conversation stream with a journalist. Keep in mind that their early questions will be around “Why now?” and “Why is this important?”. Be prepared for a little conversation before the conversation. And don’t send them your pitch deck! Instead have some visual assets and a simple “About us” deck with 1–2 slides at hand.
Update: Count 1,5 days to prepare your assets.
Team
Founders, Write Better Offer Letter For Your Employees
(relevant for: Early, Seed, Serias A, Series B Stage Startups)
This is brilliant! We struggled with these offers a lot but thanks to David McQueen you’ll get a very solid overview what to offer as a compensation package.
Obviously some of the implications for UK or DE startups are slightly different because of tax and other legal considerations, but the transparency is saluted from here over the pond.
Lean Tools
Lean Startup Tools — 10% Are Useful
(relevant for: Early and Seed)
There’s an okay-post from Producthunt with a rated list of tools to help you grow your business, analyze users, host software, … We’re using less than 10% of these tools.
Just an advice: Teams at startups are always keen to test new startupish stuff. Keep this spirit going but try to build a bottom layer where to test such tools between 1–2 people before confusing entire teams.
Another list of resources can be found here.
Do It Yourself
Logo Designs
Want a quick logo to make your prototype and MVP stand out? Then use Free Logo Design to create a draft in a few minutes. But be aware, the logo won’t stand out.
The free version of Logo Makr lets you chose from thousands of stock icons and fonts. The paid service then provides assistance if needed.
My favorite platform to create a quick artwork but with professional designers is 99 Designs. Just post a job brief and let two to 10 designers pitch their ideas. I helped my portfolio company Ad Portable creating several new logos for their services in under a week. Basic fee is €259 and it’s defently worth the costs!
If you want to have more choices, here’s a post by The Mission overviewing 7 awesome logo platforms.
Startup Events
Yes, you can spend thousands of Dollars for Startup pitch competitions. Honestly, every founder who participated in such a competition, wasn’t satisfied with the results.
In general they are a good place to balance your expectations, compare yourself with others and practice the pitch. Especially practicing is one of the most important tasks most founders don’t value enough.
NOAH Conference London — If You Plan A Presence In Europe
(relevant for: from Seed to Growth)
It costs about $850 for a 2-day-event. You shouldn’t expect too much from your first time there. It just got useful to make connections and practice the pitch. They have a valuable Fundbook with all investors attending the event. Well, most investors. About 20% are only paying to be in the book but are not physically there.
There are events in London and Berlin. I’d recommend the one in the UK.
Collision Las Vegas If You Want To Learn
(relevant for: Angel, Seed, getting practice)
We’ve been on stage for pitching Compass.to to other startups and investors. Nevertheless I learned more from talking to other startups while exhibiting on the floor. It’s not recommended to pay for being just there.
Always try to pitch on stage! For us it was a bit awkward when they reached out and asked us to present there. We were just at the Mobile World Congress and finished our 140th industry presentation. They asked if we’d like to pitch via Skype. We agreed but learned that it was kind of an acquisition for paying $1,5K for their event. Finally we managed our presence their and pitched on stage. The outcome was under our expectation of meeting at least 1–2 serious investors.
New York Tech Meetup — not only for New Yorkers
Since my landing in NYC, I tried to make it to the NYTM. It’s simply the original of all tech meetups. And it’s in NYC! With an audience so fantastic, tech adopting and pleasing like no other crowd in the world (and I’ve seen a few). Grab your chance to present there. it’s not that hard to get a slot.
At Events: 25 Most Essential Public Speaking Tips
(relevant for: every stage!)
Your opening and closing are sometimes more essential than the speech at all. And it costs you a lot of time to craft these. This link will help — including how to manage fear and your body language.
On the go
Whether you’re a first time founder or serial, never stop learning and consider yourself a student of the global startup scene.
Podcasts help you to fill every minute with ideas, tips from other founders, insights and how-tos.
Podcast: Jason Callacanis Podcast „TWIST“ Is Mostly Awesome
(relevant for: mostly Angel, Seed, sometimes Series A)
You’ll not fall in love with Jason’s podcast at the first sight. He’s an own character, like me a Brooklynite (but based in the Silicon Valley), a Robin Hood. And he has his own opinion, about nearly everything.
I always wonder if he does the podcast because he really likes to be interviewed. I was learning uncountable things from @Jason and his 1:1 with founders. My all time favorites are on iTunes are:
- News Round Table (always bold statements from interviewees)
- Ask Jason (very surprising and valuable Q&A)
- E627: Pinterest Growth Hacking
- E613: Andy Artz
- E797: latest VC funding path with Jenny Lefcourt (great rundown for VC talks)
Andreesson Horowitz — Podcasts about teams, investing, culture
(relevant for: the advanced startupper)
Not as helpful as TWIST but this series of podcasts on SoundCloud or iTunes give you a broad overview about team setups, veterans running startups, how to create culture in your startup environment…
My personal favorite shows:
Newsletters
The Newsletters You Should Subscribe To
Bonnie’s newsletter is one of a kind. She and her small team have a broad and sharp opinion about the things that matter in the Startup world. If you’re a New York based Startup, then join her investor breakfasts (and do the research prior the event). But don’t expect too much from „breakfast“.
Alley Watch provides great details about events in New York.
Great E-Mail Copies
I find myself often enough struggling with creating a great copy or email newsletter text. Whether it’s for subscribers, users or even investors.
Goodemailcopy.com is a wonderful slick website that helps you with that by collecting examples from great companies such as Airbnb or Trello. With the help of tags you can sort and browse through them.
If you have questions or need help, please reach out:
on Twitter: @StevNitz
per e-mail: steve@compass.to
