Startup Bookmarks

An active list of resources for building a better startup.

Get Started

• Get Inspired by Ira Glass
• All the startup advice you need to get started
• The ultimate cheat sheet to starting and running your own business
• What are good ideas and how to generate them
• Tools/Tactics to getting started:
  • How to name your startup
  • Silicon Valley 101
  • Panabee - Super useful service to find and register for domain names
  • Domain name generator
  • Incorporation and other tips
  • What do people use to get stuff done?
  • Confirm.io - Find available domains related to your keyword
  • How to Start a Startup | YC Class
  • step-by-step lessons, handcrafted by proven professionals
  • When in doubt, bootstrap
  • 300 free things
  • Code4Startup - learn how to build simple/useful things for your startup idea

Product

• Million Dollar Products
• The Obvious, the Easy, and the Possible
• The best lecture on creating & building product, Des Traynor
• Required reading for product designers
• How to be a great product leader
• Product Audit
• Collection of untold stories from product people
• Before your plan your product roadmap
• Lessons learned from scaling a product team
• Simple equation to figure out what to build next
• What good product leadership means
• Thoughtbot Playbook on Creating Products
• Product Inspirations
  • http://www.producthunt.com
  • http://betali.st

Fund Raising

• http://paulgraham.com/fr.html
• http://www.businessinsider.com/seed-round-pitch-deck-tempate-2013-8?op=1
• Pitch Decks for inspiration
  • http://www.businessinsider.com.au/contently-pitch-deck-2014-1
  • Mixpanel's pitch deck
• How to find the right angel investors
• To bootstrap or not?

User Research

*User research

Design

• http://firstround.com/article/The-Simple-Four-Step-Design-Process-for-Building-Product-Customers-Will-Love
• http://littlebigdetails.com
• http://goodui.org
• http://petithacks.com/
• http://emptystat.es/
• 52 Weeks of UX
• http://www.sitebuilderreport.com/websites-101/design-guides/where-the-best-designers-go-to-find-photos-and-graphics
• http://www.useronboard.com
• http://www.sitebuilderreport.com/blog/where-the-best-designers-go-to-find-photos-and-graphics
• Free logo builder from Squarespace
• Outdated UX patterns
• Landing pages inspirations
• Responsive Email Patterns
• Inspiration
  • http://usepanda.com
  • http://niice.co
  • http://app.itize.us
  • http://useyourinterface.com/
• Curated resources for everything design
• http://heydesigner.com/
• http://webfieldmanual.com
• Questions I ask when reviewing a design
• Stock photos that don't suck
• UI Names
• http://cssfontstack.com
• https://placeit.net
• http://www.gomoodboard.com/
• All bootstrap themes in one place
• Landing page inspirations

Usability Testing

• http://usabilityhub.com
• http://usertesting.com
• How to do a Product Critique
• Heuristic Evaluation

Development/Engineering

• Front-end development process from start to finish
• http://adamschwartz.co/magic-of-css/
• https://www.discovermeteor.com/blog/javascript-for-meteor
• https://medium.com/@riklomas/89fb47341c05
• http://ember.vicramon.com/introduction
• Tips for new startup CTOs
• Frontend Tools
  • Free responsive HTML5 templages
  • http://codyhouse.co/
  • Bootstrap Templates
    • Best Bootstrap templates
    • Free Bootstrap Themes & Templates
    • Tons of Bootstrap themes, etc
    • Bootstrap Zero
  • http://beta.caniuse.com/
  • http://builtwith.com
  • Responsive
    • http://www.responsinator.com
    • http://uinames.com
  • Find all APIs you need - http://apis.io/
• Scalable Web App on AWS
• Free Live Chat

Marketing

• Statup Marketing Template
• Product Hunt collection of products to grow your business or side project
• http://www.growtheverywhere.com/the-beginners-guide-to-becoming-a-full-stack-marketer/
• How Coin did a massively successful launch
• Content Marketing
• Copywriting:
  • http://blog.kissmetrics.com/power-of-mini-stories/
  • Welcome emails
  • How to fix bad landing page copy
• Referral programs
• Social Media:
  • https://buffer.io
  • http://twibble.io
• Email Marketing
  • http://reallygoodemails.com
  • https://www.sendwithus.com/resources/guide/
• T-shirt Marketing

Sales

• Sales Efficiency Benchmarks
• Ultimate enterprise startup sales guide

Growth

• http://blog.yesgraph.com/post/63562259689/first-1000
• http://www.slideshare.net/joshelman/josh-elman-threegrowthhacksgrowconf81413
• http://brianbalfour.com/post/63581380690/customer-acquisition
• https://gibbon.co/davidarnoux/growth-hacking-the-mindset-getting-started-tools-t
• How to think about net promoter score

Product Management

• https://medium.com/the-year-of-the-looking-glass/6c975dede146
• http://a16z.com/2014/04/16/shipping-is-a-feature-some-guiding-principals-for-people-that-build-things/
• Good Product Manager/Bad Product Manager
• How to not suck at managing products
• Taste and The Zen of GitHub
• A hitchhiker’s guide to product management

Company & Culture

• 10 rules for web startups
• http://www.slideshare.net/Bufferapp/buffer-culture-03
• http://www.paulgraham.com/growth.html
• http://justinkan.com/the-founders-guide-to-selling-your-company
• Five years, building a culture, and handing it off
• Momentum is everything in a startup

Team/Leadership

• http://fullstart.com/knowledge/15-baseline-tech-skills-every-entrepreneur
• Get the Most Out of Your Startup's Advisors
• 44 engineering management lessons
• Don't make these basic mistakes(http://us5.campaign-archive1.com/?u=ca6ae38471d227b05e07a47e9&id=03e5219bbe&e=d7f3f19e61)

Hiring

• How to hire and build a remote team
• Essay on qualities to look for in a senior technical engineer
• Startup Salary & Equity Compensation tool
• A system for startup compensation

Legal

• Hiring a Startup Lawyer

Personal

• http://andrewdumont.me/avoiding-burnout
• http://blog.bufferapp.com/are-you-too-tired-to-make-good-decisions-the-rise-of-decision-fatigue
• http://blog.bufferapp.com/10-of-the-most-controversial-productivity-tips-you-will-read-today
• http://blog.bufferapp.com/thinking-mistakes-8-common-mistakes-in-how-we-think-and-how-to-avoid-them

ABL - Always Be Learning

• http://codeschool.com
• http://nodeschool.io
• http://saasclub.com
• http://designcode.io
• Learn Sketch
• Gibbon - playlists for learning anything
• https://gorails.com/
• https://onemonth.com

Communities

• Design News
• Growth Hackers
• Inbound Marketing
• The best resources for learning iOS design and Xcode

Continued Education

• Must Listen Startup Podcasts