BUSINESS MODEL DESIGN: GENERAL ISSUES

• The book The Business Model Navigator by Gassmann et al. provides an overview of 55 generic business models

• Alex Osterwalder, coauthor of the book, Business Model Generation,which introduces the business model canvas widely used by entrepreneurs and describes several generic business models, lists eight questions you should ask about your business model

• My 10-part series on business model analysis covers a range of topics and overlaps with my course note on the topic

• Steve Blank on the definition of a business model

• Fred Wilson uses a parable about software for dentists to make the point that a startup must have a defensible proprietary competitive advantage

• In his book Zero to One, Peter Thiel stresses the importance of having a proprietary competitive advantage -- ideally one that yields a monopoly

• Fred Destin asks when early monetization is important to a tech startup, using Snapchat as an example; Greylock's Josh Elman on the same issue

• Ben Thompson (Stratechery blog), using Apple as an case study, concludes that Clay Christensen's theory of low-end disruption does not apply in consumer markets

• Entreprenuer/investor/advisor Brian Balfour on how the emergence of new distribution channels opens ecosystem niches for new ventures

• Steve Carpenter's TechCrunch teardown of generic web business models and key metrics for each.

• Tristan Kromer shows how to use a business model canvas based on "Puppies-as-a-Service" as an example

• In "The Anatomy of an Online Ad," Sim Simeonov describes, step by step, the role of different service providers in the delivery and tracking of online ads

 NETWORK EFFECTS

• With Tulane's Geoff Parker and BU's Marshall Van Alstyne, I've describedstrategy issues in two-sided markets

• I've written a blog post and course note that provide an introduction to platforms and network effects

• In another course note, I discuss conditions that lead to winner-take-all outcomes in networked markets

• With Andre Hagiu, I've analyzed strategies for staging user acquisition with a two-sided platform, that is, acquiring users on one side before targeting the other sided

• Chris Dixon post describing Geoffrey Moore's concept of the "bowling pin" strategy for solving the chicken-and-egg problem when mobilizing network users; Jitha on tactics for solving the chicken-and-eggproblem; Harvard Business School course note on how to mobilize networked businesses by Ben Edelman and Peter Coles; GrowthHackers.com case study by Everette Taylor on how Belly solved the network effect startup problem

• Sangeet Choudary's blog focuses on platforms and network effects, e.g., the impact of reverse network effects on social media

• Entrepreneur/angel investor Brian Balfour on solving the chicken-and-egg problem with network effects businesses

 PLATFORM STRATEGIES

• The book Platform Revolution, by Parker, Van Alstyne and Choudary, examines platform economics and strategies, as does Choudary's book Platform Scale; the book Matchmakers, by Evans and Schmalensee, covers similar topics, as does their book, The Catalyst Code.

• I've written about conditions under which rivals should share a new platform

• With Parker and Van Alstyne, I've studied when firms should open mature platforms and when they are vulnerable to platform envelopment, which entails one platform displacing another by leveraging bundling strategies

• Sangeet Choudary discusses how to manage startup growth strategies that piggyback upon an existing dominant platform, used by AirBnB, PayPal, etc.

• Mark Suster gives advice for startups with applications that face a substitution threat from in-house versions developed by big platforms

• Entrepreneur/investor Sim Simeonov expands upon the risk of platform dependency

FREEMIUM MODELS

• Dave Schappell, founder of TeachStreet, on challenges when transitioning from a free to paid model; MailChimp on their experience with this transition

• Nice summary of the freemium model by Spencer Fry, CEO of Carbonmade. For more, see Chris Anderson's book Free

• M. Wensing presents a taxonomy of different types of freemium offers

 ONLINE MARKETPLACE MODELS

• Jeremy Levin and Rafi Syed of Bessemer explain why "end-to-end" marketplaces that facilitate complete transactions (e.g., Airbnb) are displacing those that only provide listings (e.g., Craigslist).

• A white paper by VersionOne VC provides a comprehensive description of online marketplaces: types, key factors for success, metrics, etc.

• Willy Braun of the VC daphni describes metrics for marketplaces

• Tristan Pollack on mistakes made by marketplace startups; Josh Breinlinger of Jackson Square Ventures on the same topic

• Aaron Epstein on tactics for mobilizing marketplace users

• a16z GP/former OpenTable CEO Jeff Jordan discusses challenges confronting tech companies with a local focus and how successful "local heroes" manage to scale rapidly

• Kleiner Perkins EiR and former senior Google and eBay exec Stephanie Tilenius looks at key factors for success with curated consumer marketplaces such as Uber and RelayRides

• Author Sangeet Choudary also analyzes network mobilization challenges for services marketplaces, with focus on professional services.

• MuckerLab's William Hsu looks at how marketplaces create and capture value

• Julia Hanna explains my colleague Andrei Hagiu's research on the difference between multi-sided platforms and traditional retailers.

• Bill Gurley of Benchmark, David Beisel of NextView Ventures, and Seth Rothman of Greylock on key factors for success in building online marketplaces.

SAAS MODELS

• Matrix GP David Skok describes the "consumerization" of enterprise IT purchasing patters; provides an overview of key SaaS metrics; presents results of Pacific Crest's annual SaaS survey; analyzes key factors for success with the SaaS model; summarizes the SaaS business model; describes SaaS economics; interviews HubSpot VP-Sales Mark Roberge on SaaS sales best practices; and provides a link to a Bridge Group report on metrics and compensation data for SaaS inside sales.

• Redpoint VC Tomasz Tunguz writes regularly about SaaS businesses, e.g., he analyzes expense categories in publicly-traded SaaS companies; describes the fundamental unit of growth for SaaS businesses; asks how much SaaS companies should spend on customer acquisition; and examines sales efficiency

• Jason Lemkin of the SaaStr blog asks: What SaaS price point is too low to support an inside sales team? Lemkin describes how a SaaS startup at $10M in ARR is likely to allocate its first 100 employees by function. SaaStr lists its top 100 posts

• Jess Iandiorio of Drift explains how SaaS models are qualifying leads based on product engagement before initiating sales contact

• April Dunford explains how a SaaS startup evolves from founder to team selling.

• Dave Kellogg of Host Analytics provides an in-depth discussion of how to estimate and interpret Customer Acquisition Cost in a SaaS business

• Jason Cohen, founder of Smart Bear Software, probes methods forestimating attrition rates when calculating SaaS lifetime customer value and analyzes factors that can reduce profitability in SaaS businesses

• Lars Lofgren of KISSmetrics offers a primer on SaaS metrics

• Serial entrepreneur Ben Sesser analyzes the odds of building a successful SaaS startup

• KISSmetrics published analysis of SaaS operating metrics from OpenView Venture Partners

• Rishi Shah of Digioh on optimizing freemium pricing for SaaS; David Skok of Matrix Partners on why churn matters so much with SaaS models

• Dharmesh Shah of Hubspot lists 16 factors for success with a SaaS model; another post from Shah on the same topic

ENTERPRISE SOFTWARE MODELS

• David Barrett, founder/CEO of Expensify, examines new approaches that are disrupting sales and marketing in enterprise software

• Peter Levine of a16z describes the economics of open source software and speculates about why there will never be another Red Hat

• Upfront Ventures GP Mark Suster looks at the upside of pursuing early professional services revenue for an enterprise software company, then examines some of the risks of rely on such revenue

 ECOMMERCE MODELS

• Bonobos founder Andy Dunn describes challenges confronting ecommerce startups

• First Round Review interviews Julie Grace, head of engineering for Tindie, on product features that improve ecommerce site performance

• Josh Hannah on challenges with scaling commerce startups

• Katie Bolin of Spark Capital on attributes of successful ecommerce startups

• Kara Nortman of the VC firm Upfront describes the evolution of ecommerce models

• Jeff Jordan asks, "So, You Want to Compete Against Amazon?" and examines trends online/offline sales ratios for different retail segments

• Atlas GP Fred Destin looks at key success factors in ecommerce

• Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures on revenue models for online commerce sites

 ON-DEMAND MODELS

• Semil Shah on challenges confronting startups that provide on-demand services

 HARDWARE MODELS

• a16z GP and serial entrepreneur Chris Dixon discusses challenges/opportunities with tech hardware startups

• Ben Einstein of Bolt addresses misperceptions about challenges with hardware startups

 FLAWED BUSINESS MODELS

• Andrew Chen on problems with online dating

• Nadav Gur on problems with travel planning sites

• Pascal Bouvier on reasons why fin tech startups fail

LEAN STARTUP OVERVIEW

• Eric Ries explains lean startup principles in his book, The Lean Startup,and in a series of blog posts, e.g., on the minimum viable product concept, when to release your first product, the use of Toyota-style "five whys," the value of split test experiments, how to manage a business model transition, macro vs. micro testing in lean startups, and the merits of continuous deployment

• Steve Blank lays the foundation for lean startup principles in his book, Four Steps to the Epiphany, which presents the why and how of customer development processes; Blank's blog posts amplify these ideas, e.g., why you need to get out of the building to interview users, attributes of a scalable startup, the definition of a business model, and why startups should track progress with hypothesis validation, not traditional accounting metrics. Blank's Harvard Business Review article "Why the Lean Startup Changes Everything" provides an overview of lean startup logic.

• My course note, co-authored with Ries and Sarah Dillard, reviews the basics of hypothesis-driven entrepreneurship, including psychological barriers to following lean startup discipline

• The book Getting to Plan B by John Mullins (London Business School) and Randy Komisar (Kleiner Perkins) explains why and how entrepreneurs should pivot

• Laura Klein's book, UX for Lean Startups, provides an overview of user-centered design research techniques for validating demand in early-stage tech startups

• The book Running Lean, by entrepreneur Ash Maurya, summarizes lean startup/customer development principles and adapts Alex Osterwalder's business model canvas to web startups

• Brant Cooper and Patrick Vlaskovits describe customer development and lean startup methods in their books, The Lean Entrepreneur and The Entrepreneur's Guide to Customer Development

• Donald Reinertsen is a consultant and author of Principles of Product Development Flow. The book is dense and theoretical, but patient readers will learn a lot about the economic benefits of fast development cycles

 SKEPTICAL VIEWS 

• Informly founder Dan Norris offers a skeptical view of demand validation techniques and argues that reliable MVPs are difficult to execute

• The case against releasing early/often from Jason Cohen at OnStartups.com

• Dharmesh Shah on why early evidence is often too early and not really evidence

• Ben Horowitz of Andreessen Horowitz on the lean vs. "fat" startup tradeoffs and the elusive nature of product-market fit

• Glenn Kelman of Redfin on how running lean without deep product conviction can lead entrepreneurs to pivot too quickly and build mediocre products

• Mark Suster of GRP Partners on the wisdom (and ethics) of failing fast

 PRODUCT-MARKET FIT

• The blog post from Marc Andreessen that coined the term product-market fit

• Andrew Chen unpacks the concept of product-market fit

• Growth guru Brian Balfour on indicators of product-market fit

• William Mougayar on why achieving product-market fit should be viewed as a gradual process, not a single event

 MINIMUM VIABLE PRODUCTS/VALIDATION METHODS: CONCEPTS AND EXAMPLES

• My favorite post on the MVP concept, from Steve Blank: "An MVP Is Not a Cheaper Product, It's About Smart Learning"

• Michael Woloszynowicz on misperceptions about minimum viable products

• Eric Ries on using letters of intent to get feedback on a minimal viable product

• Tristan Kromer on the differences between concierge and "Wizard of Oz" MVPs

• David Aycan of IDEO on the value of prototyping multiple MVPs in parallel

• A step-by-step example from Aymeric Guarat-Apelli of "smoke testing," i.e., assessing the viability of a new business concept by measuring consumer response to ads for a dummy site

• Entrepreneur Graeham Douglas on lean techniques for rapid prototyping of physical products

• Vin Vacanti on how Yipit used a manual MVP to validate demand (i.e., by substituting humans for as-yet-unbuilt algorithms)

• Michael Herman, co-founder of Real Python, describes ways to use Kickstarter to validate demand for a new venture

 PIVOTING

• Tristan Kromer, co-founder of StartupSQUARE, develops a taxonomy of pivot types

 STAYING IN STEALTH MODE

• Elad Gil outlines the pros and cons of staying in stealth mode

METRICS/ANALYTICS

• The book Lean Analytics, by Alistair Croll and Ben Yoskovitz, provides a practical guide to applying lean startup analytics to different tech startup business models, and presents metric to track for each model, along with benchmarks for good performance

• Ben Yoskovitz of GoInstant on the value of focusing on "one metric that matters"

• Ash Maurya discusses metrics that guide action

 CASE STUDIES

• Case Study: The Nordstrom Innovation Lab, by Eric Ries. Watch the second video, which shows how a design team used customer feedback on MVP prototypes to rapidly refine a concept for an i-Pad app for sunglasses purchasers

• A video from one of Eric Ries's annual Lean Startup Conferences of the founder of Chef's Table discussing their pivots and hypothesis tests winner, Chef's Table. Many other case studies are captured in LSC videos

• Vin Vacanti on excuses that kept Yipit from launching early.

 LEAN STARTUP LOGIC: APPLICABILITY IN BIG COMPANIES

• Ries's 2nd book, The Leader's Guide (available through Kickstarter), discusses how to apply lean startup methods in large organizations

• Max Wessell and James Allworth of the HBS Forum for Growth and Innovation consider the applicability of lean startup methods in big companies

PRODUCT DESIGN PRINCIPLES

• Don't Make me Think by Steve Krug: this book provides a short introduction to UI design for web applications

• The book Hooked by Nir Eyal describes how to design "habit-forming" products

• My deck on UX design principles from my Product Management 101 course

• Jasper Liu summarizes variations of the Design Council's "Double Diamond" Design Model, which prescribes sequential cycles of problem finding and solution finding, each starting with divergent thinking and concluding with convergent thinking. This model, in my view, represents a synthesis of Design Thinking and the Lean Startup method, with DT covering problem finding and the divergent first half of solution finding, and LS providing the convergent second half. Steve Blank offers a contrary view, asserting that Lean Startup's customer development process differs from Design Thinking in that CD leads with a founder's product vision, whereas DT leads with an effort to identify unmet customer needs.

• Stop Worrying About the Cupholders and F***ing Ship It Already by Laura Klein

• 25 Principles of Mobile Site Design by Google's Multi-Screen Resources unit

• The Dribbblisation of Design is a critique of an overemphasis on visual design by Paul Adams

• Joshua Porter of Bokardo presents 19 principles of UI design and 18 principles of product design

• Mikael Cho on design tradeoffs between authenticity and elegance

• Facebook designer David Gillis on the role of emotion and logic in product design

• Facebook's Julie Zhuo on five common design mistakes

• Phil Sharp of UserTesting.com recounts lessons learned from 100,000 usability studies

• Userium's usability checklist

• 23 Questions for Early UI Design, a checklist from my Product Management 101 course

• 75 UI ideas from GoodUI.org

• Ten Usability Heuristics for User Interface Design - Jakob Nielsen

• Legendary designer Dieter Rams's ten principles for good design

• Joshua Porter lists principles of good UI design and product design

• ex-Microsoft executive Steven Sinofsky on design choices that reduce friction for users

• Designing for iOS and Android Design Principles; SC Moatti on mobile app design imperatives

• 6 Tips for Building Coherent Site Navigation by Ben Barden

• Irene Au of Khosla Ventures on the attributes of great design

• Erik Kennedy offers some principles of visual design; Chloe Mason Gray recommends resources for mastering some visual design basics, e.g., color and font choices

• Timothy Smith on the importance of consistency in design

• Sam Goertler on why Asana's redesign succeeded

• Design Explosions compares design choices behind Google Maps and Apple Maps

 RESOURCES DISCUSSING MULTIPLE UX RESEARCH TECHNIQUES

• The book Sprint by Google Ventures' Jake Knapp, Johan Zeratsky and Braden Kowitz explains how to run a five-day product design sprint

• Observing the User Experience: A Practitioner's Guide to User Research, by Elizabeth Goodman et al. This excellent book devotes a "how to" chapter to every customer research technique used by product designers and product managers

• My summary deck on early customer discovery research from my course, Product Management 101

• Customer Discovery and Validation for Entrepreneurs is an HBS course note by Frank Cespedes, Steve Blank and Tom Eisenmann that reviews basic principles of early product/market research and offers practical guidance on how to apply several research techniques, including surveys, focus groups, and usability research ($7 at HBS Publishing store -- sorry -- but free to current HBS MBA students via Baker Library)

• UX Booth provides a introduction to UX research techniques

• Ten Tools for Design Thinking by UVA Darden School's Jeanne Liedtka provides an overview of research techniques for user-centered design

• Terrific collection of "How to/Why to" articles on many aspects of user-centered design by Google Ventures' John Zeratsky

• How Startups Can Learn More by Building Less by Braden Kowitz

• Seven tools for web design research from Six Revisions

• Five UX Research Pitfalls - Elaine Wherry

PERSONAS

• Joshua Porter on personas and how to use them

• A Perfect Use for Personas by Laura Klein

 CUSTOMER DISCOVERY INTERVIEWING

• Rob Fitzpatrick's book, The Mom Test, provides practical guidance on how to avoid biased interviews

• Lean Customer Development by Cindy Alvarez. This book does a great job of explaining how to conduct customer discovery interviews and also discusses how/when/why to use MVPs

• Cindy Alvarez on applying customer development techniques with different types of customers; on how to cope with the fact that research respondents' answer to "Do you want...?" is always "Yes!"; and "10 Things I've Learned" about customer development

• Customer Visits for Entrepreneurs, an HBS course note by Frank Cespedes that offers guidance on how to conduct customer discovery interviews

• My deck on Early Customer Research from my Product Management 101 course

• How to Structure Customer Development Interviews by Jason Evanish; Evanish outlines ways to recruit customer development interviewees

• How to Find and Interview Potential Customers by Elizabeth Yin

• 12 Tips for Early Customer Development Interviews by Giff Constable

• Justin Wilcox on interviewing potential customers to understand their needs; Whitney Hess on the same topic

 ETHNOGRAPHY 

• Ben Yoskovitz describes how and why to use the "day in a customer's life" technique

• The Power of Observation: How More Companies Can Have 'Aha' Moments by Ellen Isaac, discusses ethnographic research techniques

 SURVEY RESEARCH 

• Survey Monkey White Paper on Survey Design

• You Shouldn't Use a Survey If… by Cindy Alvarez

• Customer Interview Questions by Liffft. This post debugs a bunch of badly-worded survey questions

• Improve Your Startup's Surveys and Get Even Better Data by Elizabeth Farrell-Nunge

• Using Surveys to Validate Key Startup Decisions by Brent Chudoba

• Doing Market Research with Google's Keyword Tool by Andrew Chen

 PROTOTYPING/WIREFRAMING

• John Willshire on when to use low vs. high fidelity prototypes

• Ultimate Guide to Website Wireframing by Cameron Chapman

• Legend's Nathan Barry offers tips on wireframing

• A primer from Six Revisions on wireframing

 SPLIT TESTING PRODUCT FEATURES

• Design firm slicedbread on when to use A/B testing vs. qualitative user research

• Eric Ries on the value of split test experiments and on macro vs. micro split testing in lean startups

 USABILITY RESEARCH

• Steve Krug's book Rocket Surgery Made Easy is a short, practical, and funny guide to the basics of usability research

• My deck on usability testing from my Product Management 101 course

• Jakob Nielsen, Usability 101

• Nielsen Norman Group, Turn User Goals into Task Scenarios for Usability Testing

• Christine Perfetti, Usability Tests in a Nutshell, Part 3: Creating Tasks

• Steve Krug, Usability Test Script

• Kara Pernice, Talking with Participants During a Usability Test

• Jared Spool, Three Questions You Shouldn't Ask During User Research

• Tania Lang, Eight Lessons in Mobile Usability Testing

• Cindy Alvarez on what you will/won't learn from usability testing.

• Designer Whitney Hess on how to conduct usability research interviews.

• Creating Passionate Users blog on managing expectations and securing useful feedback with a product demo

• Laura Klein on how/when to use prototypes: "usable does not necessarily mean useful"

• Tiny Tests: User Research You Can Do NOW! by Laura Klein describes some easy usability research techniques

• Knapp on how to run an effective design critique

• UsabilityNet.org, Performance Testing

• Cole Derochie, Unbounce, Measure Twice, Cut Once: Introducing User Testing into Our Design Process

• Janice Redish, Six Steps to Ensure a Successful Usability Test

• Interview with Rolf Molich, Usability Testing Best Practices

• Will Schroeder, Observing What Didn't Happen

DESIGN CRITIQUES

• Jaclyn Perrone on design critiques at Pivotal Labs

• 9 Rules for Running a Productive Design Critique, by Jake Knapp, focuses on internal presentations on product work in progress

• Facebook's Julie Zhuo on how to present designs

• Scott Berkun on how to run a design critique

ONBOARDING DESIGN CHALLENGES

• Scott Belsky on how to onboard new users

• Onboarding New Users is Harder Than You Think, by Nate Munger

• UserOnboard.com teardowns, by Samuel Hulick; Hulick offers guidelines for onboarding and explains why onboarding should start with a story; Hulick interviewed by Des Traynor; Hulick interviews 37signals' Ryan Singer

• User Onboarding Academy, by Jackson Noel; Noel explains why good onboarding is important and explains when early stage entrepreneurs can defer onboarding improvements

• Seven Onboarding Mistakes You Don't Want to Make by Bayram Annako

• Jacek Blaut presents 21 activation hacks

RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN DESIGN, PRODUCT AND ENGINEERING

• Three-part series by Facebook's Julie Zhuo's explains what designers, PMs and engineers should know about each others' priorities: How to Work with PMs: A Cheat Sheet for Designers; How to Work with Designers: A Cheat Sheet for Engineers and PMs (see also Don't Say This to a Designer by Juhi Chitra); and How to Work with Engineers: A Cheat Sheet for Designers

UX DESIGN FOR STARTUPS

• Designing for Startups by Andrew Maier

• How Should a Startup Evaluate Design? by John Long

• Laura Klein on how to sell UX research to colleagues; differences between UX and UI design; and how MVPs relate to edge cases

UX DESIGN/DESIGN THINKING BASICS

• Startups, This is How Design Works by Hack Design is a primer on design in multiple lessons

• Some books that cover the process of assessing customer needs early in the product development process:

  • The Inmates are Running the Asylum by Alan Cooper ("The Father of Visual Basic") makes the case for interaction designers playing a pivotal role in tech product development.

  • The Design of Everyday Things by Donald Norman

  • The Art of Innovation by Tom Kelley: Describes the design thinking processes employed at IDEO

  • UX for Lean Startups: Faster, Smarter User Experience Research and Design, by Laura Klein

• Required Reading for Product Designers, a great collection of links from Robert Lenne

• Hacker News thread on how to learn design basics

MARKETING FUNDAMENTALS

• The Old Testament: Geoffrey Moore’s Crossing the Chasm and Inside the Tornado

• The New Testament: Steve Blank's Four Steps to the Epiphany

• The book Traction, by Weinberg and Mares, is a terrific, practical guide to early stage startup marketing, offering a chapter on each of 19 customer acquisition methods

• Summary presentation on startup marketing from my course, Product Management 101

• Rob Go of NextView Ventures succinctly summarizes marketing fundamentals and their relevance for startups

• Paul Graham: Do Things that Don't Scale

• Wealthfront CEO Adam Nash on when to use each of the five sources of traffic for user acquisition: organic, email, SEO, SEM, and social

• HubSpot co-founder and CTO Dharmesh Shah offers tactical tips for pre-seed startup marketing; Dan Shipper on how to get your first ten customers

• Simon Schmid on some foundations of effective marketing campaigns

• Dozen Digital provides checklists for good execution of most customer acquisition methods

• William Mougayar covers the what/why/how of positioning; Andy Raskin on the same topic; ex-Netflix product lead Gib Biddle on the same topic

• Orbit Media's Andy Crestodina on how to build trust in an online business; Brandon Redlinger on the same topic

• VC Mark Suster on the "underbelly" of online marketing: startups' use of spammy or non-scalable tactics to drive the appearance of traction

• Saar Gur on why most startups fail at customer acquisition

• Brian Balfour on how to build customer acquisition skills and on testing user acquisition methods and how to choose your lead customer acquisition channel

• Andrew Chen contrasts marketing methods that do and do not scale

• Blake Masters' summary of Peter Thiel's Stanford CS183 lecture ondistribution, marketing and sales

• HubSpot's Marketing Hubs collect a wealth of resources and articles on online marketing

• Fred Wilson and Mark Suster each offer general advice on startup marketing

• Jay Soriano offers a compilation of posts on startup marketing

• VentureHarbour provides a comprehensive guide to startup marketing

• David Skok of Matrix Partners on adapting marketing and sales tactics to stages of the customer buying cycle

• Renee Warren of Onboardly offers comprehensive coverage of marketing basics in KISSmetrics' "Ultimate Guide to Startup Marketing"

• Presentation on startup marketing by Highland Capital's Michael Gaiss. See links to SEO/SEM online resources on slide 33

MARKETING ANALYTICS AND METRICS

• Alistair Croll and Benjamin Yoskovitz published Lean Analytics, a book which reviews key performance metrics for various tech startup business models

• Dave McClure's classic "Startup Metrics for Pirates" -- the AAARR!! framework; Edith Yeung adapts the framework for mobile apps

• Avinash Kaushik, analytics evangelist for Google, is the author of theOccam's Razor blog and Web Analytics 2.0, a book that provides comprehensive and practical guide to startup marketing analytics;Kaushik presents a comprehensive marketing analytics framework; describes why and how marketers should use controlled experiments; and provides a guide to Google Analytics

• Measure What Matters Most, white paper by Neil Hoyne, discusses the problem of attribution when customer acquisition is influenced by multiple marketing messages through different channels

• A post I wrote on LTV/CAC analysis; Rajiv Dham and Nino Marakovic on the same topic

• Andrew Chen on how/why to use net promoter score; Brennan Topley on the same topic

• Nikos Kaliagkopoulos on cohort analysis; Nicholas Wittenborn on the same topic

• Dan Wolch on activation measures and why growth teams track them

• Rand Fishkin, CEO of SEOmoz, on how to set up a new site for analytics; Ben Porterfield on why/how to use analytics

• Onboardly's Shanelle Mullin offers a beginner's guide to startup marketing analytics; Kristi Hines on the same topic

• Six Revisions provides introductions to web analytics and Google Analytics

• David Skok on the need to balance average customer acquisition cost with lifetime value of a customer and on metrics-driven business model analysis

• Skok on how to calculate LTV; Erik Jorgenson on the same topic

• Mark Suster reflects on how and why startups should use metrics

• Ryan Battles examines key traction metrics for content, social media, email, and advertising

• Jeremy Liew of Lightspeed Venture Partners on how to calculate lifetime customer value with cohort analysis

GROWTH MARKETING

• Brian Balfour has written extensively on growth marketing, including these posts on building a growth machine; reasons why companies fail at growth; and recognizing product market fit

• Andrew McInnes on organizing a growth team; GrowthHackers.com exchange on the same topic

• What is "Growth Hacking," Really? by Josh Elman Startup Marketing: A Guide to Growth Hacking, by Donald Donckers

• First Round Review interviews Eventbrite VP Growth Brian Rothenbergand Wealthfront VP Growth Andy Johns

• Qualaroo CEO Sean Ellis helped launch GrowthHackers.com, a community for exchanging articles and insights about accelerating tech startup customer acquisition. The site published several detailed case studies of demand generation efforts

• The concept of "growth hacking" is examined by Bronson Taylor and in an ebook by GrowthHacker.tv's Taylor and Neil Patel; Shanelle Mullin compiles early posts on growth hacking to define the discipline and dispel some myths about growth

• Mark Hayes's Growth Hacking Sourcebook provides a comprehensive overview of tactics, organized by AAARR objective

• Zach Bulygo provides a comprehensive list of resources for learning about growth marketing

CONVERSION RATE OPTIMIZATION, A/B TESTING

• Startup metrics discussed in this classic presentation by serial entrepreneur and angel investor Dave McClure, in which he describes his "AARRR" framework: acquisition, activation, retention, referral, revenue

• Dave King on using Optimizely for A/B testing

• Posts on A/B testing and conversion rate optimization by Oli Gardner; Gardner again and again; Dustin Sparks; Brian Dean; Craig Sullivan; Steven Walsh; Brad Tiller; Eric Sloan; Jason Davis; Greg Digneo; Samuel Hulick; Michael Zipursky; Pratik Dholakiya; Peep Laja;Stavros Korokithakis; Eric Sloan again; Gregory Ciotti; Zach Bulygo and Sean Work; Siddharth Deswal; and Robin Johnson

• KISSmetrics' Zach Bulygo presents 100 case studies of conversion rate optimization; Qualaroo offers a 12-chapter beginners' guide to conversion rate optimization

• Eric Siu offers tips for structuring A/B tests; Lance Kidwell on the same topic with specific application to landing pages

• Landing page critiques from Amanda Durepos and Oli Gardner

• Jen Havice presents a cautionary tale of a summer wasted as a beginner running A/B tests on a low-traffic website; Optimizely's Kyle Rush counters the myth that low traffic precludes A/B testing by early-stage startups; statistical significance calculator for A/B tesing from Jeff Pickhardt

• Sean Work of KISSmetrics and Zach Bulygo describe best practices ofhigh-converting websites

• Fred Wilson describes conversion metric targets for social media companies

• Presentation by Cindy Alvarez of KISSmetrics on conversion rate benchmarks for different types of web businesses (warning: big download). Data is from 2011, but probably still relevant for many segments

• Avinash Kaushik describes key metrics for small, medium-sized, and large ecommerce sites and offers three techniques for analyzing website conversion rates

• Cindy Alvarez on how to analyze reasons for low signup rates

• Design firm slicedbread on when to use A/B testing vs. qualitative user research

• Case study by Luke Wroblewski on how Twitter boosted sign-upsthrough gradual engagement

• Jason Cohen, founder of Smart Bear Software, on statistical significancein A/B testing

• David Skok on customer acquisition funnel optimization

• Josh Porter of HubSpot explains why A/B testing shouldn't be limited to small changes

• This infographic from FormStack (via Boston Innovation) analyzes the anatomy of a perfect landing page

• Comprehensive list of conversion rate optimization tactics from Brian Dean

VIRAL MARKETING

• A post I wrote on virality and network effects

• Adam Nash on virality coefficients

• Andrew Chen on viral loops

• Bustle.com founder/CEO Bryan Goldberg lists the 20 most viral startups of the decade and tracks their long-term performance

• Rahul Vohra of Rapportive on modeling viral growth.

• Mark Suster interviews Buzzfeed's Jon Steinberg, discussing strategies for building website virality

• Mashable on how startups build online communities

• Viral marketing analytics, including viral coefficients, explained by David Skok of Matrix Partners; Skok on the science behind viral marketing

• Vin Vacanti of Yipit on ways to drive virality

SEO

• Google SEO Starter Guide

SEM AND FACEBOOK ADVERTISING

• RavenTools on what to expect at the start of an AdWords campaign

• Avinash Kaushik on how to use Facebook advertising

• Google videos about SEM

EMAIL MARKETING

• Steve Macdonald on boosting conversion with email marketing

CONTENT MARKETING

• The book Inbound Marketing by HubSpot co-founders Brian Halligan and Dharmesh Shah offers advice on how to use Google, Facebook, Twitter, blogs, etc. to drive traffic to a website; presentation by Mike Volpe of HubSpot on this topic

• Drift's Dave Gerhardt offers lessons learned about content marketing

• How to Map Content to The Buyer's Journey, Julie Kukesh

• Posts on inbound/content marketing by entrepreneur Ross Simmondsand Henneke Duistermaat

• Content Marketing for Startups: A Blueprint to Get Started Right, Nextview Ventures

• Get Found Using Inbound Marketing, David Skok

SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING

• 7 Steps in Creating a Winning Social Media Marketing Strategy, Michael Petterson

• 42 Posts on Social Media Marketing Strategies, Jason Acidre

• 10 Tactics for Launching a Product Using Social Media, Joan Schneider

PR STRATEGY

• First Round Review interviews Facebook's Caryn Marooney, Square's Khobi Brooklyn, and Marked Point's Jennifer Hirsch

• Posts on effective PR tactics and trends in PR by Jennifer Jacobson;Vanessa Camones; Jess Champion; Conrad Egusa; Peter Kazanjy; Natalie Bartlett; Leo Widrich; and Katie Burke

• Brooke Hammerling of Brew Media Relations interviewed by First Round Review

• Mark Suster on why startups should not launch at major tech events like SXSW

• Susanna Gebauer of exploreB2B on managing PR

• Chris Dixon offers tips on interacting with the press

• Mark Suster on how startups should use PR

• Joel Spolsky and Charlie O'Donnell each discuss the pros and cons of launching at a conference like SXSW

• TechCrunch post on PR impact of SXSW launches of Twitter and Foursquare.

• Mark Suster of GRP Partners on how to manage relationships with journalists

• Serial entrepreneur Jason Calacanis on why you should fire your public relations firm

• TechCrunch's Michael Arrington on public relations in Silicon Valley.

• Xobni founder Matt Brezina on how to drive early traffic through PRstrategies. Be sure to follow link in post to slideshow.

• Erica Swallow offers 10 tips for managing startup PR

BRANDING/NAMING A STARTUP

• Kim Shandrow on logo design

• Cezary Pietrzak offers tips on naming a startup; Andrus Purde of Achoo on the same topic

• Mike Troiano offers startup branding tips

• Fred Wilson and Dharmesh Shah each offer advice on how to name a startup

• Rules for naming a web startup by SEOmoz.org

• Mashable post on naming your startup

• Calacanis on naming your startup; his podcast on the same topic

SAAS MARKETING

• A SaaS Marketing Plan for High Growth Companies by Matthew Buckley

MOBILE MARKETING

• Business development veteran Tamara Steffens on ways to drive app installs

• Tanuj Mendiratta on A/B testing for mobile commerce

• Andrew Chen on low retention rates for mobile apps

• Adam Nash on native apps vs. mobile web

• Post on marketing mobile apps by Matt Palmer; Alex Austin on the same topic

• John Koetsier shares pointers for marketing a mobile app

STARTUP SALES MANAGEMENT: GENERAL ISSUES

• The book, The Sales Acceleration Formula, by HBS colleague and former HubSpot head of sales Mark Roberge, provides a roadmap for startup sales management; Roberge on lessons learned at HubSpot

• Harvard Business Review article by Mark Leslie and Charles Holloway on the sales learning curve. Academics: note that Leslie, former founder/CEO of Veritas, has helped build a terrific case-based course on enterprise software sales management at Stanford Business School, STRAMGT 351.

• David Skok of Matrix Partners on building a sales and marketing machine;how sales complexity impacts customer acquisition cost -- and how to mitigate its impact; and customer buying cycles and triggers

• Upfront Ventures' Mark Suster on the importance of a Unique Selling Proposition, scaling a salesforce, tools/information required by a startup salesforce, on dangers that startups face when they rely on channel partners for sales, and what motivates salespeople

• Lina Vashurina on the buyer's journey and how to map content to it

• Tae Hea Nahm on organizing to serve key accounts

• Flybridge GP (and my HBS colleague) Jeff Bussgang on the challenge of scaling different types of sales models; John Doherty on the same topic

• Bussgang on the sales operations role

• Wiley Cerilli shares lessons learned about tech startup sales, as does Tres Griffin

• Google Ventures' Joe Kraus on how to match different types of salespeople to requirements at different stages of a startup's evolution

• Suster interviews Vince Thompson and Mo Ali, who discuss startup sales best practices.

• Steve Blank on how sales culture must change as an enterprise software startup matures and on customer development in big companies

ACCOUNT SELECTION AND MANAGEMENT

• Suster on how to shorten sales cycles; how to deal with large accounts' demands for product customization; how to find a champion to refine your product and sales process

• Entrepreneur Mark Birch examines conversion rates for different sources of sales leads

• David Skok discusses how to build trusted sales relationships

• Steve Blank on the challenges of closing a complex B2B sale with multiple decision influencers; Suster on the same topic.

• Brent Adamson et al. on how/why the best sales reps avoid "talkers"who superficially show enthusiasm but are unable/unwilling to mobilize organizational support for a purchase.

• a16z's Ben Horowitz on how the priorities of enterprise customers have evolved.

• Steve Blank on firing customers.

MANAGING CONFLICT WITH OTHER FUNCTIONS

• Steve Blank on the often contentious relationship between sales and marketing in startups.

• Michael Woloszynowicz on managing the risk of feature creep when sales offers input during the customer development process.

SALES SENIOR MANAGEMENT: WHO TO HIRE/WHEN TO HIRE THEM

• Jason Lemkin on how to hire a Sales VP, how to quickly assess a new Sales VP's performance and whether your VP Sales should start as a "player/coach"

• Bob Marsh, founder/CEO of LevelEleven, on the changing role of the sales manager

SALES REPS: HOW TO HIRE, MANAGE AND MOTIVATE THEM

• Ben Horowitz on hiring salespeople; Jason Lemkin on the same topic; Peter Kazanjy on the same topic

• Suster reflects on excuses offered by startup salespeople and discusses when to hire sales people in an early-stage startup and how to choose them.

• HubSpot co-founder and CTO Dharmesh Shah on building a sales team; HubSpot VP-Sales Mark Roberge on the how to use analytics to build a scalable sales team.

• Suster on why seasoned sales reps often don't work out

• Cespedes and Weinfurter on hiring sales reps

PERSONAL SELLING

• David Skok interviews Aaron Ross on why salespeople shouldn't prospect

• Whitney Sales on crafting a pitch based on a startup's origin story

• Entrepreneur/investor James Altucher offers advice on personal selling

• Suster on objection handling

• Software entrepreneur David Cummings on cold-call hit rates.

MANAGING INSIDE SALES

• HubSpot co-founder/CEO Brian Halligan on how to manage inbound sales; Scott Irwin on the same topic

• USC's Steve Martin on the growing importance of inside sales

• The Bridge Group's blog on inside sales

ENTERPRISE/SAAS SALES

• Work-Bench's enterprise sales guide

• Deva Hazarika on why SaaS sales plans fail

• David Skok interviews HubSpot VP-Sales Mark Roberge on SaaS sales best practices.

• Skok provides a link to a Bridge Group report on metrics and compensation data for SaaS inside sales.

INTRODUCTORY READINGS ON SALES MANAGEMENT AND PERSONAL SELLING 

• My HBS colleague Frank Cespedes has written extensively about the sales function. His work includes a new book, Aligning Strategy and Sales, and many articles, such as “How to Identify the Best Customers for Your Business” and “Teamwork for Today’s Selling.”

• Neil Rackham, SPIN Selling. SPIN stands for “Situation. Problem. Implication. Need-Payoff” -- a classic framework used in sales training. The book presents a practical, structured approach for selling complex products in settings with multiple decision makers.

• Philip Delves Broughton, The Art of the Sale. Broughton interviews successful salespeople around the world and synthesizes research on personal selling. He does a great job of exploring ethical issues and psychological pressures confronting sales people.

• Daniel H. Pink, To Sell Is Human. Describes how technology and other macro trends are changing the sales function and summarizes behavioral research on the attributes of successful sales people.

• Aaron Ross & Marylou Tyler, Predictable Revenue, provides a practical summary of best practices for personal selling and sales management based on Aaron's experience at Salesforce.com.

• A. Zoltners, P. Sinha, and G. Zoltners, The Complete Guide to Accelerating SalesForce Performance. A superb reference book that covers all the elements of sales management, including hiring, training, compensation design, territory assignments, quotas, etc.

• The research firm CSO Insights, run by former HP executives Jim Dickie and Barry Trailer (CSO = Chief Sales Officer), publishes frequent blog posts on a range of sales management topics.

ENTREPRENEURIAL FINANCE BASICS

• In their book Venture Deals, Brad Feld and Jason Mendelson offer a terrific, in-depth explanation of term sheets, funding strategy, VC motivations, etc.

• Jeff Bussgang of Flybridge Capital provides an overview of entrepreneurial finance and how venture capital works in his book, Mastering the VC Game

• The VentureHacks archives provide an excellent set of links to resources on fundraising and other startup management topics

• Steve Blank's amazing list of resources for entrepreneurs includes lots of links to advice on fundraising, cap table calculators, term sheet generators, etc. Scroll down to "Starting and Running a Startup Advice" about one-third of the way down the page

GENERAL FUNDRAISING ADVICE FOR ENTREPRENEURS

• DFJ VC Heidi Roizen shows how liquidation preferences can leave little on the table for founders and employees when a startup loses momentum and suffers a down round; Union Square Ventures Albert Wenger on the same theme

• Rob Go of NextViewVentures shares questions a founder might get from a savvy VC and explains what the VC is really looking for

• CB Insights presents the venture finance funnel, i.e., the fraction of companies that raise a subsequent round, starting with seed; NextView's Jay Acunzo shows how many VCs Series A aspirants need to pitch to get funded

• Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures on tradeoffs between valuation and % equity ownership, on working capital financing and on customer financing

• Eric Paley of Founder Collective describes how/why an investor's interest can fade

• Y Combinator's Paul Graham on fundraising and investor herd dynamics

• Mark Suster of Upfront Ventures offers a primer on fundraising, discusses what to watch out for when raising VC, describes the risks from setting valuation too high then subsequently suffering a down round, asks whether startups should announce their funding rounds, discusses the pros and cons of raising money from strategic investors and explains why entrepreneurs should try to close deals fast

• Suster on what to look for in a VC; Christoph Janz on the same topic; Kamal Hassan on how VCs can destroy value

• Yipit co-founder/CEO Vin Vicanti on lessons learned from raising Series A

• Steve Blank exhorts entrepreneurs to remember that fundraising is a means to an end, and to carefully consider when it makes sense to take outside capital

• Bonobos founder/CEO Andy Dunn points out venture capitalists' shortcomings in his "Dear Dumb VC" post

• Blake Masters' summary of Peter Thiel's Stanford CS183 lecture on the motives/methods of venture capitalists

• Chris Dixon of a16z on best practices for a VC round

• David Beisel of NextView Ventures discusses the importance of having VC partner buy-in for a Series A round

• Furqan Nazeeri's blog offers a wealth of insightful posts on fundraising

• Bussgang describes the VC due diligence process

• Fundraising tips from HubSpot co-founder/CTO Dharmesh Shah

SEED STAGE FUNDRAISING ADVICE

• YC's Geoff Ralston provides a primer on seed fundraising

• VC Gil Dibner on "the angel trap," i.e., raising just enough from angels to get started, but not enough to have confidence you can reach milestones need to raise the next round

• Chris Dixon on the right amount of seed capital to raise, shopping your term sheet, taking seed money from VCs, ideal first round terms, best practices for raising a seed round, and the signaling impact of seed round VC choices

• Advice for entrepreneurs in accelerators from NextView Venture's Rob Go

• Beisel on how to find and close angels; how to select investors in a seed VC syndicate; and the motives of different types of angel investors

• Bussgang on how to raise your first round

• Brad Feld on standardized seed financing documents

• BuysideFX co-founder/CEO Ty Danco reviews reasons why an angel will walk away from a funding opportunity

• Rob Go's flowchart of a seed VC's "Should I invest?" decision process; his analysis of whether team or traction is more important in deciding whether to make an early stage investment

• Roger Ehrenberg of IA Capital Partners on tradeoffs between VC and angel funding

• Zumper founder/CEO Anth Georgides offers tips for first-time entrepreneurs negotiating with VCs

• LinkedIn CEO Reid Hoffman’s criteria for making angel investments

• Dan Weinreb discusses the pros and cons of working with angel groups in seed rounds

• Danco and Dharmesh Shah give guidance on how to update angel investors

• Aaron Hall, founder/CEO of Boatbound, offers a primer for raising funds on AngelList

• Paul Graham on angel investors' motivations

HOW MUCH MONEY TO RAISE?

• Marc Andreessen on how much money to raise -- and how much is too much

• Fred Wilson discusses how much money a startup should raiseand target burn rates at different stages in a startup's life cycle

• Scripted.com cofounder Sunil Rajaraman created a tool to help entrepreneurs project their costs and determine how much capital to raise

TERM SHEET ISSUES

• Equity simulator from OwnYourVenture that calculates impact on % ownership by round of $ raised, size of option pool, etc.

• Wilson Sonsini term sheet generator

• Fred Wilson on how option pools impact startup valuation, ideal first round terms, negotiations with VCs over valuation, and typical dilution levels

• Term sheet tune-up tips from VentureHacks

• Rob Go on why VCs have a 20% equity ownership target

• Suster on super pro rata rights; Beisel on the same topic; Angel investor Dave Lerner on the same topic

• Suster discusses when investors in the same round should get different share prices

• Suster and Fred Wilson each discuss strategy for pricing follow-on rounds

CONVERTIBLE NOTES

• Brad Feld explains why pre-and post-money valuations often are confused with convertible notes

• David Hornik and Fred Wilson each discuss the pros and cons of convertible notes

• Attorney Scott Edward Walker offers a primer on convertible note terms; SaaStr's Jason Lemkin provides a similar overview

• Suster on the pros/cons of convertible debt; Dixon on the same topic

DESIGNING INVESTOR PITCHES

• The book, Get Backed, by entrepreneurs Baehr and Loomis, provides guidance on designing and delivering investor pitches

• I helped the team at DocSend analyze 200 startup pitch decks to identify best practices for deck design

• Jay Acunzo of NextView Ventures summarizes best practices gleaned from reviewing lots of decks

• Dashboard breaks down a startup pitch deck; Christopher Mirable does the same

• Bessemer's Dave Cowan on slides to include in a VC pitch deck

• Mayfield's Raj Kapoor on elements of a great pitch deck

• NextView Ventures offers different pitch deck templates and advice on when to use them

• Alex Iskold, MD of TechStars NYC describes the perfect pitch deck

• Iskold makes the case for replacing pitch decks with pitch videos; Mark Suster emphasizes the power of video and narrative for explaining your startup; Bill Gurley "In Defense of the Deck"

• Elizabeth Yin on the differences between and in-person and email pitch deck; NextView's Rob Go expands on how to structure email and in-person presentations

• John Greathouse makes the case for skipping a product demo in your pitch to VCs

• Kevin Hale shares the advice he gives to YC startups for designing pitch decks

• My post on designing pitch decks, which includes advice from Cloudflare co-founder Matthew Prince

• Robin Wauters/TechCrunch describes Adeo Ressi's one-sentence approach for pitching a startup

• Sim Simeonov offers guidance on what to include in executive summaries

• Brendan Baker on how to communicate traction to investors

DELIVERING INVESTOR PITCHES

• NextViewVentures' David Beisel on how to choose which GP to targetwhen pitching a VC firm

• A list of pitching resources from Adeo Ressi's Founder Institute

• Alex Taussig of Lightspeed on the importance of pitching yourself, not just your venture

• Seed VC Charlie O'Donnell on why you shouldn't email your pitch deck before a first meeting with a potential investor

• Reid Hoffman on what he wished he knew before pitching LinkedIn to VCs and his annotated LinkedIn pitch deck

• How to pitch VCs by Venrock’s David Pakman

• Mark Suster's primer on how to pitch to VCs and his thoughts on how/why to pitch to VCs without a deck

• Entrepreneur and startup mentor David Rose explains how to pitch a VC in this TED Talk

• Atlas VC Fred Destin on what not to disclose to a VC when raising money

• Paul Graham on how to convince investors

• Redfin CEO Glenn Kelman on best questions he was asked during fundraising

• Blake Masters' summary of Peter Thiel's Stanford CS183 lecture on how to pitch VCs

• Tips on pitching your firm from Jason Calacanis, Eric Ries, and Naval Ravikant of VentureHacks

• Andrew Fife offers guidance on designing and delivering elevator pitches

• Matt Rosoff summarizes a panel with five VCs describing best practices for pitching

• Jason Baptiste on best practices for demo day pitches; Jason Cooper on the downside of demo days

GENERAL PRESENTATION TIPS

• Media trainer Hans Rosling provides tips for presenters

• Andy Smith on attributes of great startup storytelling

• Andy Raskin on the elements of a compelling pitch; Jason Shellen on the same theme; Michael Wolfe on the same theme

• Mark Suster shares advice on what and how to present and shares practical presentation tips, e.g., where to position yourself at a table

PRODUCT DEMOS

• How to deliver a product demo, by Steli Efti; Robert Falcone on the same topic; Kathy Sierra on why your product demo should not look "done"

• Tami Reiss video on how to deliver a product demo

• Corey Pemberton on how to create a product demo video; Techsmith offers practical tips for creating a screencast; Derek Halpern on the same topic; Megan Marrs on how/why to create great explainer videos

• Brad Feld on how to do effective product demos

FINDING A TECHNICAL CO-FOUNDER

• Alter provides advice to technical founders seeking a non-technical co-founder and describes the three biggest mistakes entrepreneurs make when looking for a co-founder

• LaunchBit co-founder/CEO Elizabeth Yin on the challenge of finding a technical co-founder; part II of her post presents case studies of founding teams and how technical and non-technical founders came together

• Steve Blank on why founders should know how to code

• Joel Gascoigne of @buffer on why non-technical founders should not outsource development

• Miriam Naficy, founder of Minted.com on how to hire a startup CTO

• Charlie O'Donnell of First Round Capital on reasons for hiring a design lead before a CTO or technical co-founder

WORKING IN ALL REMOTE ENVIRONMENTS

• See the Remote Playbook from Gitlabs, one of the largest all-remote companies in tech - what works, what doesn’t and what you have to think about early if building an all-remote company.

WHY STARTUPS FAIL

• Tom Eisenmann’s book on “Why Startups Fail: A New Roadmap for Entrepreneurial Success”

• CB Insights compiles a list of startup post-mortems, including many first-person accounts

• My post on ego and entrepreneurial failure

• a16z's Ben Horowitz on the startup failure induced by the "Product CEO Paradox," i.e., an initially product-focused founder disengaging from the product

• Sim Simeonov has been periodically publishing posts on various root causes of startup failure, which he calls "anti-patterns"

• Leo Polovets examines common startup timing mistakes

• Entrepreneur Sumon Sadhu on seven signs of startup dysfunction

• Jessica Livingston of Y Combinator analyzes reasons why startups fail, as does Andrew Montalenti of Parse.ly, as does Seth Bannon

• Analysis by ChubbyBrain of the top 20 reasons for startup failure

• Paul Graham describes 18 mistakes that kill startups

• Marc Andreessen tweetstorm on ways to kill a late-stage, high growth startup

• SpinBrush inventor John Osher cites 17 mistakes that hurt startups

• Rid Empson/TechCrunch description of Startup Genome research on premature scaling as the leading cause of startup failure (scroll down for infographic)

• Quora thread on why startups fail

STARTUP FAILURE RATES

• Mattermark's Jason Rowley analyzes, by round, the percentage of startups that raise a subsequent round, and shows how failure rates vary by total amount raised for seed and Series A startups.

• Henry Blodget analyzes Y Combinator data to assess startup failure odds

WHEN TO QUIT/HOW TO FAIL/LEARNING FROM FAILURE

• Brad Feld argues that sometimes failure is your best option

• Fred Wilson describes two scenarios for VCs when things don't work out: slogging it out, and hitting the wall

• VC Charlie O'Donnell on what to do when your startup has stalled

• Paul Graham on the importance of understanding whether you are "default dead," i.e., how many more months you can operate without raising fresh capital; Graham on options for founders when cash is running low

• Vin Vacanti offers advice on when to shut down a startup

• Steve Blank riffs on the Kubler-Ross stages of grief model to describe an entrepreneur's likely emotional reactions to failure

• VC Guy Turner explores the ethics of startup failure

• Mark Suster on the wisdom/ethics of "failing fast"

• Jason Freedman offers tips on how to fail "elegantly," i.e., keeping one's reputation/relationships intact; Josh Maher on how to tell an investor that failure is likely

• Advice from Adi Hillel on learning/rebounding from entrepreneurial failure

• Andy Sparks on dealing with depression after a startup's failure

REFLECTIONS ON STARTUP RISKS AND KEY SUCCESS FACTORS

• Chris Dixon expands on Balaji Srinivasan's concept of the "idea maze" -- a metaphor for the choices a founder must make in the face of uncertainty and incomplete information

• Blake Masters' summary of Peter Thiel's Stanford CS183 lecture on the role of luck in startup success

• Paul Graham of Y Combinator on "black swan farming," i.e., coping with the facts that: 1) the vast majority of returns are concentrated in a few startups, and 2) the most successful startups often don't look very good at the outset

• Paul Graham of Y Combinator on why startup = growth, and a response from Mark Suster

• Graham on generating/coping with frighteningly ambitious startup ideas

• Graham explains three things you need in a successful startup; summarizes startups in 13 sentences and in this longer post; describes 18 mistakes that kill startups

• Marc Andreessen on team vs product vs market as key factors for startup success

• Steve Blank on the challenge of distinguishing between vision and hallucination in charting a startup's course

• Blank on why startups should avoid deliberations over "corner cases," i.e., potential problems with a very low probability

• Leo Polovets on how to parse the various risks confronting startups

• Jitha on how to avoid bad startup ideas that seem good

• Jason Cohen on startup problems that cannot be solved with money

THE FOUNDER'S ROLE: MOTIVATIONS, ATTRIBUTES, AND ATTITUDES REQUIRED FOR SUCCESS

• Investor David Tisch on the importance of "not losing sight of why," that is, of an entrepreneur keeping her motivations for launching a business in perspective

• Steve Blank on why entrepreneurs are like artists and how aspiring entrepreneurs can fail from lack of nerve

• Graham discusses the hardest lessons for entrepreneurs to learn

• Blake Masters' summary of Peter Thiel's Stanford CS183 lecture on "founder as victim, founder as god." Fascinating stuff!

• Graham on the importance of determination for entrepreneurs

• Graham on the different rhythms and mindsets of makers (product builders) vs. managers (business types)

• Eric Ries on money as a motivator for entrepreneurs

• Ries on what startup CEOs can learn from Steve Jobs

• Mark Suster on the importance of realism in startups

• Suster on the importance of tenacity and street smarts in entrepreneurship

• Jason Calacanis describes the personal attitudes and attributes required to succeed as an entrepreneur

• Marc Andreessen on why not to do a startup

• Union Square Ventures' Fred Wilson on benefits and costs of entrepreneurial bias for action

• Jordan Cooper: 35 attributes that entrepreneurs require

• 20 questions about motivations for would-be entrepreneurs from Seth Kravitz in response to Dan Isenberg's 20-question list

• Klinger of LOOKK on why founders prefer to keep doing things in their comfort zones

• Furqan Nazeeri on startup ethics

• Fred Wilson on the strengths and weakness of 1st-time vs. serial entrepreneurs; VC Rob Go on why second-time founders may face a sophomore slump

• Horowitz on why he prefers to invest in founder-CEOs

GENERAL ADVICE FOR FOUNDERS

• YC's Sam Altman's Startup Playbook covers a broad range of actions/attitudes required for success from concept through scaling

• Lectures from Altman's Stanford course, "How to Start a Startup," cover every aspect of startup management

• Entrepreneur Gilad Avidan on "Ten Things I Wish I Knew About Being a Founder Two Years Ago"

• 50 startup lessons learned by James Maskell, founder of Vinetrade

• Startup lessons learned by Vin Vacanti

• Caryn Marooney of Facebook offers 30 insights for startup success

• James Altucher offers 100 rules for being an entrepreneur

• Dharmesh Shah on 23 questions that keep entrepreneurs up at night

• SpinBrush inventor John Osher cites 17 mistakes that hurt startups

• Jason Cohen offers six questions that startup CEOs should ask themselves regularly

• "I wish I'd known…" advice from entrepreneurs from Under30CEO.com

• Lessons for first-time entrepreneurs from Matt Mireles

CHALLENGES AT DIFFERENT LIFE CYCLE STAGES

• Programmer/investor Alex Payne offers advice to a young programmer considering a startup

• Graham on things to consider before launching a startup

• Graham on how to get startup ideas and the benefits in early-stage startups of "doing things that don't scale" -- especially when acquiring a new venture's first customers

• Paul Graham on the concept of "ramen profitability," i.e., earning just enough to live on noodles

• Meebo founder Seth Sternberg offers tips on how to get started

• Serial entrepreneur and investor Chris Dixon on the tradeoffs with keeping your new business idea confidential

• Andrew Chen on dealing with the "trough of sorrow" following a big bump in traffic after a TechCrunch story

• Chris Dixon: once you take outside money, the clock starts ticking

• Investor James Altucher on how to survive your 1st year as founder/CEO

• A long story from Wired Magazine's Gideon Lewis-Kraus on a Silicon Valley seed-stage startup's struggle to gain traction and secure funding

• Entrepreneurial marketing guru Sean Ellis on milestones for startup success

• Mark Suster on the danger of a hot startup's team "drinking its own Kool-Aid"

• Brad Feld on what to do after a successful exit

• Video of Aaron Patzer recounting lessons learned while building Mint from concept to exit

GENERAL ADVICE ON FOUNDING/JOINING STARTUPS

• Charlie O'Donnell on how to switch careers and join a startup

• Simeon Simeonov offers 10 reasons to join a startup and gives practical advice on how to find the right startup position

• A 3-part series by David Beisel on how to find the perfect startup job

• Paul Graham on when it makes sense for a student to pursue a startup upon graduation

• Serial entrepreneur Furqan Nazeeri on ten things to consider before joining a startup

• Netscape founder Marc Andreessen on why not to do a startup

• Steve Blank shares advice to entrepreneurs and job seekers on how to connect with busy people; Charlie O'Donnell on how to craft a forwardable request for an introduction; Leda Marritz on how to craft a cold email

ADVICE FOR MBAS WHO ASPIRE TO FOUND/JOIN STARTUPS

• My post offering advice for MBAs seeking startup jobs in startups; Jeff Bussgang on the same theme

• Charlie O'Donnell admonishes MBAs who seek startup jobs without having a clear view of how they will add value

• I survey HBS MBAs who took Harvard's introductory computer science course on the payoff from learning to code

• David Beisel of NextView Ventures offers advice for incoming MBAs who want to launch a startup upon graduation

• Ben Horowitz's book The Hard Thing About Hard Things conveys deep insights about the pressures of leading a startup and guidance on how to manage them; in this post, Horowitz gives advice to startup CEOs on managing their own psychology

• Startup Life, a book by Brad Feld and Amy Batchelor offers advice for coping with the pressures that entrepreneurial career can put on friends/family relationships

• Feld has written many posts about the connection between entrepreneurship and depression; Michelle Nickolaisen on why entrepreneurs are vulnerable to depression and what they should do about it; Sarah Jane Coffey's first-person account of her experience with startup-induced burnout and depression

• Jessica Bruder of Inc. Magazine on the psychological price of entrepreneurship

• Phin Barnes of First Round Capital on founders' fears and "The Monster Under the Bed"; entrepreneur/investor Semil Shah on similar themes

• Jason Cohen on what to do when the emotional pressure of founding a firm makes you want to throw in the towel; Spencer Fry on coping with this pressure

• Eric Reis on handling fear as an entrepreneur

• Steve Blank on work-life balance for an entrepreneur

• More on work-life balance tradeoffs: “Confessions of an Entrepreneur’s Wife” from Inc. Magazine

• Jerry Colonna on the payoff from/personal cost of entrepreneurial passion

• Paul DeJoe of Ecquire on managing the pressure that comes with being an entrepreneur;

• Serial entrepreneur and 4-hour workweek guru Tim Ferriss on managing entrepreneurial manic-depression