The first and most important thing I recommend to folks who are thinking about starting a startup is to work your way through the YCombinator Startup School curriculum. It is fifteen lectures given by some of the startup world’s best operators and venture capitalists, covering all of the important facets of “starting a startup”:
Curriculum | Startup School - The Best Resource for Founders
The lectures are great, and in addition, the team at YCombinator has created a cadre-based program that runs multiple times per year and get some informal mentoring, pitch practice, and once you complete the curriculum, access to free resources to help you build a company.
In addition to the lectures and the school, YC also has an online library of sorts with articles about nearly any question you might have regarding starting a startup:
YC Startup Library | Y Combinator
If you’re looking for something even more substantive, there’s also a myriad of programs run by “OnDeck,” a startup that is aiming to create a flywheel of flywheels for founders starting companies, ops people joining companies, engineers helping build companies, and so on. There are various programs with a relatively low price point:
If you’re thinking about starting a startup, you owe it to yourself to also understand exactly what game you are about to start playing.
What do I mean by that? Startups, upon achieving product-market fit, grow fast by raising money from venture capitalists and building out the company as quickly as possible. Impressive, yes, but also quite unique from a financial standpoint. Startup investors, both at the “Angel” stage and the later stages look for specific types of founders, specific types of companies, and so on. Read these two books to understand the broad strokes:
Angel, by Jason Calicanis - how do angel investors pick investments? what makes a good angel investment?
Venture Deals, by Brad Feld - how are deals structured? what does the language mean? how do venture capitalists make money? how do entrepreneurs make money?
One of the easiest ways I have found to quickly learn about a subject is to read others’ accounts of their work in the same area. Startups are no different. Two great resources:
The Hard Thing About Hard Things, by Ben Horowitz details how he, along with Marc Andreessen, founded a company called Loudcloud, spun out another company called Opsware, and then after its sale, founded heavyweight venture capital firm “Andreessen Horowitz.”
Starting Greatness, a regular podcast by Mike Maples, Jr., a legendary investor in Silicon Valley. Every week or so he puts out a new interview with some of the world’s best founders and investors, talking about their experiences building some of the greatest startups in history.
All In Pod - This is one of the two podcasts I listen to every week (along with NIA, below). Not only are Sachs, Chamath, Friedberg and Calicanis great entrepreneurs, they are all also amazing investors. Getting their “hot” takes on whatever is happening in the world of technology and current events is a great way to keep up with the zeitgeist.
Not Investment Advice - The NIA boys are basically a Millennial version of the All-In Pod, but with more focus on Web3, memes, and Trung’s special skill of finding cool applicable historical nuggets. Again, ride the wave of whatever is happening on any given week and give this one a listen.