79 Free Ebooks, Videos, Courses and Resources on How to Start a Startup

A startup is a company that’s in the initial stages of business. Startups come with high risks of failure but they can also be very unique places to work, with great benefits, focused on innovation as well as a great platform to learn and grow. While entrepreneurship refers to all new businesses, including self-employment and businesses that never intend to become registered, startups refer to new businesses that intend to grow large beyond the solo founder.

Run the numbers, nail the process, and prepare for the journey. This list shares various free ebooks, videos, courses and resources on how to get your startup’s first customers — and go from there. There are hundreds of online tutorials on how to start your startup and these resources will tell you exactly how to grow your new startup.

Videos and Courses

1. Startup Talks
2. Startup Movies
3. The Lean Launchpad by Steve Blank (Udacity)
   Learn the key tools and steps to build a successful startup (or at least reduce the risk of failure). An introduction to the basics of Steve Blank’s famous Customer Development process, where entrepreneurs “get out of the building” to gather massive amounts of customer and marketplace feedback, and then use that feedback to continuously iterate and evolve their startup business models, improving the chances of success at every step.
4. Developing Innovative Ideas for New Companies (Coursera)
   Explore how to identify and develop great ideas into great companies. Learn how to identify opportunities based on real customer needs. Develop solid business models. Create successful companies.
5. 500 Startups #500distro conference videos
6. YC Startup School 2012, 2013, 2014 videos
7. How to Start a Startup
8. Startup courses at Edx
   Learn how to start your new business venture with free online entrepreneurship and business development courses from MIT, IIMB and other top schools.
9. Authors @Google: Eric Ries “The Lean Startup”
10. Marc Andreessen & Dave McClure: The Future of Startups, VC’s, and Technology
11. Foundation 37 // David Byttow
12. How to Start a Startup – IIM A

General

1. Sam Altman’s blog
2. Startup advice, briefly
3. Paul Graham’s essays
4. How to get startup ideas
5. Do thing’s that don’t scale
6. 18 Mistakes that kill startups
7. How to raise money
8. The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable by Patrick Lencioni
   Throughout the story, Lencioni reveals the five dysfunctions which go to the very heart of why teams even the best ones-often struggle. He outlines a powerful model and actionable steps that can be used to overcome these common hurdles and build a cohesive, effective team.
9. The Five Temptations of a CEO: A Leadership Fable by Patrick Lencioni
   Patrick Lencioni delivers a provocative message. CEOs mainly have themselves to blame when things go wrong. If you’re a CEO (or a manager for that matter), do you have the courage to face it? Doing so could change your future — for the better.
10. The Four Obsessions of an Extraordinary Executive: The Four Disciplines at the Heart of Making Any Organization World Class by Patrick Lencioni
    In this follow-up to his best-selling book, The Five Temptations of a CEO, Patrick Lencioni’s focus is on a leader’s crucial role in building a healthy organization–an often overlooked but essential element of business life that is the linchpin of sustained success.

Resources

1. Product Hunt
2. Hacker News
3. Crunchbase
4. AngelList
5. BetaPage
6. StartupJohn

Accelerators

1. Alchemist
   Enterprise sales accelerator
2. YCombinator
   Seed funding for startups (from the creators of HackerNews)

Finance

1. Brex
   Banking for newly-founded tech startups made easy
2. Revolut Business
   Control your payments, company cards, expenses and more from one app.

Reading

1. Startup Notes
2. Ideas are just a multiplier of execution
3. Do things that don’t scale by Paul Graham
4. Startup = Growth by Paul Graham
5. What startups are really like by Paul Graham
6. Startup Advice by Sam Altman
7. My Best Advice for Entrepreneurs: Learn to Speak
8. Paul Graham on Building Companies for Fast Growth
9. The 30 Best Pieces of Advice for Entrepreneurs in 2013
10. The Dentist Office Software Story
11. 27 books every startup ought to read by Hiten Shah

Venture Capital and Raising Money

1. Black Swan farming by Paul Graham
2. How to convince investors by Paul Graham
3. How to present to investors by Aaref Hilaly
4. Fundraising Mistakes Founders Make
5. Pitch Decks for VCs – You’re doing it wrong.
6. Raising Capital: This is the Advice We Give Our Founders
7. Free Startup Pitch Deck Templates for Figma

Marketing Sales & Metrics

1. The Pmarca Guide to Startups, part 4: The only thing that matters
2. Startup Metrics for Pirates by Dave McClure
3. How New User Acquisition Channels Drive Change
4. Guide to SaaS metrics by David Skok
5. Free Marketing guides by Kissmetrics
6. Elements of a viral launch page by SmashingMagazine
7. Self-Service SaaS: A Beginner’s Guide to Maximizing Growth
   There aren’t many resources available that thoroughly outline the basics of managing self-service revenue at a SaaS company, but Chargebee does a nice job of it in this guide. By explaining the basics, providing a framework, including real-world examples from the SaaS space, and linking out to additional resources this asset is a solid place to start!

Task Management & Collaboration

1. Asana
   Track your team’s work & manage projects
2. Trello
   Create and manage kanban boards
3. Todoist
   The to do list to organize work & life
4. Monday.com
   One platform, better teamwork
5. Taskade
   Collaborative task lists and outlines
6. Airtable
   Build flexible spreadsheets that behave like a database
7. Jira
   Issue tickets, keep track of progress and plan your agile projects
8. Microsoft Teams
   Business communication platform that offers workspace chat, videoconferencing, file storage and 3rd party app integration
9. Wire
   The most secure collaboration platform
10. Feedbear
    Prioritize feature requests to build your roadmap.
11. Notion
    All-in-one workspace for notes, tasks, wikis, and databases.

Marketing Tools

1. Buffer
   Social Media analytics and Scheduling
2. BuzzSumo
   Find Most Shared Content and Key Influencers
3. Hootsuite
   Social Media Management Tools
4. SocialBlade
   Social Media Statistics
5. IFTTT
   Create custom triggers to automate social media workflows
6. Zapier
   Alternative to ifttt : triggers based automated workflows
7. Phantombuster
   Automate social media via webscraping
8. QApop
   Find relevant Quora questions to answer
9. Smartlook
   Understand how people interact with your website and improve conversion

Leadership & People

1. How to Start a Movement
   3 minute video drawing parallels to leadership and the importance of the people that follow the leader. Critical for a start-up to achieve and maintain alignment
2. Employee Engagement: The Wonder Drug For Customer Satisfaction
   Short article showing the high correlation between employee engagement and customer satisfaction. Satisfied customers and happy/engaged employees produce the most amazing start-ups – or any type of company for that matter.