Articles
The best articles for startups we’ve read across the web.
Big thoughts
FARNAM STREET – 38 MIN
Mental Models: The Best Way to Make Intelligent Decisions (109 Models Explained)
Our brains are complicated creatures. To make their job easier, we tend to use mental models to understand the world, consciously or subconsciously. Farnam Street has summarized 109 mental models from biology, numeracy, human nature and judgment to general thinking patterns. Reading this article will expand your toolbox to solving problems.
TIM URBAN – 6 MIN
Why Procrastinators Procrastinate
A graphical explanation on why procrastinators procrastinate and three simple reasons why you shouldn’t.
BILL AULET – 6 MIN
Entrepreneurship Is a Craft and Here’s Why That’s Important
Entrepreneurship is a craft – it combines science and art. With this interesting angle from MIT Sloan, entrepreneurship can be taught at scale.
CLAYTON M. CHRISTENSEN – 18 MIN
How Will You Measure Your Life?
This article teaches about life in business terms. How to build a strategy for life, how to allocate your resources, how committing 100% of the times can be easier than commiting 98% and why you need to clarify how to truly measure success and happiness.
JOÃO MEDEIROS – 22 MIN
This economist has a plan to fix capitalism. It’s time we all listened
Human kind’s greatest innovations are the outcome of cooperation between government and the private sector. In the midst of the hype governments role in innovation has been overlooked for a long time. Economist Mariana Mazzucato sheds light on why that cooperation matters.
FARNAM STREET – 5 MIN
Eight Ways to Say No With Grace and Style
In a world of more requests than we can possibly fulfill, learning how to say no with grace and style is a skill we all need.
IMPACTMAPPING.ORG – 5 MIN
Why use Impact Mapping?
Why you should care about impact mapping and how to build products and deliver projects that make an impact?
Funding
AARON HARRIS AND JASON KWON – 6 MIN
Y Combinator Series A Round Checklist
A throughout Series A diligence checklist. The articles runs you through all the pieces of information and documents a startups needs to have ready when signing a term sheet.
SAM ALTMAN – 8 MIN
Fundraising Mistakes Founders Make
A list of the most common concrete mistakes that founders make with investors and how to steer clear of making them.
KEVIN HALE – 9 MIN
How to Design a Better Pitch Deck
A beginners guide on building great pitch decks.
AARON HARRIS AND JANELLE TAM – COLLECTION
Y Combinator Series A Round Guide
A very concrete and tactical guide to raising your series A; from timeline to material guides.
AARON HARRIS – 3 MIN
The YC Seed Deck Template
Seed stage pitch deck explained. Make it good.
MATHILDE COLLIN – 3 MIN
Front Series B Deck
A practical example on Front’s series B fundraising deck.
GEOFF RALSTON – 20 MIN
A Guide to Seed Fundraising
A general guide to why, how and when to raise seed funding.
Growth
HILA QU – 11 MIN
Your First 90 Day Startup Growth Plan
How to kickstart a growth strategy in a startup? A detailed recipe for the first 90 days of implementing growth as a part of business.
ADAM RISMAN – 24 MIN
Greylock’s Casey Winters on how to create long-term growth
When should you hire a growth team? What are the key growth activities? What even is growth? Insights on building long term growth by Casey Winters.
NITESH AGRAWAL – 7 MIN
How to Do Things That Don’t Scale
How to build a scalable company? By building things that don’t scale first and leveraging in persona customer learnings to improve your product until you’re ready to scale.
MARTIN CASADO – 10 MIN
Why Sales Isn’t Just Selling: Advice for Founders in Early Markets
Practical advice on how to start an early-stage company’s sales function. Start with the founders and continue from there.
ANDREW CHEN – 8 MIN
Growth Hacker is the new VP Marketing
How to build marketing feature within the product? Growth hackers are a mix of engineers and marketers. They make your product compete with a distribution strategy by shifting to API-centric activities and leveraging wide reach platforms.
SAM ALTMAN – 4 MIN
Navigating Mid-Success
Is your startup an airplane or a spaceship? If you’re flying an airplane, you might want to give this article a read. It gives you advice on how to navigate mid-success from fundraising to new product building.
ROBBIE RICHARDS – COLLECTION
Growth Hacking: Strategies & Tactics Learned Studying 77 Hyper-Growth Companies
There is one common challenge staring all businesses in the face: finding leads and turning those leads into paying customers. This article uncovers the growth hacking strategies and techniques used by 77 of the most successful companies, like AirBnb and PayPal.
PAUL GRAHAM – 18 MIN
Do Things that Don’t Scale
How and why startups need to put effort in unscalable things, like recruiting and customer-acquisition to get the company and customer-base going.
RAHUL VOHRA – 23 MIN
How Superhuman Built an Engine to Find Product/Market Fit
A comprehensive yet simple approach to finding, measuring and improving your product-market-fit. A must-read.
Leadership
ADAM MENDLER – 4 MIN
Tips From The Top: One On One With Holger Seim
“Be vulnerable: It really doesn’t hurt and can do magic. No one is expecting you to know it all or have all the answers.”
KIM SCOTT – 14 MIN
Radical Candor — The Surprising Secret to Being a Good Boss
Radical Candor is a framework on giving and getting better guidance, your most important duty as a boss.
MATHILDE COLLIN – 4 MIN
Why I Spend 2 weeks every quarter on an internal presentation
Keeping your employees in the loop of how your company is doing is important. Here’s why and how.
WADE FOSTER – COLLECTION
Zapier’s guide to working remotely
A comprehensive guide to remote work by Zapier, a company with a fully distributed team of 300 over 17 time zones. Feel free to pick and choose the sub-categories most interesting to you.
BEN HOROWITZ – 3 MIN
Which Way Do You Run?
Ben Horowitz on why as the CEO you always need to run towards the pain not away from it.
GIGI LEVY-WEISS – 8 MIN
What Makes a Strong Startup CEO
A short beginner’s guide to the role of a startup CEO as a manager and more importantly as a leader.
ANU HARIHARAN – 19 MIN
How to Manage a Board
A practical guide on board work; how to build a board, how to communicate with the board and how to leverage your board the best.
KEITH RABOIS – 14 MIN
How to run an Effective Board Meeting and make an Effective Board Deck
Keith Rabois gives you the synopsis of why your board matters, and how to make the most of your engagements with them.
BEN HOROWITZ – 6 MIN
Peace time CEO / War time CEO
A concise article on what kind of leadership is needed when a company is growing and comfortable in it’s market vs. when a company is fending off imminent existential threats. It’s wartime for many startups out there now.
MICHAEL LOPP – 13 MIN
The Best Approach to the Worst Conversation
Firing someone is perhaps the hardest thing a manager of founder has to do. Michael Lopp advises you on how to make the best of it.
MATHILDE COLLIN – 5 MIN
One-on-ones are my most valuable meetings; here’s how I run them
Founder of Front on why 1-on-1s are important and how to run them to get the most out of them.
BETH STEINBERG – 23 MIN
How to Lead and Rally a Company Through a Layoff
Beth Steinberg has run the gamut of managing talent. Here, she opens up a topic that’s rarely discussed; layoffs.
Marketing & Comms
AMY LEWIN – 20 MIN
How to tell your story: PR advice for startups
Seven PR professionals offer tangible advice on figuring out what makes a great story and how keep journalists engaged with it.
JAMES CHADWICK – 18 MIN
Facebook Advertising Decoded in 15 Minutes
The fundamentals on how Facebook advertising works.
MARK BONCHEK – 5 MIN
How to Build a Strategic Narrative
This article guides startups on how to build a strategic narrative that inspires employees, excites partners, attracts customers, and engages influencers.
ANDY FOOTE – 26 MIN
The LinkedIn Algorithm Explained In 25 Frequently Asked Questions
After reading this article, you will know the ins and outs on how the LinkedIn algorithm works and how you can get your message heard on the platform.
FIRST ROUND REVIEW – 27 MIN
Tips for Telling Stories That Resonate
The ability to tell stories that inform, persuade, or inspire supercharges every part of company building from investors to your team. Learn how to find your own startup’s story.
ARIELLE JACKSON – 22 MIN
So You Think You’re Ready to Hire a Marketer? Read This First
Arielle Jackson gives a rundown of when to hire your first marketer, what different specialities the practice entails, and which ones different marketer archetypes can take care of for you.
SHAREBIRD – COLLECTION
Sharebird – AMA site for top Product Marketing people in the world
A collection of 60+ AMAs with product marketing people from category-leading companies. An awesomely valuable resource for anyone dealing with product marketing and wanting to see how the best do it.
DOUGLAS HOLT – 26 MIN
Cultural brand strategy
A summary chapter of Douglas Holt’s pioneering thoughts on cultural branding, innovation and strategy.
TRICIA WANG – 13 MIN
Why Big Data Needs Thick Data
Tricia Wang makes a great case for why ethnographic insights, what she calls Thick Data”, is a vital counterpart to quantitiative big data.
Product
BEN HOROWITZ – 3 MIN
Good Product Manager/Bad Product Manager
A classical piece with practical examples of what a good and bad product manager does.
JAMES CURRIER & THE NFX TEAM – 33 MIN
Network Effects Bible
A clear and concrete piece on what Network Effects are, why they are important and how to build and maintain them.
SANDHYA HEGDE – 10 MIN
Every Product Needs a North Star Metric: Here’s How to Find Yours
An introduction to product strategy with examples of north star metrics across industries.
RAPH KOSTER – 10 MIN
What Drives Retention
Concrete examples on what drives user retention in the context of the games industry.
CASEY WINTERS – 23 MIN
Pinterest and Grubhub’s Former Growth Lead on Building Content Loops
Interview with Casey Winters on building content loops and how it may be the right path to scale your company.
PRIYANKA GODBOLE – 12 MIN
Spacing system for faster design-dev handoff
How to create a framework for creating a predictable & harmonious spacing system for faster design-dev handoff.
SACHIN REKHI – 15 MIN
The Top 10 Deliverables of Product Managers
Explaining what makes a great product manager great, and provides top ten most important deliverables for product managers across each of the dimensions of product management.
MARK LESLIE – 15 MIN
Leslie’s Compass: A Framework For Go-To-Market Strategy
A framework by Mark Leslie for startups figuring out whether to execute a sales or marketing heavy go-to-market strategy.
TODD JACKSON – 26 MIN
After 15 Years as a Product Leader, CEO and Now VC, Here’s the Advice I Always Share with Future Founders
Todd Jackson, a long time product manager with past experience at Google, FB, Dropbox and Twitter shares his learnings on building simple yet powerful products, unlocking product-market-fit, being acquired and planning for an IPO.
People
FIRST ROUND REVIEW – 38 MIN
40 Favorite Interview Questions from Some of the Sharpest Folks We Know
First Round Review spent a few months asking some of the smartest and most thoughtful operators in their network a simple question: What’s your favorite interview question and why?
PATTY MCCORD – 18 MIN
How Netflix Reinvented the HR
Netflix’s Culture Handbook — something that everyone should read — coupled with then Chief Talent Officer Patty McCord’s commentary.
ADORA CHEUNG – 3 MIN
Technical co-founder
Adora Cheung on how to find yourself a technical co-founder, and whether you need one.
LIZ BURTON – 9 MIN
What is Unconscious Bias in Recruitment?
An insightful look into what is unconscious bias and how to avoid it to make better recruiting decisions with your startup.
BORIS GROYSBERG, NITIN NOHRIA AND CLAUDIO FERNÁNDEZ-ARÁOZ – 28 MIN
The Definitive Guide to Recruiting in Good Times and Bad
Recessions present an unexpected opportunity for companies to snap up the top-level talent needed to drive growth in better times. Learn how to build a hiring practice to snatch talent before others.
JAY PARIKH – 10 MIN
How Facebook Tries to Prevent Office Politics
How to keep office politics away from your company as told by Jay Parikh, the Global Head of Engineering and Infrastructure at Facebook.
FIRST ROUND REVIEW – 21 MIN
The Best Interview Questions We’ve Ever Published
The questions you choose to ask during job interviews are of paramount importance – here are the best ones to ask from your candidates.
MAGGIE COHEN – 7 MIN
How to make sure you’re hiring the right people
Recruiting at a startup is a high stakes game. Here are five tips on how to attract bright talent and ensure you’re recruiting the right people for your startup.
SAM ALTMAN – 14 MIN
How to hire
Finding the right employees is easier said than done. Here are some tips on how to approach the art of hiring and succeed in it.
TYLER PALMER – 3 MIN
How to build a company culture that lasts
Pushing forward as fast and as hard as possible does not foster employee happiness or a better work product. In fact, it does just the opposite.
FIRST ROUND REVIEW – 4 MIN
Question Bank for Better 1:1s
The best questions to ask in a 1:1.