What Are The Top-Notch Resources To Launch New Business?
If you recently launched a startup—or you’re thinking about it—you’ll inevitably hit the “I have no idea what I’m doing” stage (if not once, then multiple times). It seems that there are countless problems to solve that you don’t necessarily have the tools or resources to answer, right?
How do I gain early startup traction?
How do I find a co-founder or built an early team?
How do I come up with the cash to build an early team?
How do I know that my idea is something people want?
There is no other way to find yourself asking some of these questions than by taking the knowledge of those who have already successfully navigated their way through the same entrepreneurial journey.
Below you will find ten great books, courses, and other resources to help you build your startup effectively in the initial stage.
Things you must read before launching a startup
Thanks to Startup Launch List, select from a list of pain points like coming up with an idea, building a team, raising money, and making money-and then get a curated list of the MUST-READ articles on each topic. You will get great advice from some of tech's top thought leaders, including Paul Graham, Mark Suster, Brad Feld, Derek Sivers, Seth Godin, and more.
Free course with 7 marketing super-hacks
Justin Mares and Gabriel Weinberg co-wrote a book in 2015 called Traction. It has quickly become one of the most significant startup books because it details exactly how to think about growing your startup, which is the billion-dollar question all founders want an answer to. Justin and Gabriel created the Traction course to showcase super-tactics in seven different marketing channels, including email marketing, content marketing, publicity, and display and social ads.
Email copies from great companies
Having a great email from approachable companies is one of the most effective ways to build and engage with your customers. Additionally, writing email copy remains one of the most tedious marketing tasks ever. If you don't want to waste your time on creating something that already exists, check out Good Email Copy, here you can find a collection of emails from great companies like Slack, Trello< Pinterest, Basecamp, Everlane, Eventbrite, Shopify, and more which makes it super easy to find sample copy related to the kind of email you are looking to write.
Acquisition, retention, & revenue hacks used by companies
It is a useful resource, you will going to find numerous examples of hacks various websites use to drive acquisition, revenue, referrals, retention, and activation. Each hack includes a screenshot and a short explanatory blurb. This is a fun site to browse if you are looking for new mini-traction strategies to try as you grow your startup.
A free guide to building awesome communities
Building products comes with unique challenges. Building communities around a product? That’s another thing entirely. Brick by Brick is a comprehensive, free guide created by Sacha Greif that takes you through the various elements of community building. You’ll learn more about engagement, promotion, moderation, voice, value, and audience segmentation. This is a useful resource that includes tidbits of wisdom from incredible community builders, like Pieter Levels, Justin Kan, Josh Owens, and more.
Grow your core business by launching side projects
When you subscribe to Make This Year, you’ll get a step-by-step lesson every month from an “experienced side project maker,” who will teach you how to grow your business in the most efficient way possible by building tools that create value for your customers. This is as lean as it gets: build one side project at a time, and see what sticks with your audience. And, with only one lesson a month, you won’t feel overwhelmed by the content.
A short course on the future of PR, marketing, and advertising
The Growth Hacker Course was created by Ryan Holiday based on his popular book Growth Hacker Marketing. He walks you through a four-step framework that begins with helping you find product-market fit shares and ends with retention and optimization hacking. There’s only so much you can learn about startup growth tactics from a book; at some point, the only thing left to do is start experimenting in real life. This course will guide you through that process with various exercises you can try as you learn about each step in the framework. Since taking action is the whole point (and also the hardest part) of learning, we’re pumped about the design of this course.
Explore revenue models to make money with your idea
This kit makes business modelling fun again. If you aren’t sure exactly what your startup’s business model is yet, The Business Model Kit is a useful tool that will help you whiteboard what your company might look like in 5, 10, or 20 years. There are 16 different blocks to help you visualize your model (e.g. consumers, suppliers, government, product, service, experience, data money, exposure, etc.). When you’re thinking about the bigger picture—like multiple revenue streams, partnerships, and complex supplier transactions—this will help you get your creative (and organizational) juices going.
Lean Series Books The entire Lean Series, published by O’Reilly, is packed with incredible insight and strategies for growing your startup—especially in the early stages when there’s often no other option but to run “lean.” We highly recommend starting with Ash Maurya’s Running Lean, which is all about finding the right product-market fit. Effectively, it’s a step-by-step blueprint for taking your ideas, turning them into experiments, and taking action quickly. Once you’ve devoured that book, pick up some of the others based on your startup’s most pressing needs.
