How to Start a Startup
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How to Start a Startup

Advice from the How to Start a Startup class at Stanford

About the Book

Sam Altman (Y Combinator) created a class at Stanford in 2014 which covered the stages a startup goes through from idea to growth. Read the advice from the distinguished guest speakers:

  • Paul Graham (Y Combinator)
  • Dustin Moskovitz (Asana)
  • Adora Cheung (Homejoy)
  • Peter Thiel (Founders Fund)
  • Alex Schultz (Facebook)
  • Kevin Hale (Y Combinator)
  • Stanley Tang (DoorDash)
  • Walker Williams (Teespring)
  • Justin Kan (Twitch)
  • Marc Andreessen (Andreessen Horowitz)
  • Ron Conway (SV Angel)
  • Parker Conrad (Zenefits)
  • Alfred Lin (Sequoia Capital)
  • Brian Chesky (Airbnb)
  • Patrick Collison (Stripe)
  • John Collison (Stripe)
  • Ben Silbermann (Pinterest)
  • Aaron Levie (Box)
  • Reid Hoffman (Greylock Partners)
  • Keith Rabois (Khosla Ventures)
  • Ben Horowitz (Andreessen Horowitz)
  • Emmett Shear (Twitch)
  • Hosain Rahman (Jawbone)
  • Kirsty Nathoo (Y Combinator)
  • Carolynn Levy (Y Combinator)
  • Tyler Bosmeny (Clever)
  • Michael Seibel (Y Combinator)
  • Qasar Younis (Y Combinator)
  • Dalton Caldwell (Y Combinator)

Topics covered include:

  • Ideas
  • Product
  • Building a team
  • Customer development
  • Culture
  • Legal/accounting
  • Execution
  • Strategy
  • Growth
  • Fund raising

If you can I stongly recomment watching all of the lectures! The advice is inspirational and extremely actionable as you go through the process of starting and growing your own company.

All revenue net of platform fees goes to the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

About the Author

Will Johnson
PersonalOpz

PersonalOpz aims to provide tools to improve your business and life.

Table of Contents

  • Preface
  • Lecture 1: Welcome, and Ideas, Products, Teams and Execution Part I
  • Lecture 2: Ideas, Products, Teams and Execution Part II
  • Lecture 3: Before the Startup
  • Lecture 4: Building Product, Talking to Users, and Growing
  • Lecture 5: Business Strategy and Monopoly Theory
  • Lecture 6: Growth
  • Lecture 7: How to Build Products Users Love, Part I
  • Lecture 8: Doing Things That Don’t Scale
  • Lecture 9: How to Raise Money
  • Lecture 10: Company Culture and Building a Team, Part I
  • Lecture 11: Company Culture and Building a Team, Part II
  • Lecture 12: Building for the Enterprise
  • Lecture 13: How To Be A Great Founder
  • Lecture 14: How to Operate
  • Lecture 15: How to Manage
  • Lecture 16: How to Run a User Interview
  • Lecture 17: How to Design Hardware Products
  • Lecture 18: Legal and Accounting Basics for Startups
  • Lecture 19: Sales and Marketing
  • Lecture 20: Later-stage Advice
  • Thanks for Reading

Causes Supported

Electronic Frontier Foundation

Defending your civil liberties in a digital world.
https://www.eff.org/

Based in San Francisco, EFF is a donor-supported membership organization working to protect fundamental rights regardless of technology.

From the Internet to the iPod, technologies are transforming our society and empowering us as speakers, citizens, creators, and consumers. When our freedoms in the networked world come under attack, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) is the first line of defense. EFF broke new ground when it was founded in 1990—well before the Internet was on most people's radar—and continues to confront cutting-edge issues defending free speech, privacy, innovation, and consumer rights today. From the beginning, EFF has championed the public interest in every critical battle affecting digital rights.

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