VCs & Angels Lists
Pre-seed & Seed VC/Angel contacts
130+ curated contacts of VC’s & Angels with the most effective way to reach out
List of European VCs (early stage/growth)
Over 800 EU & US VCs and private equity funds in Europe. Includes each VCs website, verticals, location, and more
Venture Capital List US
Airtable with 140+ VCs (United States)
49 startup angel networks in DACH
Building Team & Culture
Growing Your Tech Talent Brand
Insight on what appeals to developer candidates in a job, based on a survey of 39,000+ developers
How to build a great tech team at Seed stage:
How to build a great tech team at Seed stage by Samaipata VC
Designing your Startup’s ESOP (Employee Share Option Plan)
Article by Laura Faulconer on how to design your company's ESOP, and why it's important.
Building the initial team for seed stage startups
Essay by Andrew Chen from A16Z on seed funding and building out the initial team
Techstars: People & Culture Toolkit
A collection of articles, resources and templates from Techstars on hiring, recruiting, hiring, leadership and management
Frameworks for Using Diversity to Win
Frameworks on how to hire and retain a diverse team
Training and resources to help make your organisation more inclusive
Training resources on privilege awareness, inequality, and other diversity and inclusion work
Recruiter Cheat Sheet: How to Assess Technical Roles
A guide to help you understand exactly how each major technical role contributes to the overall productivity of the technical organization, and what makes a standout candidate in each role.
Recruiting - Interview questions
Exclusive list of 40 interview questions, sent to us by the sharpest folks we’ve met or just outright admire
A guide to help you figure out how to approach advisors and their incentives
Co-founder
The Founder Dating Playbook – Here’s the Process
Advice on how to find a co-founder
Co-founder Forming Questions & Rubric
Framing around what to look for in a co-founder.
Engineering
Decoding the no-code / low-code startup universe and its players
Let's be clear: no-code and low-code tools are not about eliminating code or engineers. They are about making life easier for coders, while opening access to everyone, making everyone a 'citizen developer'. They are about abstracting away the complexity of code to focus on design and logic.
Fundraising
How to Value a Private SaaS Company
A guide on how to value a SaaS company
Writing great investor updates
Templates on how to write great investor update emails
100+ Pitch Deck Examples From the Most Successful Startups
How to pitch your startup by Kevin Hale
Tips on how to package up your idea and communicate it to an investor
Use this tool to get randomly asked common VC questions so you can be sure you can answer them on the fly.
Negotiating Term Sheets: focus on what's important
Key elements to focus on when negotiating a term sheet.
The Ultimate Guide to Raise Capital for a Startup
The Ultimate Guide to Raise Capital for a Startup
Starting your fundraising pitch deck
The 4th & King team shares pitch plots, sample decks, and field notes to help early-stage startups prepare to raise capital
The new playbook for startup fundraising during COVID-19
Best fundraising strategies during the pandemic
A simple and clear table on how to value a SaaS company
PITCH-DECK LIBRARY: The pitch decks that helped hot startups raise millions
A collection of pitch decks from the leading startups
Cap Tables, Share Structures, Valuations, Oh My! A Case Study of Early-Stage Funding
Explanation of the basic mechanics of the first rounds of funding, some of the key terms involved, and how different types of financial instruments and deal structures work
Pitch deck templates of successful companies
40 Startup Pitch Deck Examples That Got Funded
A very deep and thorough guide to all the steps you'll go through when raising your Series A
Growth
Toolkit for companies expanding to the US from Index Ventures
New data shows losing 80% of mobile users is normal, and why the best apps do better
discussion of exclusive data/graphs on mobile retention rates based on anonymized datapoints from over 125M mobile phones.
Why consumer product metrics are all terrible
Breakdown and discussion of the few key metrics: Signup rates, Retention and frequency, Social graph density
How to interview for your growth team (from execs at Atlassian, Gusto, Hubspot)
Growth Interview Questions from Atlassian, SurveyMonkey, Gusto and Hubspot
Required reading for marketplace startups: The 20 best essays
A collection of 20 best essays on marketplace startups
The red flags and magic numbers that investors look for in your startup’s metrics
How investors use metrics to evaluate, pick, and reject startups
How To (Actually) Calculate CAC
Essay by Brian Balfour (ex-VP Growth at Hubspot) on how to calculate CAC
Analysis of success stories from different companies and insights that helped them at early stages to get to success and market power.
How to Kickstart and Scale a Marketplace Business – Phase 1: Crack the Chicken-and-Egg Problem
Insights from 17 of today's biggest marketplaces, including Airbnb, DoorDash, Thumbtack, Etsy, Uber and many more
A guide from Asana on how to implement objectives and key results (OKRs) to improve goal setting at your company
The Burn Multiple How Startups Should Think About Capital Efficiency
A framework for how to think about capital efficiency.
Introducing: “Stats for Startups”
Benchmarking for Startup KPIs
A set of concrete recommendations for GOOD and GREAT retention across most types of businesses
The New Rules of Growth vs. Profitability
Guide on how to navigate the new rules of growth vs. profitability
Startup Growth and Venture Returns: What We Found When We Analyzed Thousands of VC Deals
Report on startup growth from a VC perspective
The ultimate guide to financial modeling for startups
A very thorough explanation of how to build financial models for startups
Data-driven learnings from successful startups organized in charts
The Founder’s Guide to Financial Modeling
101 of financial modeling
Idea
Why “Uber for X” startups failed: The supply side is king
Explanation of the economics behind "Uber for X" startups
The Hidden Patterns of Great Startup Ideas
5 frameworks to help Founders refine their startup ideas
Uber’s virtuous cycle. Geographic density, hyperlocal marketplaces, and why drivers are key
Explanation of Uber's network effect
Leadership
Andreessen Horowitz: Advice and How To
A collection of articles, podcast and interviews from Andreessen Horowitz on most startup-related topics
A recording of "How to Start a Startup" class taught by Sam Altman and Silicon Valley leaders at Stanford. Great talks on all things startup-related.
Entrepreneurs know how important stock options are for hiring and retaining the best talent.
Startup playbook from former YCombinator president Sam Altman
A free book from Firstround on management essentials
How to Be a Career-Changing Mentor — 25 Tips From The Best Mentors We Know
Advice on how to be a better mentor
A collection of videos from YCombinator on all aspects of creating a startup
Key lessons on how to make the most out of your advisors
Marketing & Sales
Personal branding and social media 101
A crash course on personal brand building as well as Twitter and LinkedIn 101 to help boost your social media and online presence. This will include how to optimize your profile, how to quickly grow your network and more. This link includes the recording of the session, slides and cheat sheets.
Methodologies for understanding and measuring marketplace liquidity
Don't Just Throw Together a Webinar — The Virtual Events Crash Course You Need
Tactics for making the virtual discussions format more valuable
a16z Podcast: Gross Margins, Early to Late: What They Do (and Don’t) Tell You
Gross margins: nuances of and strategy for calculating margins with things like cloud costs, freemium users, or implementation costs, to the impact margins can have on valuations
Product
Build Products That Solve Real Problems - A Lightweight JTBD Framework for Product Teams
Article and templates on how to weave the JTBD (jobs-to-be-done) framework into each stage of product development in order to ensure you build something people need
the basic framework to evaluate SaaS businesses
How to pick next features for your product
A Practitioner’s Guide to Net Promoter Score
Essay by Sachin Rekhi, former Director of Product at Linkedin, on the practical aspects of measuring Net Promoter Score
The Power User Curve: The best way to understand your most engaged users
Essay by Li Jin, a partner on the investing team at A16Z, on one of the common frameworks to analyze investments: the power of user curve
Hierarchy of Marketplaces — Level 3
How to build enduring marketplaces
Hierarchy of Marketplaces — Level 2
How to build enduring marketplaces
The Hierarchy of Marketplaces — Introduction and Level 1
How to build enduring marketplaces
Hierarchy of Engagement, Expanded
How to build a product that endures.
Crypto Startup School: Learn How to Build a Crypto Company
A collection of videos on all things crypto