Books

• Do More Faster – The founders of TechStars identify the key issues that first-time entrepreneurs encounter, and offer proven advice from successful entrepreneurs who have worked with the TechStars program.
• Founders at Work – A collection of interviews with founders of famous technology companies about what happened in the very earliest days.
• Business Model Generation – Well written framework for creating a business model, we use this a lot in class.
• The Lean Startup – Making your startup more efficient, and putting value on learning.
• Rework – Somewhat controversial lessons from 37signals. Not everyone agrees with their attitude and methodologies, but your traditional business school thinking will be challenged.
• The Four Steps to the Epiphany – Emphasizing the importance of getting customers involved during development. You can download the first three chapters at http://www.stanford.edu/group/e145/cgi-bin/winter/drupal/upload/handouts/Four_Steps.pdf
• The Entrepreneur’s Guide to Business Law – The essential legal book you’ll have to have in your library.
• Venture Deals: Be Smarter Than Your Lawyer and Venture Capitalist – Necessary reading when you’re ready to raise money.

Magazines

• Game Developer Magazine – Good coverage of the game industry. I highly recommend the Postmortem series they run.
• Harvard Business Review – Premiere source of business articles.

Websites

• feld.com – Blog of Brad Feld, Venture Capitalist
• readwriteweb.com covers the tech industry, primarily focused on Internet news. They filter the content in to a few channels, of particular interest to this class is  the startup channel: readwriteweb.com/start/
• onstartups.com – For and about software startups
• jasonlbaptiste.com– Entrepreneur and co-author of onstartups.com. Two good posts to read:
  • What To Look For In A Business Co-Founder
  • What To Look For In A Technical Co-Founder
• jimcollins.com– Business author. Coined “BHAG”
  • “What Comes Next” http://www.inc.com/magazine/19971001/1335.html
• steveblank.com– Website of Steve Blank. In particular is the slide presentation on Creating Startup Success:
  • Creating Startup Success
• avc.com– blog of Fred Wilson, VC at Union Square Ventures in NY
  • avc.com/a_vc/mba-mondays/ – subset of his posts dealing with business
• bostonvcblog.typepad.com/vc/ – blog of Jeffrey Bussgang, a Boston VC
• • “Walking Away From Liquidity” http://bostonvcblog.typepad.com/vc/2011/01/walking-away-from-liquidity.html
• HBS Startup Tribe(Harvard Business School Startup Tribe)
  • Services & Tools – great list of free and near-free tools you can use to run your startup
• Platforms and Networks – Oddly named blog from Harvard Business School professor Tom Eisemann, it’s much more about entrepreneurship than platforms and networks. Great compilation of advice in this post.
• Stanford Entrepreneurship Corner has a deep collection of videos of presentations given at Stanford. Technologists, entrepreneurs, investors… all well represented.

Twitter feeds

• bfeld – Brad Feld
• rww – readwriteweb.com
• dharmesh – runs onstartup.com
• fredwilson – Fred Wilson, VC at Union Square Ventures in NY

Company Structure

• A good corporate lawyer! Get a professional’s advice before incorporating.
• National Venture Capital Association – nvca.org
  • Model Legal Documents
• www.ftb.ca.gov/businesses/index.shtml#Business – Has descriptions of all business structures and links to all the forms you need in California
• corp.delaware.gov/howtoform.shtml – Similar link for Delaware. Includes link to flowchart for registering your company.
• revenue.delaware.gov/services/Business_Tax/business_structures_table.pdf – A more detailed table of different business structures than the one in the presentation. From the state of Delaware.
• www.bizfilings.com/learn/llc-vs-s-corp.aspx – a lite overview of LLC vs. S Corp tradeoffs

Other

Some starting points for market research

• Nielsen – the premiere consumer tracking company
• socialbakers.com – new site tracking Facebook stats
• Information Week – technology business magazine and website
• A to Z guide to American Consumers – by Cheryl Russell (1.1MB pdf) – Quick links to free demographics
• guides.library.cmu.edu/marketresearch – Resources at CMU libraries. You need to logged in.
• Pew Internet & American Life Project – Nonprofit research center.

Presentations

• TechStars – vimeo.com/techstars The video from class is not available online, but this link has some other pieces they put up.
• TEDTalks – www.ted.com/talks These aren’t company pitches, but the quality of the presentations (and the material!) is A+.
• Any talk by Steve Jobs
• Startup School (from Y Combinator and BASES) startupschool.org. Click through to the videos for a full day’s worth of talks by an impressive collection of entrepreneurs, Angel investors and VCs.

Incubators and Things Like Incubators

• Techstars
  • In house documentary: www.techstars.org/thefounders/ Episode 1 is a great overview, Episode 12 is Demo Day
  • FAQ www.techstars.org/details/
• Y Combinator www.ycombinator.com
  • What happens there: ycombinator.com/atyc.html (long article)
  • FAQ ycombinator.com/faq.html
• IGN www.ign.com/indieopenhouse/
• Plug and Play www.plugandplaytechcenter.com

Accounting

The Big Three

Balance Sheet

• Fred Wilson MBA Mondays: The Balance Sheet

Income Statement (aka Profit and Loss Statement or “P&L”)

• Fred Wilson MBA Mondays: The Profit and Loss Statement

Cash Flow Statement

• Fred Wilson MBA Mondays: Cash Flow

Financial Resources

Financial Statements Used in Class

• EA Documents available at investors.ea.com/
• Pandora S-1 Filing www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1230276/000119312511032963/ds1.htm

Websites

• SEC Filings www.sec.gov/edgar.shtml
• IRS Employer’s Tax Guide www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p15.pdf

Accounting Software

• Quickbooks www.quickbooks.com
• Mint www.mint.com