Startup Resources
A curated collection of the best startup resources I've found across years of teaching MBA entrepreneurship, advising founders, and building companies. Organized by what you need, when you need it.
400+ resources across multiple curated sources. I use these in my Rice MBA course and with the founders I advise.
Fundraising (38)
Pitch decks, term sheets, investor updates, and the mechanics of raising capital.
- Pitch Deck Template — Sequoia Capital
- Series A Guide — Y Combinator
- Pitch Deck Storytelling Template — Pillar VC
- Non-Obvious Guide to Fundraising — NFX
- Essential Terms — Holloway
- Why Do Some Startups Get Funded? — DocSend
- How To Write Great Investor Updates — Carta
- Three Terms in Venture — Fred Wilson
- Option Pool Shuffle — Venture Hacks
- Economics of Term Sheets — a16z
See all 38 fundraising resources
- Open Deck: Compiled Pitch Decks — OpenVC
- 150+ Pitch Deck Examples — PitchDeckHunt
- Investor Pitch Training — BaseTemplates
- Good VCs, Bad VCs — Christoph Janz
- SAFE & Convertible Note Calculator — Carta
- Series A Term Sheet — Y Combinator
- Enhanced Model Term Sheet — NVCA
- Investor Update Email Template — Leo Polovets
- Series A Pitch & Deck Guide — Janelle Tam
- Startup Valuation Explained — Fred Destin
- First-Time Founders Fundraising — Lolita Taub
- How to Make a Cap Table — Nivi
- How to Raise a Smart Series A — Alpaca VC
- 31 Pitch Deck Slide Examples — Crunchbase
- Visual Introduction to VC — Dan Lopuch
- Investor Updates Matter — Jason Calacanis
- Updating Your Seed Investors — NextView Ventures
- Raising Seed Capital Guide — Parul Singh
- VC Guide — Various
- Ridiculously Detailed Fundraising Guide — Founder Collective
- Fundraising Playbook — Emergence Capital
- Series Seed Term Sheet — Cooley
- VC Valuation Calculations — Mark Suster
- Negotiating Term Sheets — Matthew Bartus
- Understanding Term Sheets — Holloway
- VC List: No Warm Intro Required — Yuliya Bel
- Signal NFX — Investing Network
- Latinx Founder Resources — Lolita Taub
Product (16)
Product-market fit, pricing, user research, and building things people want.
- How Superhuman Built an Engine for Product-Market Fit — First Round
- Product Market Fit Guide — Lenny Rachitsky
- How To Price Your SaaS Product — Lenny Rachitsky
- The Hidden World of Pricing — NFX
- How to Talk to Users — Eric Migicovsky / YC
- How to Define Product Strategy — Gibson Biddle
- Quantitative Product-Market Fit — Tribe Capital
- B2B SaaS Pricing Masterclass — ChartMogul
- Pricing Your Product — Sequoia
- How to Run User Interviews — Y Combinator
- User Research & Testing — UX Collective
- Guide to UX Research — UXR
- User Interviews Guide — Pillar VC
- Evaluating Marketplace Ideas — Lenny Rachitsky
Management & People (21)
Hiring, firing, equity, boards, and building your team.
- Best Hiring Practices — Fred Wilson
- How to Hire — Sam Altman
- Employee Equity — Sam Altman
- The Equity Equation — Paul Graham
- Right Way to Grant Equity — First Round
- The Worst Conversation: Firing — First Round
- Board of Directors: Selection & Board Meetings — Fred Wilson
- Good Board Member Guide — Mark Suster
- The Perfect Board — Fred Wilson
- Preparing a Board Deck — Bryan Schreier / Sequoia
- Compensation at Startups — Homebrew
- Onboarding at Startups — Homebrew
- Sourcing Talent — Homebrew
- How to Hire Your First Engineer — Y Combinator
- Recruit Great Talent — Marvin Liao
- Startup Employee Salary Data — Alex Cohen
- Salary & Equity Benchmarks — Leo Polovets
Operations & Metrics (13)
SaaS benchmarks, retention, financial planning, and the numbers that matter.
- 16 Startup Metrics — a16z
- 16 More Startup Metrics — a16z
- What is Good Retention? — Lenny Rachitsky
- How to Increase Retention — Lenny Rachitsky
- ChartMogul SaaS Benchmarks — ChartMogul
- Financial Planning for SaaS — Christoph Janz
- KPI Dashboard for Early-Stage SaaS — Christoph Janz
- Cohort Analysis in SaaS — Christoph Janz
- Founder's Guide to Metrics — Baz Banai
- Customer Acquisition Playbook — First Round
- Bottom-up SaaS Metrics — Lenny Rachitsky
Blogs, Newsletters & Podcasts (21)
The best ongoing sources for startup knowledge.
Must-Read Blogs
- Essays by Paul Graham
- a16z — Andreessen Horowitz
- First Round Review
- Stratechery — Ben Thompson
- Benedict Evans
- Andrew Chen
- Lenny Rachitsky
- AVC — Fred Wilson
- Both Sides of the Table — Mark Suster
- Above The Crowd — Bill Gurley
- Patrick Collison
Essential Podcasts
- How to Start a Startup — Sam Altman / YC
- The Twenty Minute VC — Harry Stebbings
- The Knowledge Project — Shane Parrish
- Masters of Scale — Reid Hoffman
- How I Built This — NPR
- a16z Podcast
- This Week In Startups — Jason Calacanis
Essential Books
- Zero to One — Peter Thiel
- Venture Deals — Brad Feld & Jason Mendelson
- High Growth Handbook — Elad Gil
Curated Resource Libraries
Other excellent collections worth exploring.
- Occasionally Useful — 100+ curated founder resources by Eric Ramos
- High Output Founders' Library — 300+ resources by Steve Schlafman
- Founder Resources — 500+ resources organized by startup stage
- FoundersList — Community-vetted tools, events, and co-founder matching
- Holloway Guides — In-depth guides on VC, equity, recruiting (paid)
- Y Combinator Library — Official YC essays, videos, and guides
- Awesome Startup Resources — Open-source GitHub collection
- Venture List — Monthly-updated directory
- Founder Institute Resources — Global startup ecosystem guides
This list is maintained from my teaching and advising work. If you have a resource that should be here, let me know.