When starting up your own business, your task list is long, and your money is short. Lucky for you, we live in a time where information and resources are plentiful - you just have to know where to find them. Mason Levy is the Program Director for the Canopy accelerator program, and a man who knows how to tackle a project, researching and executing quickly and efficiently for the benefit of the accelerator's teams and his own company. A startup founder himself - he came through the program with his app WeGrow - Mason rakes the internet and beyond to find to find the best resources for startup founders.
- Steve Blank’s blog. Blank is the co-author of The Startup Owner’s Manual, and his blog is an amazing resource for tapping into the mind of a serial entrepreneur turned A+ mentor and teacher. If nothing else, check out his extensive list of StartUp Tools for everything from internal team collaboration tools to a breakdown of different cloud services and tools you might be able to use for building your company from the ground up.
- Sam Altman, president of Y-combinator and co-chairman of OpenAi, has been building and launching startups since he was 19 when he co-founded Loopt (which was acquired in 2012 for $43.4M). How To Start a Startup and Startup School are helping to demystify the process of starting a tech company.
- A great Medium post details 213+ FREE resources to continue to learn about entrepreneurship. From stock photography to user acquisition tools, this list even links to other “free stuff” lists to dig through. With the right questions in hand, you’re bound to stumble upon something that will help take another step towards getting them answered.
- Enough behind-the-screen resources - get out and talk to people. Or if you’re one who likes to hide behind your keyboard (yes, I’m looking at you) at least jump onto a Slack team and start asking questions. Slack List details Slack communities that are focused on everything from design and business to music and social. And come on, who isn’t using Slack already?
- The last one is a book. Yes, one with pages! The Google Design Sprint “is a five-day process for answering critical business questions through design, prototyping, and testing ideas with customers.” This is an amazing DIY guide for running your own sprint. Get out there and start learning!
One more thing…
6) I’m always trying to stay up-to-date and on top of the latest and greatest products that are coming to market. Product Hunt makes it crazy simple for me to spend a couple of minutes a day looking at what’s hitting the market. I’ve been curating a couple of collections to help the companies I mentor grow, and two of my favorites to follow are StartUp Tool Chest and StartUp Education Playlist.