Letter to a Startup Wannabe (part 2)

Dragos Nicolaescu
5 min readMar 27, 2021
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I decided to add to my first Letter to a Startup Wannabe more new resources that I discovered in the last 2 years, which I think are an essential list of knowledge to be learned before even thinking on building a Tech Startup:

Fundamentals:

Customer Development:

Tools & Resources:

  • YCombinator Resources — Articles, Videos, Documents (especially the template of seed note, sales contract and term sheet)
  • Alejandro Cremades — 300 Best Tools And Resources For Entrepreneurs
  • Google for Startups is Google’s initiative to help startups thrive across every corner of the world. We bring the best of Google’s products, connections, and best practices to enable startups to build something better.
  • Maxime Blondel — 100 tools to launch & grow your start-up without web developer, without graphic designer and (almost) without money
  • Growth Supply — 400 Awesome Free Tools & Resources for Entrepreneurs and Startups
  • Askalmanac — A knowledge base that combines wisdom from tech leaders with your team’s own practices. Access to tools, templates, and guides from top startup minds. Save guides and tools to your own playbook where you can edit, comment, and make them useful for your team.
  • ToolBox ToolBox — A curated list of the best business, design, and organisational change toolboxes built by some of the most influential companies, institutions and thinkers.
  • Adalo — Turn Your Startup Idea Into Reality Without Coding! We believe anyone should be able to make an app, regardless of technical skill. Adalo is a platform that makes creating apps as easy as putting together a slide deck. What WordPress, Wix, and Squarespace have done for websites, Adalo does for apps.
  • SeedLegals — Launched as the world’s first platform that lets founders and investors easily create, negotiate and sign all the legal agreements they need to do a funding round. In less than 3 years, SeedLegals is now the largest closer of funding rounds in the UK.

Sales & Marketing:

Human Resources:

Online Learning:

  • Javelin Academy — Learn the principles of the Lean Startup method and how to maximize the power of Javelin tools.
  • Sam Altman — Startup Playbook
  • Techstars Entrepreneurs Toolkit — An online educational resource to help you learn the fundamentals of entrepreneurship and accelerate your success.
  • Google Digital Garage — 126 of free classes, covering all aspects of a Tech Startup (strategy, marketing, data, HR, soft skills, etc.)
  • Quantic — A new online business school that’s connecting a rigorous MBA education directly to positive career outcomes and a global alumni network. Quantic offers two highly selective, accredited business degree programs — the free MBA and radically affordable Executive MBA.
  • Google Ventures — The Design Sprint is a five-day process for answering critical business questions through design, prototyping, and testing ideas with customers. Developed at Google Ventures, it’s the greatest hit of business strategy, innovation, behaviour science, design thinking, and more — packaged into a battle-tested process that any team can use.

Fundraising:

Investors:

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Dragos Nicolaescu

I use my 25+ years of experience in business, management and entrepreneurship to advise executives and founders in creating and growing successful companies.