Welcome to the Startup Lore - Deyan's guide to creating successful startups. The Startup Lore is a free online guidebook, which summarizes some of the most important things I have learned about building new ventures. It is based on my experience in the past 10 years, during which I cofounded 2 companies (both acquired) and 2 nonprofits as well as worked on at least 8 products, which failed to get enough traction. This is the resource I wish I had when I was starting out as an entrepreneur. [1]
The Startup Lore is exclusively focused on the kind of venture I want to build: startups with an ambition to have a massive impact. [2] There are 5 sections in total:
- Introduction to the Startup Lore is useful for first time readers, who are interested in getting some more context about the Lore.
- Understanding Startups describes the defining features of startups and their implications for evaluating ideas and managing new ventures.
- Building the Startup Organization focuses on some of the necessary building blocks of startups such as recruiting a team and fundraising.
- Achieving Product/Market Fit explains how to quickly and efficiently validate the key hypotheses that the startup idea rests on.
- Conclusion provides some brief concluding remarks.
I hope you enjoy the Startup Lore and welcome any feedback or comments that you might have. Note that it is a constant work in progress and there are plenty of things that I need to fix / add. If you have never been here before, you might want to check out the preface.
Or just jump right in: I have a simple starting point - startups are fundamentally different from companies.
Notes
[1] The usage of "lore" is dedicated to Fravia of Searchlores and reverse engineering fame - one of my earliest and greatest teachers. May he rest in peace.
[2] Please note that this is a rather specific definition of startups, based on my professional goals. Most new ventures do not fit into this category - as Mark Suster explains in this excellent blog post.