"How to Start a Startup" - Sam Altman/YC/Silicon Valley Entrepreneurs
- 20 taped lectures + background reading materials
"Reference Guide on our Freedom & Responsibility Culture" - Netflix
- 128 slides in a pdf
"Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future" - Peter Thiel
- 200pg book
My own personal pieces of advice:
Hiring is unbelievably important. No matter how good a candidate looks on paper, no matter how much you like them, no matter what their role is, always do a live technical test (I call it an âexerciseâ to lower their anxiety, and I do it somewhat collaboratively).
Give them a set of data (e.g. in a google spreadsheet), have them share their screen, explain the context of the data, explain what it is that you want, encourage them to ask questions, and see how it goes.
Do they try to understand the data? Do they understand the goal of the task? Do they go directly to their favorite tool (e.g. a pivot table) without understanding how it applies to this data set? Do they sanity check their results in a different way? Do they get flustered by not knowing the answer/being outside their element? Are they comfortable asking questions when theyâre confused? Are they threatened by you making corrections/pointing out something they missed? Do they seem to understand and update based on your guidance?
Maybe theyâll bomb and youâll decide to hire them anyway, but at least youâll have a lot more information about where theyâll need support.
See also Useful Services (the thing I am currently most impressed by is Mercury bankâit was already clearly the best bank for startups, and it just keeps offering more thoughtful services and user interfaces. They even have a great option for low-risk investing for allowing your treasury to keep up with inflation). I find myself wanting to invest in Mercury, poach their talent, or at least get an insider tour to better understand whatâs making them so good.