Some Start-up Related Stuff

Here is a collection of some start-up related stuff that I have come across.

Next Big What- An India-based platform for entrepreneurs

Hatch - Accelerator and Incubator based out of Chandigarh. Their website has good articles about some start-up basics. Check out their resources section to see some sample business plan templates.

Yourstory - News about Indian Start-ups

The RodinHoods - Excellent online community of entrepreneurs.

NEN - Vast collection of resources. Don't expect too much details but it covers the basics. Their associative program with Tata is called 'First Dot' focuses on student entrepreneurship.

TechCrunch - Best source of global news about tech-based start-ups

The stuff listed till here was more like 'fundas for start-up' . It mostly dwells on 'What' should be done regarding various aspects of a start-up. But it does not go into exploring reasons for why it should be done. Therefore if you wish to go deeper into understanding about a start-up, the links listed below might help you.

How to Build A Startup - A one of its kind course with a totally different approach.

Paul Graham's Essays - There are about 200 essays, some of which are well over 3000 words. If you have the patience and time to go through them, you will find many gems in there. Paul Graham is the founder of Y Combinator, world's best start-up accelerator. In these elaborate essays, he describes his views regarding various issues that start-ups face apart from other topics such as hacking.

Also, a link to the best start-up tools list I could find on the web:

Startup Tools by Steve Blank

Hope this helps :)
Would really welcome additions to this list.

Edit:
Another Start-up course suggested by Samarth Bansal : Technology Entrepreneurship course by Stanford : (http://venture-lab.org/venture)

Book Review: Founders at Work by Jessica Livingston

I could not have found a better topic for my first blog post than a book review of the book which could as well be titled 'Chronicles of Tech-Entrepreneurs'. This book will definitely feature in my list of 'Best among the Favourites'.

Founders At Work by Jessica Livingston contains interviews of start-up founders (about 30, some of which are Apple (Woz), RIM (Mike Lazardis), PayPal (Levchin) and Hotmail (Bhatia) among others. The best part about this book is that these interviews are printed verbatim, in the form of a dialogue between Jessica Livingston and the founders which has helped in capturing the emotions of the founders when they talk about their beginning days. Their fear, doubt, confusion, joy and satisfaction just flow naturally. It almost feels as if they are talking to you in person.

Being a partner at YC has given Jessica a very keen insight into the start-ups which can be clearly seen in the questions that she has put up to the founders. The focus is on the very early days and the challenges the entrepreneurs struggle against during that period. This makes the content of the book very relevant to the founders who are planning to start-up since this phase, mostly, is a crazy roller-coaster ride in terms of emotions. The questions asked to the founders seem designed to explore these very emotions. One of the questions Jessica interestingly asks each of the founder is "When did you come closest to quitting?"

But the most fascinating aspect about this book is the exploration of the combination of technology and business and how it can bring about a revolution in the way people do things. In each of these interviews, the founders talk of how they faced a problem, observed that many other people also face similar problems, developed a solution through technology and made it available to people through business. It shows that certain people just choose to be luckier than others by making their choices in such a way. For some it was a continuous tweaking of the product or business model, for others it was opening one start-up after another. Needless to say, passion, perseverance, technical abilities and business insights are frequently mentioned in this book. If you are passionate about start-ups, this book will make a perfect collection of bed-time stories for you.

Thanks to Sneha Bengani for reading drafts of this.