The Best Articles in Startups
The most useful articles and videos in Startups from around the web—beginners to advanced—curated by thought leaders and our community. We focus on timeless pieces and update the list whenever we discover new, must-read articles or videos—make sure to bookmark and revisit this page.
Top 5 Startups Articles
At a glance: these are the articles that have been most read, shared, and saved in Startups by Refind users in 2023 so far.
Videos
Watch a video to get a quick overview.
Behind the scenes of Calendly’s rapid growth
Annie Pearl is the Chief Product Officer at Calendly. Previously, she was Chief Product Officer at Glassdoor, as well as Director of Product Management at Bo...
Lessons from working with 600+ YC startups
Gustaf Alströmer is a Group Partner at Y Combinator, where he has worked with over 600 startups. He’s also a fellow Airbnb alumnus and even started the origi...
Lessons from Airtable’s unconventional growth strategy
Brought to you by OneSchema—import CSV data 10x faster: https://oneschema.co/lenny; Pando—always-on employee progression: https://www.pando.com/lenny; and Le...
Series A terms you should ALWAYS negotiate
By the time you get to the A round, you probably feel that you have your business under control. It's time to get a huge investment and turn your growth into...
10 lessons on bootstrapping a $200m business
Patrick Campbell is the founder and CEO of ProfitWell, which he bootstrapped and sold for over $200 million. In this special episode, we explore 10 big ideas...
What is ...?
New to Startups? These articles make an excellent introduction.
Design Thinking, Lean Startup and Agile: What is the difference?
What is the difference between Design Thinking, Lean Startup and Agile?
How to ...?
How to Cultivate Resilience: A Four Part Framework
Part I of Rethinking Resilience
How to maintain engineering velocity as you scale
Faire’s engineering team grew from five to over 100 engineers in three years. Throughout this growth, we were able to sustain our pace of engineering execution by adhering to four guiding principles.
How to Spot Business Ideas Worth Pursuing
Your company might be eager to innovate, but you'll want to have a strategy in place to govern the prioritization of ideas - and avoid chasing shiny objects.
How to handle comp challenges at every startup stage — Kaitlyn Knopp’s advice from Pequity, Instacart, Cruise…
Kaitlyn Knopp, founder & CEO of Pequity, shares tactical compensation advice for every startup stage — from initial leveling and comp philosophy, to negotiating offers, extending exercise windows, and…
Trending
These links are currently making the rounds in Startups on Refind.
Founders Need to be Contrarian and Right to Pass the Validation Phase
Labelbox co-founder and CEO Manu Sharma sits down with First Round partner Todd Jackson to tell the story of how he prioritized idea validation and customer discovery before building Labelbox.
How to Pivot and Succeed as a Solo Non-Technical Founder
Alma founder and CEO Harry Ritter sits down with First Round partner Todd Jackson to tell the story of how he tackled a huge pandemic pivot that turned his initial startup idea on its head and found…
How Intercom navigated the AI paradigm shift
Intercom’s Des Traynor and Fergal Reid share field notes on what other builder teams should know as they transform their products with language models.
You Probably Shouldn’t Work at a Startup
It’s overrated—both financially and emotionally
The Silent Killer of Your Operating Practice: Fear
Amanda Schwartz Ramirez, former PayPal strategy leader and now COO advisor for startups, shares the 5 biggest fears that can derail your company's strategic planning sessions (and tactical advice for…
Short Articles
Short on time? Check out these useful short articles in Startups—all under 10 minutes.
What I Learned Reading 1,000 Investor Reports
Mar 1, 2023 SHARE ↓ I read 1,000 investor reports last year. It’s part of my job. Along the way I’ve learned a few things I’d like to share — from the very basics to some that may surprise you. Why…
Davids in the Land of (AI) Goliaths
How do startups compete in the midst of a platform shift?
Focus
The best time to stop a distraction is before it starts. The second best time is now.
«The best time to stop a distraction is before it starts. The second best time is now.»
What it takes to get paying users?
The underline principle of knowing customer journey from being unknown to being obsessed with the brand.
The Rise of the Silicon Valley Small Business
What you need to know about the next big startup archetype.
Long Articles
These are some of the most-read long-form articles in Startups.
Are You Ready to Hire a Data Scientist? Advice for Founders
Are you ready to hire a data scientist? Mengying Li, Growth Data Science Lead at Notion, shares her framework for testing whether you should invest in this key hire and how to find the right data…
The One Tool Startups Need to Brainstorm, Test and Win
At the heart of the Lean Startup movement, the Business Model Canvas can help early stage startups carve out a successful model.
Investing in Internal Documentation: A Brick-by-Brick Guide for Startups
David Nunez, an early hire at Stripe and Uber, shares his step-by-step playbook for establishing good internal documentation habits at your startup. He unpacks his tested tactics for creating a…
The Elephant in the room: The myth of exponential hypergrowth
Fast-growing startups are frequently described as “exponential,” especially when the product is “viral.” Turns out, this is incorrect, even for “viral” products like Facebook and Slack. If you have an…
«t’s well-known that growth—as a percentage—naturally declines with scale, even when there’s nothing wrong with the company.»
The Wisdom of Patrick Collison
A newsletter for the ambitious. Learn from the world's best founders through deep dives sent every Sunday.
Podcasts
On the go? Listen to these Podcasts and audio in Startups.
Reid Hoffman | Crisis Management
A re-broadcast of our episode featuring Greylock general partner Reid Hoffman in conversation with his Blitzscaling co-author Chris Yeh. In this episode (originally recorded in May 2022), Hoffman and
Thought Leaders
We monitor hundreds of thought leaders, influencers, and newsletters in Startups, including:
Sam Altman
@OpenAI
steve blank
Customer Development & Secret History, Teaching at Stanford and Columbia
andrew chen
a16z GAMES FUND ONE. Investing in games, AI, VR/AR, metaverse, and the future of entertainment!
Ryan Hoover
Founder of @ProductHunt. Investor at @WeekendFund. Writing about fun(d) stuff at http://signatureblock.co with @vedikaja_in. Say hi! 👋🏼
Eric Ries
Trying to change how startups are built.
Publications
We monitor hundreds of publications, blogs, newsletters, and news sources in Startups, including:
a16z
we invest in software eating the world http://a16z.com/portfolio/ http://a16z.com/podcasts/
Every 📧
We publish smart, thoughtful essays on business and personal development. Our mission is to feed the minds and hearts of the people who build the internet.
Tomasz Tunguz
Venture capitalist at @theoryvc. Student of Startups. Author of Winning with Data http://amzn.to/1UQAMSr. Author of http://tomtunguz.com
Packy McCormick
Boyboss @ Not Boring: http://notboring.co || Not Boring Capital || Advisor @a16z crypto
Lenny Rachitsky
👋 Newsletter http://LennysNewsletter.com | Podcast: http://LennysPodcast.com | Jobs: http://LennysJobs.com | Investing: http://LennyRachitsky.com/investing
What is Refind?
Every day Refind picks the most relevant links from around the web for you. Picking only a handful of links means focusing on what’s relevant and useful. We favor timeless pieces—links with long shelf-lives, articles that are still relevant one month, one year, or even ten years from now. These lists of the best resources on any topic are the result of years of careful curation.
How does Refind curate?
It’s a mix of human and algorithmic curation, following a number of steps:
- We monitor 10k+ sources and 1k+ thought leaders on hundreds of topics—publications, blogs, news sites, newsletters, Substack, Medium, Twitter, etc.
- In addition, our users save links from around the web using our Save buttons and our extensions.
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The result: lists of the best and most useful articles on hundreds of topics.
How does Refind detect «timeless» pieces?
We focus on pieces with long shelf-lives—not news. We determine «timelessness» via a number of metrics, for example, the consumption pattern of links over time.
How many sources does Refind monitor?
We monitor 10k+ content sources on hundreds of topics—publications, blogs, news sites, newsletters, Substack, Medium, Twitter, etc.
Which sources does Refind monitor in Startups?
We monitor hundreds of sources in Startups, including a16z, Every 📧, Tomasz Tunguz, Packy McCormick, Lenny Rachitsky, and many more.
Who are the thought leaders in Startups?
We follow dozens of thought leaders in Startups, including Sam Altman, steve blank, andrew chen, Ryan Hoover, Eric Ries.
Missing a thought leader? Submit them here
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