Startup Articles

A collection of must-read startup articles for the first-time entrepreneur. The articles below should give you inspiration and direction for your next startup. Most of the articles are geared towards web-based startups; however, the principles of starting a business remain the same. You may be unfamiliar with some of the tools and terminology used in the articles. It is imperative that you learn what they are and how to use them. Google is one of the most invaluable learning tools ever created.

Getting Started

How to Create a Million Dollar Business this Weekend -  Tim Ferris, Noah Kagan of AppSumo on creating a profitable idea, finding customers, and assessing their value.
How I Quickly Test and Validate Startup Ideas - David Berube founder of MoFuse. A short post that will give you  a taste of how to test startup ideas. NOTE: Contrary to what he says, I think Facebook and Google AdWords are awesome for testing.
How to Build a Web Startup - Steve Blank’s Lean Launchpad. He is an expert on starting a business with minimal risk. This is one of the most complete posts on starting a business.

Minimum Viable Products & Testing

How I Built My Minimum Viable Product - Micro-testing (testing products that don’t exist yet) won’t work for all products. Ash Maurya on putting together a MVP.
From Minimum Viable Product to Landing Pages - Ash Maurya on creating and testing landing pages.

Customer Development

Customer Development Checklist for Web Startups – Part 1 - Ash Maurya’s checklist could be the most valuable to startup entrepreneurs on the internet. It is a step by step process for building your product.
Customer Development Checklist for My Web Startup – Part 2 - These articles have been so popular that he built, Running Lean, an entire book around them.
The First Thing That Matters: Product/Market Fit
How I am Measuring Product/Market Fit

Promoting Ideas with Klout

Pitching the right idea to the right people can make a world of difference. The question is how do I find the right people?

These last few weeks I have spent a great deal of time brainstorming ideas to promote the Elephant on Campus. When thinking about people to pitch we are looking for people that are influential about higher education reform. We must figure out a way to target a small, but passionate group of people with no budget.

About this same time I discovered Klout, a free influence measurement tool for Twitter. Klout’s algorithm measures the interactivity of the content users create and share on a scale of 0 to 100. The higher the score, the more influential the user.

The most important tool is Klout Topics, which pinpoints topics specific users are influential about.

So, for the documentary we are looking for those who are influential about #education, #college and #educationreform. The Top +K Recipient category is the most accurate way to measure who is influential about a specific topic, because users are the ones that awarding influence.

Once potential influencers are found it is up to you to reach out and make a compelling pitch. This is just a way to find influential people interested in a particular topic, that are not necessarily famous.