Build Startups Like Entrepreneur

There is No shortcuts. No growth hacks. Just building & shipping every day and talking to users is the 🔑

This book is intended to give entrepreneurs students a foundational understanding of leveraging a development framework to quickly build a MVP.

Because you have little time, here's the mega short TL;DR (too long; didn't read) summary of this book:

💡 Idea

• Get an idea from problems in your own life. If you don't have problems that are original enough, become a more original person. Don't build products that are solutions in search of a problem.

🛠 Build

• Build your idea with the tools you already know. Don't spend a year learning some language you'll never use. Don't outsource building to other people, that's a competitive disadvantage. Build only the core functionality. The rest comes later.

🚀 Launch

• Launch early and multiple times. Launch to famous startups websites (like Product Hunt, Hacker News, The Next Web), mainstream websites (like Reddit) and mainstream press (like Forbes).
• But more importantly, find where your specific audience hangs out on the internet (or in real life) and launch there. Launch in a friendly way, that means "here's something I made that might be useful for you", instead of acting like you're some big giant new startup coming to change the world.

🌱 Grow

• Grow organically. A great product that people really need which is better than the rest will pull people in. You don't need ads for that. Don't hire people if there's no revenue yet. Don't hire many people if there's revenue either. Stay lean and fast. Do things yourself.

💰 Monetize

• Monetize by asking users for money. Don't sell their data. Don't put ads everywhere. Don't dilute your product. Be honest that you need money to build the product they love and they'll be fine paying for it.

🤖 Automate

• Automate by writing programs that do stuff that you do repeatedly. Only automate if it's worth the time saved. For stuff that's too hard to automate or not worth it, hire contractors. Let them work as autonomously as possible. Where possible let robots manage them (for example by giving them alerts when things happen in your product). This lets you take time off, or work on your next business.

🚪 Exit

• Exit by not putting your company for sale, but letting buyers come to you. Filter out the majority of buyers that aren't serious. With the serious buyers left, negotiate a price by valuating your own company. Price it agressively high. Always keep the bargaining power on your side of the table. Get paid in cash, not stock and don't fall for the trap of earnout bonuses. Make sure you're prepared for the emotional fallout of selling (and missing) your business.

🤝 Ethics

• Not a chapter but important: be ethical, and don't cut corners on ethics. You'll be rewarded by not doing dodgy stuff like spamming, manipulating your users into doing stuff, growth hacking your search rankings or faking your social media, or abusing your power to compete unfairly if you're successful. If you make a good product, you don't need any of this. If you make mistakes, own up to them and say sorry. Be nice as a person and especially as a company. Karma always pays back in the end. Just being ethical and nice is a competitive advantage these days because most companies (and people) are not!

📝 Homework

• Homework: Each chapter ends with homework exercises that you can do. Instead of just reading, I'd like you to use this book as a handbook while actually building and shipping a product. It doesn't matter if it fails. But you need to do something instead of just read! This is not startup porn! This is startup life.

📕 This book

💡 Idea

• 1.1. Introduction
• 1.2. Solve your own problems
• 1.3. Your problem might just be everyone else's
• 1.4. You are the greatest expert at your own problems
• 1.5. How well do you need to know a problem to solve it?
• 1.6. Be more original, and your ideas will be original
• 1.7. The downside of solving only your own problems
• 1.8. Always start from the problem, not the solution
• 1.9. To get big, you have to start small
• 1.10. Start with a micro niche
• 1.11. From micro niche to multi-niche
• 1.12. From multi-niche to vertical integration
• 1.13. From vertical integration to becoming a platform
• 1.14. You just became big by starting small!
• 1.15. Your idea does not have to be earth-shattering
• 1.16. Create a list of ideas and keep track of them
• 1.17. Should you make ideas alone or in a group?
• 1.18. Don't be afraid to share your ideas
• 1.19. Conclusion 1.19.1. Resources mentioned 1.19.2. Your homework

🛠 Build

• 2.1. Introduction
• 2.2. Build fast and minimal
• 2.2.1. Downsides of fast development
• 2.2.2. Your enemy is perfection
• 2.2.3. How viable should a minimum viable product (MVP) be?
• 2.3. Build yourself or outsource
• 2.3.1. DIY vs. people who hire others to do it for them
• 2.3.2. DIY vs. big teams with VC money
• 2..5. My gripe with venture capital in terms of building products
• 3.3.4. Bootstrapping vs. venture capital
• 3.3.4.a. The importance of keeping costs down
• 3.4. To build, should you learn to code?
• 3.5. Tools
• 3.5.1. Which tools should you use to build?
• 3.5.2. My "light" stack
• 3.5.3. Why are people so obsessed with tools?
• 3.5.4. How do you evaluate if a new tool is useful for you?
• 3.6. Native vs. web
• 3.6.1. Web
• 3.6.2. Native
• 3.6.3. User experience and development
• 3.6.4. Updating native apps vs. web apps
• 3.6.5. Hybrid web + native apps
• 3.6.6. What are people using most?
• 3.6.7. A future where your web app lives inside other native  apps
• 3.6.8. The web and native will merge in the future
• 3.6.9. Learn both
• 3.6.10. What are you able to build now?
• 3.7. Building with constraints
• 3.7.1. No money/investment
• 3.7.2. No office
• 3.7.3. No coding skills
• 3.7.4. No connections
• 3.8. Building a startup without coding
• 3.8.1. Building a landing page
• 3.8.2. Accepting user data entry
• 3.8.3. Processing & manipulating user data
• 3.8.4. Contacting users
• 3.8.5. Making tasks for contractors
• 3.8.6. Charging users payments
• 3.8.7. Okay, let's try build something
• 3.9. Let's talk APIs
• 3.9.1. Why are they useful?
• 3.9.2. You can build a business on other people's API's
• 3.10. Conclusion
• 3.10.1. Resources mentioned
• 3.10.2. Your homework

🚀 Launch

•  4.1. Introduction
• 4.2. What is a launch?
• 4.3. Why even launch?
• 4.4. How fast should you launch?
• 4.5. Preparing your app for a launch
• 4.5.1. Fix most bugs
• 4.S.2. Add an email box
• 4.5.3. Add push notifications
• 4.5.4. Set up analytics
• 4.5.5. Feedback box
• 4.6. Where to launch?
• 4.6.1. Typical places to launch a startup
• 4.6.1.a. Launching on Product Hunt
• 4.6.1.b. Launching on Hacker News
• 4.6.1.c. Launching on Reddit
• 4.6.1.d. Launching on Beta List
• 4.6.1.e. There will be hate
• 4.6.2. Things not to do
• 4.6.2.a. Asking people to share/like/post your product
• 4.6.2.b. Buying fake upvotes, likes, followers
• 4.6.2.c. So why doesn't this work
• 4.6.2.d. Be organic
• 4.6.3. Telling your story
• 4.6.3.a. Blog
• 4.6.4. Press
• 4.6.4.a. Why press matters
• 4.6.4.b. Why press increasingly matters less
• 4.6.4.c. How to get press
• 4.6.4.d. Which press outlets
• 4.6.5. Don't stick to one launch, keep launching
• 4.6.5.a. Make every feature a launch opportunity
• 4.6.5.b. Side project marketing
• 4.7. How to stay motivated working on one product
• 4.7.1. If it doesn't motivate you, sell it or kill it
• 4.7.2. How many ideas should I work on at a time?
• 4.8. Conclusion
• 4.8.1. Resources mentioned
• 4.8.2. Your homework   

🌱 Grow

•  5.1. Introduction
• 5.2. Why is organic growth better?
• 5.2.1. Especially...fake users
• 5.3. How to get organic growth
• 5.3.1. Get new users
• 5.3.1.a. Keep launching
• 5.3.1.b. Spinning off
• 5.3.1.c. Tell stories to people & press
• 5.3.1.d. Build in public
• 5.3.1.e. Make people share easily
• 5.3.1.f. Human-readable URLs and slugs
• 5.4. Launch an API
• 5.5. Build with your users
• 5.6. Measure how you stand up against your competitors
• 5.7. Conclusion
• 5.7.1. Resources mentioned
• 5.7.2. Your homework

💰 Monetize

• 6.1. Introduction
• 6.2. Why is monetization so important?
• 6.5. Don't be afraid to charge money
• 6.4. Charge money, get hate
• 6.5. Build with monetization in mind
• 6.6. Monetization is validation
• 6.7. Business models
• 6.7.1. Limit features to paid users
• 6.7.2. Pay-per-feature
• 6.7.3. Ads
• 6.7.4. Sponsorships
• 6.7.5. Patronage
• 6.7.6. Subscription-based memberships
• 6.7.7. Community model
• 6.7.7.a. The story of Nomad List's paid membership community
• 6.7.8. Job boards
• 6.7.9. Conditional payments
• 6.7.10. Productizing an agency into a SaaS
• 6.7.11. Learn from your competitors' business models
• 6.7.12. Keep experimenting with business models
• 6.7.13. When are you done monetizing?
• 6.7.13.a. It depends on your objectives
• 6.7.13.b. How big do you want to be?
• 6.7.13.c. Widen your market
• 6.7.13.d. Grow the pie
• 6.8. Payment platforms
• 6.8.1. Stripe
• 6.8.2. Braintree
• 6.8.3. PayPal
• 6.8.4. Local alternatives
• 6.8.5. Stripe Atlas
• 6.8.6. Use a combination of platforms
• 6.9. Use a Typeform to charge fast
• 6.10. How to deal with refunds?
• 6.11. How to deal with bookkeeping and tax?
• 6.12. Conclusion
• 6.12.1. Resources mentioned
• 6.12.2. Your homework

🤖 Automate

•  7.1. Introduction
• 7.2. How is automation relevant?
• 7.3. What's a robot really?
• 7.4. Don't automate if it's not worth to automate it
• 7.5. Where do humans fit in here?
• 7.5.1. What if the robots can't fix things themselves. How do the robots
• ask the humans for help?
• 7.6. So this is like passive income, right? No!
• 7.7. The "bus test"
• 7.8. Conclusion
• 7.8.1. Resources mentioned
• 7.8.2. Your homework

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