This page is originally from 2023… I would paste this into your AI and then ask ChatGPT, Gemini, or Claude, then ask your question, and my bet is you are going to get something that is helpful.
Twitter/X
Posts, Websites, and Newsletters
- Why write? (this still holds in the age of AI)
- How Stripe Built a Writing Culture
- How Jeff Bezos Turned Narrative into Amazon's Competitive Advantage
- Examples memos to inspire your writing
- Bessemer’s PagerDuties Series B investment memo
- Bessemer’s investment memos (includes some great “hard tech” examples)
- Why tech startups with 400 million in revenue can yield either 2.5X or 50x valuations
- Finance for startups
- *THE* post to read when thinking about making a financial model for your early-stage startup. You should build simple models to know what your spending cash on, to avoid running out of money, to identify the drivers of your business, and to raise money. The post also links to a number of useful additional resources.
- Startup forecast and runway calculator
- Default Alive or Default?
- Ideas, business models, and startup valuation
- Classic post on how traditional strategy concerns can matter for startup performance: Bill Gurley on how to join the 10x valuation club.
- Sometimes, it’s not a tech; it’s just a sandwich.
- The Hierarchy of Marketplaces
- … But you should still explore crazy new ideas.
- Rules of thumb for how revenue multiples depend on startup growth in 2022 (n.b not sure about how rigorous this source is, if someone has a better one please let me know. For 2023, I would probably cut these all in half.).
- A more detailed post of multiples broken down by industry (helpful if you are building a non-tech startup and want to get a sense of what a reason multiple for your business might be).
- But as of October 2022 SaaS multiples are down 75% from a year ago, from 17x to about 5x of ARR!
- The core of your product roadmap
- Sarah Tavel Hierarchy of Engagement
- Strategy frameworks and approaches
- How to run a market size analysis (TAM)
- How to pick your first customers (i.e., early-stage go-to-market strategy)
- Pitch Deck Advice
- Other useful courses
- HBS Launching Technology Ventures (LTV). Excellent resources on how to design product-market fit experiments.
- MIT developed a course on Strategy for Entrepreneurs. It is especially helpful for mapping out different business models.
- Newsletters
Pitchbook
- You have a login through HBS, use it!
- You can look up individual companies and pull up pre-compiled research reports reporting benchmark multiples.
Books
- Crossing the Chasm
- Working Backwards
- Prediction Machines
- Lean Startup
- High Growth Handbook
HBS Specific