Digital Coaching Content
The following content is designed to give you an easy introduction to the world of entreprenership and business model creation. You have the opportunity to learn from a variety of successful personalities and to participate in their knowledge.
Your final goal should be to use this content and create a first draft of your Business Model CANVAS and a first draft of your pitch deck. A contemporary alternative to the Business Model Canvas model is the Ecogood Business Canvas.
Once you have achieved this goal, contact us and we will provide you with qualified feedback on both of your drafts.
If you and your startup project are beyond the idea stage, use this content to further improve your product offering and business model with it. Also find useful knowledge, for example regarding marketing, branding and sales, for the startup and growth phase.
Table of Contents
What does it mean to be an entrepreneuer and why should you start a startup?
This section is about basic fundamentals of an entrepreneurial mindset and how and why you should start your own startup. Learn how to think like an entrepreneur, learn about entrepreneurial DNA and the different types of founders.
Author and Stanford Lecturer Amy Wilkinson reveals the skills underlying entrepreneurial success. Wilkinson’s career spans leadership roles at McKinsey & Company, J.P. Morgan and as founder of Alegre, a foreign-based export company.
Joe Abraham is the founder/CEO of bosiDNA.com and author of Entrepreneurial DNA: The Breakthrough Discovery That Aligns Your Business to Your Unique Strengths.
Bill Roche shares stories of students that have created their own real business ventures with PowerPlay Young Entrepreneurs. He worked directly in Langley classrooms for over ten years.
YC Group Partner Harj Taggar shares his advice on the types of people best suited to be startup founders and how to prepare to start a company in the future.
Micheal Seibel comments on his essay Why Should I Start a Startup? He cofounded Justin.tv, wich becomes Twitch.
Sam Altman and Dustin Moskovitz, Cofounder of Facebook and Asana, kick off the How to Start a Startup Course. Dustin discusses Why to Start a Startup and Sam introduces the 4 key components of Starting a Startup: Idea, Product, Team and Execution.
Learn about startup basics and ideation process
This section explores the question of how to develop good business ideas. Via the following link, you can additionally find an interesting essay by Paul Graham (founder of Y Combinator), in which he writes about how he develops good business ideas.
Paul Graham delivers an informative (and highly amusing) talk, addressing counterintuitive parts of startups.
YC Group Partner Jared Friedman shares a framework for how to get and evaluate startup ideas. He shares many examples of YC companies and the inside stories of how they came up with the ideas that turned into billion dollar companies.
In this lecture, we’re joined by Stewart Butterfield, founder and CEO of Slack, and Adam D’Angelo, founder and CEO of Quora. Sam and Stewart will explore the process of getting an idea, followed by Adam on tracking metrics for your company.
YC Partner Kevin Hale walks us through the process of evaluating ideas and how founders should think about their startups. Watch if: you haven’t picked a startup idea yet / you are worried that your startup idea isn’t good
YC Partner and Head of Admissions Dalton Caldwell talks about pivoting for startups and shares his advice on when and how founders should consider it for their companies.
Kirsty Nathoo is a Partner and the CFO at Y Combinator. She has worked with thousands of companies through all stages of their life; from incorporation to hiring to fundraising. In this lecture, Kirsty will talk about Startup Mechanics
Learn about team (management) and culture
Here you can explore a lot of necessary information on how you can find the right co-founder, build a strong startup team and a great team culture, and work together to achieve your vision.
In this Startup School lecture, YC Partner Harj Taggar shares advice on how to find the right co-founder for your startup.
Y Combinator CEO and Partner Michael Seibel on splitting equity between cofounders.
YC Partner Kevin Hale talks about the importance of building a successful working relationship with your cofounders, and setting up processes to optimize for the strengths of your team.
YC Partner Tim Brady covers the importance of building a strong and coherent culture early and shares six things that you can do now to help you create a solid foundation for your startup.
Ali Rowghani, YC Partner and CEO of the YC Continuity Fund, takes from his experience working with great leaders to share his three observations on leadership.
Ben Horowitz, founder of Andreessen Horowitz and Opsware, discusses this important management perspective that founders miss.
Learn about customer centricity and how to interview your first customer
This section will help you learn more about the relevance of customer centricity. It explains how to find the first 10 potential customers and how they are best interviewed for product development.
Michael Seibel, Managing Director at Y Combinator and co-founder of Justin.tv/Twitch and Socialcam, on how to get early customers.
Emmett Shear, Founder and CEO of Justin.tv and Twitch, covers the latter. What can you learn by talking to users that you can’t learn by looking at data? What questions should you ask? How can user interviews define or redefine your product goals?
YC Partner Eric Migicovsky, Founder of Pebble, shares a framework for asking questions and collecting feedback from your users.
Learn about product design
This section focuses on product development, starting with an MVP. It looks specifically at the development of hard-tech products and describes the path to product-market fit.
Y Combinator Managing Director and Group Partner Michael Seibel shares his approach to building an MVP and getting your first users as a pre-launch startup.
Hosain Rahman, CEO and Founder of Jawbone, covers the design process for building hardware products users love.
YC Partner Jared Friedman covers hard-tech companies and why founders should consider starting one. He also covers a couple of the most common problems hard-tech companies face and how to solve them, with examples from seven YC companies.
Y Combinator CEO and Partner Michael Seibel shares a process for building product as a small startup.
YC Partner Michael Seibel outlines how successful startups think about building something people want.
Peter Reinhardt, co-founder and CEO of Segment, shares his experience on finding product market fit.
Learn about marketing & sales
This section explains the basics of customer persona development and creating the customer journey (map). You will also learn the basics of selling and be shown examples of possible customer touchpoints. Via the following link, you can use a HubSpot persona creator for free.
Getting started with marketing as a new startup isn’t an easy task. You’ve got to make sure you have a solid foundation on who you’re trying to sell to before you start anything else, and that is where buyer personas come into play.
The buyer’s journey is the active research process someone goes through leading up to making a purchase. It’s a fundamental part of an inbound strategy because it’s a framework you can use to empathize with your prospects.
Ash Rust, YC W12 Managing Partner, Sterling Road discusses the basics of enterprise sales.
Learn how to create a customer journey map with this 8-step template so you can design a user experience to build your brand.
Learn 21 touchpoints on your customer journey map so you can design an experience to shape perceptions at every interaction.
A quick guide to running a customer journey map workshop.
Learn about branding
This section teaches you the basics of your brand strategy. For a better understanding you will get concrete examples of brand strategies of well-known brands. Finally, it explains what a brand persona is and how it differs from the customer persona.
In this brand strategy 101 course, you’ll learn brand strategy fundamentals, process, framework, elements and deliverables.
Discover how the best brand strategies with our top 10 brand strategy examples from Nike, Apple, Tesla, Harley Davidson, AirBnB and more.
Learn what a brand persona is and how to create an engaging one to connect and resonate with your customers.
Learn about launching your product
This section explains how to launch your product the right way, how to get your first real customers, and how to measure how customers use your product.
YC Partner Kat Manalac presents on how startups should think about launching and why you should do it repeatedly. Watch this if: you haven’t launched yet / you launched, but it didn’t go well.
YC Partner & Former Head of Growth at Airbnb, Gustaf Alströmer, gives tactical advice to answer the question: how do I get my first customers? Gustaf will cover this topic for all kinds of companies – whether you’re B2B or B2C.
Suhail Doshi, founder of YC alumnus Mixpanel and a world-class expert on measurement, details how startups should think about discovering the important facts about how their product is used.
Learn about business models, pricing, finance and growth
This section explains how to manage your time as a founder under increasing pressure. You will see different business models, learn more about pricing and startup finance. In addition to that, you’ll discover the right growth channels and metrics.
YC Visiting Partner Divya Bhat talks about how to set your KPIs (key metrics) and how to prioritize your time. This talk helps founders launch faster and set goals in order to make real progress.
YC Group Partner Aaron Epstein talks about different startup business models, how to monetize, and how to price your product. Pricing and monetization is one of the most common questions from founders.
YC Partner and GC Carolynn Levy details the basics of startup financing and how modern early stage rounds of financing are done using convertible securities, like the SAFE.
YC Partner Kevin Hale goes over the fundamentals of pricing and monetization, how it affects your customer acquisition strategy, and how to optimize it through a few rules of thumb.
YC Partner and CFO Kirsty Nathoo shares the most common mistakes startups make with their finances and how they can prevent them.
YC Partner and growth expert Gustaf Alströmer talks about how to measure product market fit, how to decide on a growth channel, metrics that lie about PMF and other mechanics of growth for startups.
Learn about fundraising, pitching and investor perspective
This section provides you with a lot of useful knowledge about fundraising. You will learn what ways of fundraising exist, how to deal with investors and how to pitch your startup to them.
YC Partner Brad Flora has seen startup fundraising from every angle. He has coached hundreds of companies on fundraising. In this talk, he shares stories and advice on how modern startup fundraising works 2022.
YC Partner and GC Carolynn Levy details the basics of startup financing and how modern early stage rounds of financing are done using convertible securities, like the SAFE.
YC Partner Kevin Hale goes over how to package up your idea and communicate it to an investor. He shares his tips on how to craft your pitch in a clear and concise way that effectively grabs your audience’s attention.
YC Partner Aaron Harris gives invaluable advice for how to most effectively and strategically meet with investors.
YC Partners Anu Hariharan and Adora Cheung answer questions from Startup School founders on how investors measure startups.
YC Partner Geoff Ralston gives an introduction to the key concepts to keep in mind once you enter a fundraising process.