Resources

TechWadi Knowledgebase

This is just a start – the list will expand over time. Please comment and suggest top resources YOU find – as this gets larger, we will expand into multiple pages separated by topic. We are also always looking for volunteers to expand the short descriptions below with meaty and compelling summaries.

Also make sure to check out our Videos section as well as the pitch-book examples above.

Starting a Company

• Soft Skills: Public Speaking and Presentation
  • The Importance of the Narrative (Mark Suster, GRP Partners)
    When making a presentation or giving a talk, make sure you’re telling a good story
  • Quick, Practical Tips for Presentations (Mark Suster, GRP Partners)
    How to position yourself (physically) in a presentation… Also check out the links at the beginning of the post for more
• Raising Funding: the Business Plan and the Pitch
  • How to Present to Investors (Paul Graham, YCombinator)
    Some great and up-to-date advice for entrepreneurs looking for financing from a long-time investor
  • Video: Raising VC Funding (Jim Goetz, Sequioa Capital)
    Presentation to Stanford Graduate School of Business focused on developing business plans for VCs
• Raising Funding: Term Sheets and Valuation
  • Term-Sheets: Some Silicon Valley Resources
    Fantastic resource on term-sheets for early stage companies (startups), featured on Plug and Play Egypt
  • Want to Know How VC’s Calculate Valuation Differently from Founders?
    Wonderful article by entrepreneur-turned-VC Mark Suster
  • What Should You Do with Your Crappy Little Services Business? (TechCrunch)
    Should you even raise venture capital funding? Especially if you’re a profitable service -based business, it might make sense to expand current operations instead of trying to fit into a venture capitalist’s mold.
• Establishing Your Company
  • How to Allocate Founder and Employee Equity (Fred Wilson, Union Square Ventures)
    An important question when setting up your startup. Some advice from Fred Wilson – “Founding teams that allocate the founders equity fairly stay together a lot more than founding teams where one founder has a much better deal than the others.”

Running a Company

• General Strategy
  • Your Product Needs to be 10x Better than the Competition to Win: Here’s Why
    Incredibly detailed and extensive interview between California VCs Mark Suster and Bill Gross, founder of IdeaLab. A cool fact: Bill Gross was the inventor of sponsored search (as on Google today) – “he presented the idea at the TED conference in the mid 90′s and was literally boo’d while he was on stage.” In fact, Bill Gross founded GoTo, later Overture, bought by Yahoo! for $1.63 Billion in 2003. Great summary below the video so you can follow as you watch. Highly recommended.
  • Competition: the Pros and Cons
    For most businesses, competition is a given. It’s possible to live with it and do well, and yet it’s possible to be wiped out by it. A few points in this post are very relevant for the MENA region: “when your competitor spends heavily on marketing its offerings and identifying the pain point both your company and their company solve, that is good for you. It generates additional demand, and some of that demand will come your way.” But competition can also be challenging – especially in sales, human resources, and even fundraising.
  • How Startups can use Metrics to Drive Success (Mark Suster, GRP Partners)
    In a startup you are constantly under pressure and have way too many distractions. Having a set of metrics that you watch & that you feel are the key drivers of your success helps keep clarity.
• Marketing & PR
  • Seven Key Elements of Startup Marketing (David Feinleib, Mohr Davidow Ventures)
    In a noisy environment, it’s not enough to be well ranked and buying keywords. The most successful marketing strategies today have seven key components.
  • Startup Marketing: Tactical Tips From The Trenches (Dharmesh Shah, Hubspot)
    Relevant insights from serial entrepreneur, angel investor, and online blogging celebrity Dharmesh Shah
  • Video: Startup Marketing 101 – MIT Startup Bootcamp (Dharmesh Shah, HubSpot)
    Dharmesh Shah addresses an audience at MIT School of Business, with a focus on marketing the entrepreneurial way
  • Blog Posts:
    • Five Key Marketing Priorities for a Startup (VentureBeat)
    • 12 Ways to Market Your Startup With Zero Ad Spending (ArabCrunch)
    • Prediction: Facebook is no longer a viable marketing strategy for startups [but it will be for a while] (Adventurista)