10 Useful Resources For Aspiring Entrepreneurs

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Whether you’ve just started a business or thinking of becoming an entrepreneur, becoming the being a CEO is one of the toughest jobs you’ll ever do. While it’s true that you have a lot of power, the cliché holds true: with great power, comes great responsibility. And as an entrepreneur, you need to ensure the business is successful and continue to grow.

You’ll have to lead different people with different personalities to achieve the main goal for your company. And in the backstage, you have to deal with investors’ and shareholders’ expectations.

Venture capitalist, Ben Horowitz, states how difficult the job of a CEO can be: “Look – this is the terror of being a founder & CEO. It is all your fault. Every decision, every person you hire, every dumb thing you buy or do – ultimately, you’re at the end.”

You need all the help you can get to lead your company successfully and make sure that you’re keeping your customer base happy – and continuously growing.

In this blog post, discover 10 useful resources you can refer to on a regular basis. Learn how to become a better entrepreneur, how to build a successful business and how to build a community of happy customers:

1. Startup Grind

This is one of the largest communities for entrepreneurs. Startup Grind has a community of over 2,000,000 entrepreneurs across 600 cities in 125 countries.

The community provides content that members will find useful for their businesses. Furthermore, Startup Grind organizes monthly local events in various countries.

In these events, local founders and investors will share their lessons on how they built their successful companies. Added to that, the community organizes a global conference in Silicon Valley that features entrepreneurs around the world.

2. Coursera

Building a business requires a lot of learning. Fortunately, Coursera will link you to many reputable universities worldwide and their best online courses.

Whatever the type of business you want to start and the knowledge you need, Coursera will provide courses that meet your needs. With collaboration with universities like Stanford and the University of Pennsylvania, you can also obtain online degrees.

Even better, most of these courses cost between $25 and $99 which makes it affordable for most people. For example, here’s an Entrepreneurship course from Wharton (in UPenn) that you can enroll for free.

3. Odoo Scale-up!

Simulation is one of the best ways to learn about a process. Odoo Scale-up! is a game that takes you through all the important business processes.

As an aspiring CEO, you’ll learn how to build a business from scratch and grow it into a big entity. The game has 7 business cases with 8 to 10 cards each.
Odoo scale-up

To play the game, you have to pick a card, play online to create a solution for the business case, and compare your solution to Odoo’s at the end of the game. Through this game, you can learn about business on an interactive platform.

4. VentureBeat

Getting the right news at the right time can be a boost for any business. And while you’re looking for investors, it’s vital to find news about how new companies are funded.

VentureBeat provides news about the venture capital industry. This way, you can find investors who are investing in the type of business you want to create.

5. OnStartups

Learning about start-ups from someone who has built a successful start-up will teach you to prepare for potential situations. OnStartups is a blog by HubSpot’s co-founder, Dharmesh Shah.

The sales and marketing software company has grown from scratch to become a multi-billion-dollar company. Without a doubt, Shah can teach you one or two things about building successful start-ups.

On the blog, you’ll find insights such as communication tips, remote work, how to pick the right idea, how to pitch investors and others.

6. Acceleration: what all entrepreneurs must know about start-up law

Understanding the legal side of a business is important at different stages of your company’s growth. Acceleration is a book written by Ryan Roberts who’s an attorney for start-ups.
accelaration

But before the book, Roberts created startuplawyer.com which educated aspiring CEOs about vital legal issues.

7. Quora (Startup Founders and Entrepreneurs page)

There’s a reason why Quora is one of the most popular question and answer websites (forums) online. Quora has been able to reduce irrelevant answers or push them down the page for questions.
quora screenshot

As a result, this platform has attracted so many professionals in different fields. By following the “Startup Founders and Entrepreneurs” topic, you’ll see quality answers to important questions about startups.

Furthermore, you can ask questions about starting a business and even request reputable authors to answer. This way, you get answers from people who are already successful at starting and running a business.

For instance, here’s a question under the topic:
quora answer

8. Y Combinator

Since 2005, Y Combinator has funded over 2,000 start-ups. Twice a year, the company invests $150,000 (presently) in many start-ups.

Apart from this, start-ups also get exposure to investors who are willing to invest in exciting ideas. After this, Y Combinator continues to assist founders during their company’s existence.

How influential has Y Combinator been? The company provided seed funds to start-ups such as Airbnb, Stripe, and Dropbox that grew to be multi-billion-dollar businesses.

9. LivePlan

Creating a business plan can be an impossible task for someone who has never done it. But without a business plan, it’s difficult to run a successful business or get bank loans or entice investors.
liveplan screenshot

Thanks to LivePlan, you can build a robust business plan within a short time. LivePlan provides over 500 sample business plans across different industries.

You also get video and text tutorials to take you through the process. Moreso, LivePlan helps to create a one-page pitch that you can present to investors.

10. The Lean Startup

If you’re looking for the next big business idea, you won’t find it in this book. Instead of this, The Lean Startup(by Eric Ries) teaches how to create robust processes to make your company nimble and able to survive inevitable problems that every business face.
the lean startup

As Eric Ries says in the book, “Startup success is not a consequence of good genes or being in the right place at the right time. Startup success can be engineered by following the right process, which means it can be learned, which means it can be taught.”

The ideas in this book have been adapted from the hugely successful Toyota production system. Within the pages, it’s evident that Ries has refined the ideas for startups.

Conclusion

Being an entrepreneur is a tough job. And of course, it’s even tougher if you’re involved in running and growing a business. That’s why so many of the biggest entrepreneurs in the world always take the time to read as much as possible and continue educating themselves – Warren Buffet and Bill Gates are just some of the most prolific CEOs known for their reading habits.

The 10 resources in this list are designed to help keep you informed, as well as help you create and run a business as successfully as possible. Don’t overlook the importance of being prepared – it can be the difference between success and failure.

Lilach Bullock
Highly regarded on the world speaker circuit, Lilach has graced Forbes and Number 10 Downing Street. She's a hugely connected and highly influential entrepreneur. Listed in Forbes as one of the top 20 women social media power influencers and was crowned the Social Influencer of Europe by Oracle. She is listed as the number one Influencer in the UK by Career Experts and is a recipient for a Global Women Champions Award for her outstanding contribution and leadership in business.

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