Top 12 blogs for business startup advice
Jan 25, 2012
Table of contents:
- A VC - Fred Wilson
- Swombat.com - Daniel Tenner
- Both Sides of the Table - Mark Suster
- Only Once - Matt Blumberg
- Hypernet Blog - Roger McNamee and Mike Maples, Jr
- Lessons Learned - Eric Ries
- Paul Graham
- Seth’s Blog - Seth Godin
- Chris Dixon
- Feld Thoughts - Brad Feld
- Ben Horowitz
- Steve Blank
It has never been a better time to learn how to create your own business startup through the free flow of information that is widely available online today. Many of the most experienced Entrepreneurs, CEO’s and Venture Capitalists have created indexes of valuable information and advice through their blogs. Covering every aspect of creating, running and financing a successful company from their hard earned experience, you would be crazy to over look their advice if you are looking to start your own company.
Here are 12 of my favourite business and startup blogs.
A VC - Fred Wilson
Fred Wilson is a Venture Capitalist from Union Square Ventures based in New York. His blog A VC is one of the most highly respected business blogs on the Internet with a huge community of active followers who regularly engage with Fred’s posts. Fred covers a wide variety of topics in his blog, from raising finance to Entrepreneurship and Fred’s view of the current state of technology. Fred’s blog has gained a reputation for being one of the best business blogs on the Internet. Whilst many VC’s choose to blog, only a handful put as much time and effort into their free to web advice. Fred has created one of the best, most active online business communities, which is a testament to the extremely high standard of his writing, knowledge and teachings.
Swombat.com - Daniel Tenner
Swombat.com is the business blog of Daniel Tenner. Daniel is a former Accenture employee who escaped the corporate life to become an Entrepreneur. Daniel writes in great depth on how to make the transition from corporate life to startup founder and offers incredibly useful advice for wanna be Entrepreneurs in England who want to start their own company. Daniel also cherry picks some of the best business posts from around the web and shares them with his audience. I’ve found many fantastic blogs that have been incredibly insightful through this. Swombat.com is one of the best blogs you can follow if you are based in England and are looking to make the transition from employee to startup founder in the very near future!
Both Sides of the Table - Mark Suster
Mark Suster is the man behind Both Sides of the Table. Mark is a 2x Entrepreneur and now a full time VC with GRP. Mark is a very successful Entrepreneur and VC and so can give a very in-depth perspective from being a founder and from being a Venture Capitalist. For example, a recent post, How to Develop Your Fund Raising Strategy gave a huge overview of exactly how you should approach raising money for your company from both the founder and VC “sides of the table”. Like Fred Wilson, Mark is a very successful person who dedicates a large amount of time to create and share his knowledge and experience of the business world. If you are looking to start a technology or Internet related company, you would be mad not to read Mark’s blog.
Only Once - Matt Blumberg
Matt Blumberg is founder of Return Path and still runs the company today over 10 years down the line. Matt’s blog, Only Once is interesting because it focuses on managing and running a company and how he runs Return Path. For example, Matt talks extensively about Return Path’s Core Values and he has written a number of times about scaling the team, hiring and organising your company. Matt has a wealth of experience in running a company, and his blog offers some excellent advice if you are looking to create a company that people love to work at.
Hypernet Blog - Roger McNamee and Mike Maples, Jr
Roger and Mike’s Hypernet blog is where Roger McNamee and Mike Maples, Jr talk about their ideas and visions for the next disruptive change in the Internet. Roger McNamee is a founding partner of the venture capital firm Elevation Partners and Mike Maples, Jr. is the managing partner of Maples Investments, and was recently named as one of “8 Rising VC Stars” by Fortune Magazine for his investments in business and consumer technology companies. Roger and Mike believe the Social Networking wave is ending, and so they discuss where they think the next wave of technology will rise. If you are looking to keep ahead of the curve, The Hypernet Blog is a fantastic way of looking into the thoughts of some of the industry’s most knowledgeable people.
Lessons Learned - Eric Ries
Eric Ries is the author of The Lean StartUp and the Startup Lessons Learned blog. If you are a fan of Eric’s work, then subscribing to his blog will be a no brainer. Eric is an experienced startup founder who created the very successful IMVU. The Lean Startup is Eric’s vision for a better, more scientific and approach to starting companies and creating successful products. Not only should his blog be in your RSS reader, I also highly recommend getting your hands on a copy of the The Lean Startup.
Paul Graham
Paul Graham is one of the industries most respected figures. Paul started a company called Viaweb back in 1995 which was acquired by Yahoo. Paul also started Y Combinator which is a startup incubator that has already produced some of the most succesful Internet companies around today such as DropBox. Paul’s essays are some of the best writing on the subject of internet startups, founding a company and technical innovation.
Seth’s Blog - Seth Godin
Seth’s Blog is the blog of highly successful Entrepreneur and Author Seth Godin. Seth’s daily blog offers an incredibly insightful view of everything from business, to marketing, technology and creating your best work. If you’ve read any of Seth’s books, you will find his blog to be of equally high standard. One of the most profound things about Seth’s blog for me is, his short little nuggets of gold seem to give me the daily motivation boast to ensure I seize every opportunity to do my best work.
Chris Dixon
Chris Dixon is serial Entrepreneur and Angel investor based in New York. Chris was the co-founder of SiteAdvisor, Hunch and is one of the co-founders of Founder Collective, an early-stage seed venture fund. Chris’ blog is made up of articles of Chris’ startup and business advice, as well as his commentary of the industry and his insight in the inner workings of Internet business. Chris is already one of the most experience startup founders around, and so his blog is his outlet to share his knowledge and experience.
Feld Thoughts - Brad Feld
Brad Feld is the man behind Feld Thoughts. Brad is a Managing Director at The Foundry Group. Like many of the blogs already mentioned, Feld Thoughts shares a wealth of business, startup and technology knowledge and advice. However for me, some of the best posts from Brad are the more personal insights into how he manages his work / life balance and how he manages the stress of being a highly successful business man. I’d like to see more of these kind of personal posts from more high profile business people and Entrepreneurs such as Brad as I think they are just as useful as a post describing in-depth technical jargon.
Ben Horowitz
Ben Horowitz was formally founder of the Enterprise software company Opsware and is now co-founder of the very successful Venture Capitalist firm Andreessen Horowitz with Marc Andreessen. Ben has a wealth of experience in the industry and in technology and business in particular. Ben’s Blog offers extremely insightful posts on running a large business, scaling a company and the intricate world of Venture Capital amongst many other topics. Ben’s resume is extremely impressive, and he is definitely one of the stars of the industry. If you are looking to create a large successful company, Ben’s blog should be in your RSS reader.
Steve Blank
Steve Blank is a serial technology Entrepreneur and the author of the very insightful startup business book, The Fours Steps to the Epiphany. Like many of the blogs that I’ve already mentioned, Steve’s Blog has a wide selection of very good business and technology posts that offer sage advice for anyone looking to start a company in this industry. Steve is a very knowledgeable man, and by understanding his views on the industry landscape, you can get a sense of his experience in the field. I would highly recommend subscribing to Steve’s Blog and picking up a copy of The Four Steps to the Epiphany.
Of course there are many other very good business startup blogs out there. I think a lot can be learned from reading from the experiences and the advice from people who have been there and done it. If you think I have missed off a really good blog that deserves to be on the list, please leave a comment with the URL and why you think it is so good. Thank you!
