Five Startup Blogs Every Founder Should Read

As cofounder of LinkedIn Reid Hoffman frequently says, starting a company is like jumping off a cliff and assembling a plane on the way down. Definitely a very risky endeavor.

Tapping into the wealth of knowledge available online will increase startup’s chances of survival. That’s where this list of 5 startup blogs for entrepreneurs comes to help. In my opinion of course, and in no particular order:

1. Paul Graham

In 1995 Paul Graham co-founded Viaweb, the first software as a service (SaaS) company that was later acquired by Yahoo. In 2005 he co-founded Y Combinator that since then funded over 3000 startups, including Airbnb, Dropbox, Stripe, and Reddit.

Paul Graham’s classic startup essays (that today get ~25m views per year) are some of my favorite and I don’t think they will go out of style anytime soon.

Here are few to get you started 👇🏻

🚀 Default alive or default dead?

🚀 How to raise money?

🚀 Do things that don’t scale

2. Andrew Chen 

Andrew Chen is a General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz, focusing on consumer technology. Previously, he led the the Rider Growth teams at Uber. He is an advisor/investor for tech startups including AngelList, Boba Guys, Dropbox, Gusto, Kiva, Product Hunt, Tindee and others.

Andrew’s blog features long-form essays on startups, metrics, and network effects. Some of my favorites 👇🏻

💡 Required reading for marketplace startups: The 20 best essays and

💡 How to (Actually calculate CAC) 

💡 Zero to Product / Market Fit 

3. Bottom Up by David Sacks

David Sacks is a General Partner at Craft Ventures. Previously, Sacks was the founding COO and product leader of PayPal and founder/CEO of Yammer which was acquired by Microsoft for $1.2b.

In his blog, David writes about topics relevant to founders who are starting or scaling software companies.

✍🏻 Your startup is a movement

✍🏻 The Cadence

✍🏻 The SaaS Metrics that matter

4. The First Round Review

The First Round Review is a content platform of a seed stage VC firm First Round Capital created to share the knowledge on how to build technology companies. It can be summed up in one line "actionable insights for technology entrepreneurs."

The thought pieces I like in particular 👇🏻

✅ How Superhuman Built an Engine to Find Product Market Fit

✅ The 5 Phases of Figma’s Community-Led Growth: From Stealth to Enterprise

5. Seth’s blog

I mean, who doesn’t know Seth Godin?

Seth Godin is an entrepreneur, best-selling author, and speaker. In addition to launching one of the most popular blogs in the world, he has written 20 best-selling books, including The Dip, Linchpin, Purple Cow, Tribes, and What To Do When It's Your Turn (And It's Always Your Turn).

I love the essays below so much (but honestly all of his top 100 are crazy good) 👇🏻

🤩 Replacing bad systems with bad systems

🤩 Ode: How to tell a great story

🤩 Quieting the Lizard Brain

PS: What other major blogs am I missing? Let me know 🙏🏻.

Thanks for reading,

Olga