Topics Covered
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INTRODUCTION
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My Story
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How This Book Is Written
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What Are Startups?
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Why Are Startups the In Thing Now?
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Why Do So Few Startups Succeed?
EARLY STAGES
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Should You Join a Startup?
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Which One Should You Join?
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Appearing for a Startup Interview
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How I Joined redBus, My First Startup
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Should You Start One?
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Getting Ready to Start 43 Finding/Generating Ideas
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Fastest Ways to Validate Ideas
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Ensure Your Idea Has These Elements
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The Early Product
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The Chicken-and-Egg Solution
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The Initial Team
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Finding Product Market Fit (PMF)
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Initial Funds
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How Much to Raise?
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The Fundraising Deck
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Raising Funds
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Connecting with Investors
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Hiring Investment Bankers (IB)
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Valuation
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Initial Product Launch
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Pivots
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Early Challenges
FOUNDER-RELATED
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Should You Do It Alone?
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Choosing the Right Co-founder(s)
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Equity Split between Co-founders
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Co-founder Responsibilities
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Thought Process while Running a Startup
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Founder Priorities at Various Stages
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Co-founder Working Methods
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Moving from Ownership Status to Roles
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Co-founder Conflicts
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Dealing with Ambiguity
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Secondaries
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Mentors/Guides
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Getting an EA
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Building for a Global Market from India
THE PRODUCT
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Product Vision
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Product Roadmap and Prioritization
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Product Funnel
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Product Documentation
MANAGEMENT-RELATED
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Vision Statements
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Managing Risk
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Framework of Decision Making
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Prioritization
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Huge Targets and Achieving Them
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Communication—A Tool for Clarity
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Town Halls
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Execution Culture
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Finding Owners
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Aligning Everyone to Metrics
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Setting up Dashboards
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Competition
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Chasing Profitability
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Operational Excellence
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Special Projects Team
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Knowledge Management
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Process-Driven Organization
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Being Frugal
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Outsourcing
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Managing Time Effectively
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Managing Meetings
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Managing Boards
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Getting an External CEO
PEOPLE-RELATED
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Hiring
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Building and Managing Core Teams
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Core People
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Managing People
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Culture
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Granting Equity
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How ESOPs Work
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Employee Perks
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Appraisals
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Off-Sites
GROWTH AND COMMUNITY BUILDING
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Customer Feedback/Reviews/Listening
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Acquiring Users
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Organic Acquisition
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User Retention
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Growth Hacks
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Cost of Customer Acquisition (COCA)
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Branding
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PR
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Building Community/Supply
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Acquiring Companies
PERSONAL ASPECTS
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Achieving Freedom/Independence
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Managing Family Life and Work Hours
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Managing Personal Funds
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Professional Reading
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Serial Entrepreneurship
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Angel Investments
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Managing Fear
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Being Happy
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Parting Words
500 Tips for Startup Folks by Mayank Bidawatka
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Hello! I'm Mayank. I've been building startups since 2007. I've had the opportunity to build high growth internet startups and brands like redBus, Koo, The Media Ant, Goodbox, and now—Billion Hearts. I've created venture-backed as well as bootstrapped B2C, B2B, B2B2C startups, across diverse categories like travel, social media, quick commerce, media and advertising.
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'500 Tips for Startup Folks' is a collection of insights from my experiences founding and running multiple startups. The book offers 500+ Tips across ~100 aspects of startup life, from idea generation and validation to fundraising, team building, growth and scaling. I've shared personal anecdotes and practical tips gained through both successes and failures, emphasizing the importance of speed and having a hustler mindset. While there are many books that talk about broader startup topics, I've focused on extremely practical and actionable stuff. I've distilled my learnings to focus on the ‘how’. The overall tone reflects my personality - informal and conversational - aiming to provide a readily accessible guide for aspiring and current startup folks, be it founders or employees.
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I help and advise numerous entrepreneurs on various problem related to their startups, and this book is a way for me to provide tips / advice at scale and give back to an ecosystem I absolutely love. There's nothing more joyful than creating and if I can help any creator, I'll consider myself privileged to be a part of their journey!