The Red Book of Startup - Startup 101

Startup 101

By Chang Liu

Table of Contents

Part I
The Core

Part II
The Process

Part III
Elements of startup design

Part IV
Essential business, humanity, economics, and philosophy

Part V
The Startup Tools
(for starting business, running business, and obtain funding)
Templates

Appendix and resources

The Teensharks startup video stories library
The book library
The dictionary and vocabulary
The pictorial cards gallery
The case studies library
The Q&A vault
The Quotes cards
Social media: youtube, instagram, pinterest, and Twitter.

The indexes
Important Tips #important_startup_tips  ☝
Hard rules #startup_hard_rules (important lessons earned on battlegrounds, veteran hacks)  ✌
The myth #startup_myth ☕
#startup_quotes

Starting up a business is to establish a business from new.  It is not just to startup a company.  The company only facilitates the business.  A startup business consists of three parts: (1) THE BUSINESS; (2) THE STARTUP; (3) THE FOUNDERS.  A founder is the chief builder - the founder build (1) the business and sale; (2) the company; (3) the offering; (4) the name.

 
TOC EXPANSION

Part I

The Core

Part II

The Process

Chapter 1: Cooking up a startup - the essential ingredients and steps

Four essential processes: Offering to Market to Customer; Curiosity to Product to Merchandise, Personal Knowledge to Experience to Maturity (link)

Other flows of larger scale: history, discovery, society, war, diffusion

The required elements of a startup
Managing the two jumps: focus to growth, early to mature

Chapter 2: Readiness evaluation
Startup Readiness Levels
Startup Personal Readiness
Startup Product Readiness
Startup Market Readiness
Startup Funds Readiness

Chapter 3: The learning and practice of startup skills

Business startup process (two lifetime in one)

Time axis

Chapter 4: Participate in the connection and flow

Business supply chain
The flow and transactions of money and value

Part III

Elements of startup design

Chapter 1: The frame work of design

Heaven, Earth, and Human

The Builder in Chief: Founders, Investor, Talents
Time, repeat and accumulation
The world refreshes itself.

[Link1]

Chapter 2: Beginning and End of Startup

The only element that matters: SALES

You can invent anything, but you need to steal a sale. The era of "make something and they will come" is over.

The startup process ends with a brand

The exit of various players

Chapter 3: Choosing a business to start

Types of business to start

Definition of a good business

Repeated sales and continuous operations

Chapter 4: Mixing the high and low, big and small

An idealistic person making money, and a technical person making sales

The mixing of dream, details, money and sweat

The elements that are rare and relative: Sales, Quality, and Talent

No one will buy anything.  The value to money exchange

Chapter 5: Business if Final Level of the Game

Business is war, not a war game

Business is survival, cash is survival, innovation is survival

Quality is only barrier you can count on
You are the chief builder: vision, trust, talent around you, money, and quality

Business is about collaboration. Business model - Ecosystem

Business is about extreme focus.

Business is about giving maximum joy.

Business is about relentless money and profit making.

Chapter 6:  The Elements and their connections

The elements and contradictions (dream and focus; focus and scaling)

The elements and confusions

The chains of elements

Chapter 7: You understanding yourself and managing your life

Personal career planning: livelihood and employment process

Managing the three opposite: Grand and Detailed, Focus and Grow, You and World

Innovation of world renewing itself, not you renewing
Startup is giving people what they want, not to make them pay for what you intend to sell

You are not the center of business (give what people want; give more to make money)

For the first three years, you are your worst enemy

Chapter 8: How do investors see your business and offering

#startup_quote Investors may not be as clever, but they are not fools

Investment and investors - what do they want and what do you want?

Chapter 9: Hard way is the only way to go, the easy way is a setup

Ideation fantasy busters

New is not the answer (novel and new; different and new)

Offering to satisfy a need is bad way to start

Getting rich should not be your motivation
Cleverness is not the answer

Chapter 10: The Long Haul Finisher: Rule of thumb target numbers as reference

The numbers from reliable sources

Part IV

Essential business, humanity, economics, and philosophy

Types of knowledge

Talent Equals Balance of Integrity, Skills, Aspiration

Catch All For Future
Hash tag collection
Index

Part V

The Startup Tools

(for starting business, running business, and obtain funding)

The entire startup is build on three preconditions: sales, quitting your job, and two people.  If not, it is called a hobby or prequel.

Templates for ideation

Tools for managing production of quality products
Tools for bringing your products to markets
Tools for enticing your customers to the same market

Business plan tools
Business model generation tools
Business choice tools
Product development tools
Startup school homework and quizzes

A brand is a name that you decide to own and monopolize, so that people can find you.

 A sale is someone else's livelihood you decide to steal.

The NEW in innovation is the new strategy for doing an old business much better (called a disruption).  The SECRET in innovation is the details of your method.   

Startup is not about participation and hope.  It is to monopolize a very well defined sector of business and provide maximum value to your customers but prevent others from doing the same.

Should Co-founder Be Given Equity?

A lot of startup companies are better off with two people on board.  After all, the name "Company" literally means "more than one person".  When someone invite another person to be a cofounder, what are the points of discussions associated with equity share?

Here are a couple of major points to consider.

(1) Does the cofounder pay cash into the company coffer?
(2) Does the cofounder need to quit current job and forego salary?
(3) Does the cofounder need to take a pay cut from current level or industry standard?
(4) Should the cofounder be given private equity?

Keep in mind that a cofounder is important.  The founder is a status, a position, and a responsibility.  These three goes together.  The status means it is obviously a later badge of honor.  But the cofounder has to earn it with what he/she does for the company.  A cofounder should be a builder in chief - building the product, the sales channel, or something critical.

Later when the team goes to ask for funding from an investor, the investor WILL ASK this question "are both you working full time for the company".  It is important to keep this in mind.  If when you go to investor and one of you have not given up your job, it just looks bad.

A cofounder is not a high level employee.  A cofounder is a founder. 

Cofounder is not a gig.

The Core of a Startup

The Core of Startup

Dear Friend,

I am writing this to my former self living in 2010.  After having started and experienced, I wanted HIM to get it, clearly, quickly, convincingly.

Starting up a business means you, the founder, wants to have a business.  Because you can not buy a business or don't care about joining one, you need to start one.

A company is not a business yet.  A company will not automatically get business.  Honestly, a single person operating a solo entity is not even called a company.

Starting up is a multi dimensional, multi stage, multi phase, multi year, multi disciplinary engagement.  It is one of the most complex endeavor for a single human being.  It is a long journey of no return.  In this journey, you learn it all, and by personally failing.  Because it literally takes two lifetimes to start one business, no matter how small, very few people are blessed with the experience or success.

A startup is not a trial balloon or a vehicle of hope.  Startup is not to make something and then try to sell to people.  A startup company is not business yet, and a startup business is not a business yet.  These all remain to be proven.

A good business means continuous profitable sales.  The core of a business is sales.  Money-generating good business is rare and heavily competed - hence the phrase "there is nothing new under the sun".

A founder needs to build the offering, the company, the name, and the channel.  After you have those, you can try if people want to buy them.  If people don't want to buy, or you can not sell them profitably, then you don't have a business.  You had a run of curiosity.  You can be sure that no one will fund an expedition - both an expedition that you are not sure what you will get nor an expedition where you are sure what you will get.  It does not matter how good you prepare your motivational elevator pitch.

Startup is a skill that needs to be learned and practiced.  A clever or hardworking person is not enough.

To start up a business, you must know business, and you must know how to startup one.  And you must know yourself.  Further, you only learn the skills through personal experience, not just through books or conventional schools.

Starting up is ultimate learning, even if you are a professor or guru.  If you have read every book there is and have written books, you are still starting at ground level with everyone else.  Startup is a new set of skill.  You learn by personally experience (not by reading) and learn by failure.  Failure means you are trying hard enough.  If you want a business and fame and money, you must try hard and get out of the comfort zone.

There are investors out there.  Dumb or clever, they are extremely alert.  They only want to make money, no matter what they tell you.  They want their best interest, never yours.  They are not friends, nor eager benefactors. They are just potential investors.  Starting up is all YOUR business.  There is no one to help, only you helping others.

Because you don't have a lot of resources (e.g., money), you must start in advance and pick correctly. Ideally, you start when no one understand the vision and build diligently over 10 years.  Only then will your efforts be rewarded.  Vision is simple - it is earned by finishing a level once.

There is NO CHANCE SUCCESS.  Anything new takes a long time to be accepted or wanted.  Don't try to get lucky by acting on whims and logic guessing.  Building a new thing is just building a new thing, not starting up a business.  People generally don't need new things.  Starting up a business is offering new value in an old line of business through innovative and inventive method.

New business must sustain financial turmoils and copying/competition.  If possible, make sure your new business idea is not a small-business idea.  A small business remain small forever, but a new business must grow into a mature business at the end of the process.  If you want to do anything small, use your own money.  If you plant a watermelon seed, it will never grow into a tree.

If anyone utters one of the three phases, "I have an idea", "I was a good student" or "I don't like money", or "I want some extra income", run as far away as possible immediately.  You will waste a lot of energy trying to help or convert them.