The weekly practice of putting together this list has been most gratifying. Looking back at the past 6 issues I still think the classification of the posts with tags needs to become better. I have a couple of ideas that I may implement over the next couple of months to make the archive searchable with better granularity. If you have any comments on how I could make this post better please do leave a message or send me an email!

Startup advice, briefly This was definitely one of the best articles I came across this week. It is a summary of the startup class which ran in the last quarter of 2014. If you haven’t watched the series, I would highly recommend it. Starting a business is undoubtedly very challenging, the advice in this post distills some of the most pertinent advice which is relevant when just getting started.

To Succeed, Get to Failing This post is based on the upcoming book called Roadmap which is a collection of a 1000+ interviews, that a group of fresh graduates conducted with some of the most successful people in the world. They talk about societies stigma with failure and advice on how to overcome it to find success.

The Only Technique To Learn Something New James Altucher continues to churn out great content on a daily basis. This post breaks down the ten techniques which one can use to learn something new. One of the techniques which he calls “Study what you did” is probably the most insightful out of them all. Reflection on our actions and results is one of the best ways on how to adjust your process in getting the desired result. Sounds simple in theory, however is very difficult to do on consistent basis.

Customer Service Manifesto (PDF) This post is based on the book Zombie Loyalists, which I am looking forward to reading soon. It talks about the future where the age of “buy from us because we say we’re awesome” is over, and has truly been replaced by the age of “I’ll buy from
them because someone I trust says they’re awesome. This is a huge shift in the way we think and how business will be conducted. It has some very interesting case studies from the future of customer service as well.

Growth Is Optional: 10 Reasons Why Companies Fail At Growth Growth is critical to the success of any company. Every company wants to grow, however a majority of them do not put in place drivers that are going to drive that growth. The author highlights 10 pertinent reasons that may be holding you back.

The Most Important SaaS Metric Nobody Talks About: Time-to-Value (‘TtV’)Whether we start reading an article, a book or sign up for a new service; there is a gap between when we begin to receiving value from the activity. The delta between those two are critical and are usually a strong indicator of whether something will succeed or not. The author summarizes some key insights that can be used to reduce that delta.

What Startups can learn from a Sushi Chef This post is based on the documentary Jiro dreams of sushi. If you haven’t watched it yet, I would highly recommend it! At it’s core the documentary is all about choosing a skill set and dedicating your life to perfecting it. This goes against the current trend of becoming a generalist that is a jack of all trades and master of none.

23 Campaigns Every Startup Should Run to Gain Immediate Traction This is a very detailed how to post that talks about the specific steps to finding your target customers and validating demand for your product/service. The entire goal being to find the unit economics that drive your business, which are the lifetime value of a single customer and the cost of acquiring that customer.

The Three Dimensions Of Content Marketing Strategy For Startups When we think about content marketing we associate it with blog posts, whitepapers and perhaps presentations. This post breaks down content marketing into three dimensions and provides a host of examples on how to execute a far more granular strategy.

Wishing everyone a great week ahead!