Recently, I sat down with some close friends who’ve wanted to learn more about Pocket Tales, and each time the same question seems to arise – “so where did you learn how to start and build a company?” Sometimes I struggle to answer the question. I’d tell them, “I just started a company and learned along the way,” but that answer wasn’t appeasing to any of them. They wanted something more tangible and concrete. In their defense, the answer does seem ludicrous, doesn’t it? Think about this – the first …

Venture Hacks has a pretty quick but to-the-point rundown of starting up a company. I’ve embedded it below. Take 3 minutes and read it, you’ll be glad you did.

A Quick And Dirty Guide To Starting Up
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“…what I found was that I was getting advice when I was asking for money, and getting money when I was looking for advice.”
- Laura Fitton, oneforty.com. Check out the interview here.
This is a great interview. Laura Fitton founded oneforty, an iTunes of sorts for Twitter apps. She was “highly unqualified” to start a company, but was able to raise $2+ million from investors and landed Guy Kawasaki as an advisor. The story is long, but it’s definitely a must hear for those who think they don’t have the right background …

AngelBlog.net has a great checklist of items you should consider when starting a company. I included the first 20 steps and you can find the full list here (it’s long, 50+ steps), but its worth the read. I can say that with Pocket Tales, we covered many of these when we started, not because we planned to but because there was no way of getting around it. Some things are probably overkill (like the offsite planning retreat) but everything is still worth consideration.

Build a startup team (if it’s still just you, repeat …