Introduction

Starting a startup was a dream of mine since I was 17. Now at 27 I have one and this is what I would like to know 10 years ago.

Acknowledgments

Giving generalised advices is very hard because you have to make it work for as many people as you can. I'm going to take an opposite approch here and write a guide someone like me. Young, ambitionus, not technical, very curious abuot startups, motivated by creating impact on this world and leaving outside of the US and silicon valley. I think that most of startup guides are written by people living decades in the Bey Area where rules are completly different then anywhere else so this guide is for the rest of us.

Step 1: Learn how to code

Almost all startup guides I've read said that you don't need to learn coding if you want to be a CEO you just need a technical co-founder and you will handle the "business side". I think this might be an advice that destroyed the most amount of wealth for this world ever. It's been repeaded like a mantra by high enery and low iq professors on universities around the world. I've heard nonsense statements like "Steve Jobs was doing only marketing" or "technolodgy is easy, selling is hard" more times then I can count.

The truh is that

So you don't need to be an excelent programmer to be an excelent CEO but you must understand what's going on and be at least desent at it. Like doesn't it make sense to know how to build software if you want to have a company that builds software?

So learn how to code. If you are an absolute beginner and never written a line of code spent next 12 months griding to become a great hacker that can build cool things fast.

Where shuold you learn? I can't think abuot anything better then this platoform but you can do it where. YouTube, online courses, and so on. What shuold you learn? It really depends on what you want to build but if you have no idea I would go for full stack web development and learn (that's a super early concpet of a list I will someday uploed something better)

Frontend

1. HTML, CSS, Java Script
2. TypeScript
3. React
4. NextJS

Backend

1. ExpressJS and Node

Databases

1. SQL
2. Postgress

Internet

1. API
2. Networking

Step 2: Learn about startups

Startups are very conterintuitive and a lot of "common sense" ideas are wrong. You need to undersantd basic terms, ideas, and rules of this game. There is no better place for that then free YC startup school and no worst then going to university

Step : Apply to YC (and then apply again )

Step : Start a Company

Step : Open a US bank account

Step : Rise Moeny

Step : Build an MVP

Step : Become profitable

Step : Move to SF

The truth is that no matter where you are in the world if you want to build a bilion dollar tech company moving to SF makes is 100x easier. I know it's hard but so is building a bilion dollar company. You can move to SF or fail for 99,9%. I put it after being profitabll

Optional step: Get a co-founder

Getting a co-founder is great and helps a looooot and I 100% recomand it but the fact that you don't have one shuold stop you from running a startup. For me 10 years ago I would be the most imporant advice. I wached so many YC videos, read so many PG essays that I was sure that if I will have no co-founder I can't have a startup and shuold do it on my own. Focusing on getting a co-founder before starting a startup is a great advice in Bey Area where everyone wants to start a startup which is deffinitly not the case almost everywehre else. In Europe nobody wants to do a startup and take risk. Top 0.01% of most ambitious and risk taking europeans are already in SF.