The Startup Founder's Playbook
Y Combinator's playbook plus the pitch skills to sell it.
Free to watch. Starting adds a personal copy to My Learning with progress tracking and a curated-path certificate on completion.
About this path
The essential founder curriculum: Y Combinator's legendary lectures on ideas, product, and team (Altman, Graham), the operational block on legal, accounting, and sales, a public-speaking module so your pitch lands as well as your product deserves, and the Excel and personal-finance modules that keep your runway math honest.
What you'll learn
- Evaluate startup ideas and find product-market fit
- Build and lead an early team
- Handle legal, accounting, and early sales correctly
- Deliver a pitch that commands a room
- Model runway and unit economics with pivot tables
- Keep personal finances stable through the zero-salary months
The path, module by module
Each step is lifted from a full course in our catalog, and where a course repeats itself we keep only the lessons that earn their place.
Module 1 · from How to Start a Startup (Y Combinator)
Start, Talk to Users, Build Something They Love
Three of the twenty YC lectures carry most of the value for a pre-launch founder. These are them.
3 lessons · 2h 24m · hand-picked from 8
Lecture 1 - How to Start a Startup (Sam Altman, Dustin Moskovitz) · Lecture 4 - Building Product, Talking to Users, and Growing (Adora Cheung) · Lecture 7 - How to Build Products Users Love (Kevin Hale)
Module 2 · from How to Start a Startup (Y Combinator)
Growth, and Why Competition Is for Losers
Peter Thiel on moats and Alex Schultz on growth. Watch after you have something users want, not before.
2 lessons · 1h 37m · hand-picked from 8
Lecture 5 - Competition is for Losers (Peter Thiel) · Lecture 6 - Growth (Alex Schultz)
Module 3 · from Public Speaking & Communication
Pitch Like It Matters
Opening strong, seven hooks, and a full session on storytelling. Fundraising is a storytelling job.
3 lessons · 1h 3m · hand-picked from 8
How to Start Your Presentation So Strong People Can't Look Away · 20+ Years of Storytelling Advice in 46Min · How to Start a Speech - 7 Simple Hooks
Module 4 · from Sales Foundations for Closers
Selling Before You Have a Brand
Founders do the first hundred sales themselves. Process, objections, psychology, and getting buy-in from owners.
4 lessons · 55m · hand-picked from 8
How to Perfect Your Sales Process and Increase Sales FAST! · Overcoming Sales Objections - How to Handle Sales Objections CORRECTLY! · Secret Of Sales - The Psychology Behind Getting A "YES"
Module 5 · from Microsoft Excel Full Course
The Founder's Spreadsheet
Charts and pivot tables. Enough to build a model your investors can follow.
4 lessons · 37m · hand-picked from 8
8.1 Data Analysis in Excel Why Every Department Needs This Skill! · 8.2 Create Pivot Table in Excel in Just 3 Clicks! · 8.3 How to Create Pivot Charts in Excel? | Excel Tutorial For Beginners
Module 6 · from Personal Finance for Beginners
Personal Runway
Emergency fund, debt traps, and asset allocation, because the founder's own finances are the startup's first constraint.
3 lessons · 20m · hand-picked from 7
What is an Emergency Fund? | How to build it? | Personal Finance for Beginners Ep - 1 · What is a debt Trap? Mistakes to avoid while taking debt | Personal Finance for Beginners Ep - 3 · What is Asset Allocation? Learn how to do asset allocation | Personal Finance for Beginners Ep - 6