Startup Academy — learn how startups actually work

107 free lessons and a 154-term glossary covering startup finance, fundraising, customers, product, sales, hiring and exits — written for first-time founders who have never run a company.

Subjects

• Start Here — The mandatory foundation. What a startup is and is not, how it differs from a small business or an agency, the vocabulary of ownership and money, and the map of the whole journey.
• Idea & Opportunity — Where startup ideas actually come from, how to tell a problem from an idea, how to judge whether an opportunity is worth years of your life, and how to size a market honestly.
• Founding Team — Whether you need a co-founder, how to find one, the conversations to have before you commit, the trial project, and how founder equity, vesting and cliffs really work.
• Customer & Market — Customer discovery done properly — interviews that produce evidence instead of flattery, Jobs To Be Done, ICP, buyer versus user, and how to tell willingness to pay from politeness.
• Product & MVP — MVP versus prototype versus proof of concept, prioritisation frameworks and when each one applies, roadmaps, technical debt, build versus buy, and what product-market fit actually feels like.
• Growth & Marketing — Positioning, messaging and distribution — then the channels themselves, funnels, retention, cohorts and growth loops. Starts with how a startup gets its first ten customers, not with brand theory.
• Sales & Business Development — Founder-led sales for people who have never sold anything — prospecting, discovery, demos, objections, closing, and the pipeline maths underneath it. Plus business models and pricing.
• Startup Finance — Finance from zero — revenue, margin, cash flow and the three financial statements — then the startup-specific numbers: MRR, burn, runway, CAC, LTV, churn and payback. Budgeting and scenario planning.
• Fundraising & VC — Whether to raise at all, who the investors are, how a VC fund actually works, valuation, dilution, cap tables, SAFEs and notes, the process end to end, and pitching.
• Metrics & Analytics — What to measure at each stage and what to ignore, activation and retention, cohort analysis, north star metrics, and how to tell a real signal from a number that only moves because you looked at it.
• Company & Legal — Educational only, never advice. Legal structures, incorporation, founders agreements, IP assignment, contracts, NDAs, trademarks, and the single most useful question — when do I actually need a lawyer?
• Management & Leadership — Managing yourself first — time, priorities, decisions, delegation — then managing people: expectations, feedback, 1:1s, accountability and conflict. Plus the systems that hold it together.
• Hiring & People — Whether to hire at all, contractor versus employee, defining a role, running a fair process, compensation and equity for employees, offers, and onboarding someone properly.
• Operations — SOPs and documentation, workflows, vendors and procurement, customer support, incidents, security basics and internal communication — the unglamorous layer that decides whether growth breaks you.
• Banking & Capital — The practical end — business banking, payment processors, accounting software, payroll and international payments — and then the advanced end: what investment banks do, and when a startup ever meets one.
• Founder Skills — Practical founder psychology, not therapy. Uncertainty, rejection, decision fatigue, isolation, delivering bad news, and knowing the difference between a hard week and the wrong direction.
• International Expansion — Entering another market, localisation, currency and pricing, hiring internationally, remote teams, cross-border payments and the regulatory questions to ask before you commit.
• Exit & Acquisition — Advanced. Why companies acquire startups, acquihires, asset versus stock deals, LOIs, diligence and the transaction process — and a plain explanation of what an IPO is.

Learning paths

• I want to validate my idea — Find out whether anyone actually wants this, before you spend a year building it.
• I need my first customers — The first ten come from you talking to people, not from a growth channel.
• I need to understand my finances — Runway is the number that kills startups. Start here and you will never be surprised by it.
• I want to raise my first round — What it means, what it costs you, and what you need before you email anyone.
• I want to understand how VC works — Why a VC behaves the way they do — it is a fund with its own investors, not a person with money.
• I need a co-founder — The highest-stakes hire you will ever make, and the one people do most casually.
• I need to price my product — Pricing is a product decision, not a number you copy from a competitor.
• I want to hire someone — Start with whether you should, then how to do it without wrecking your runway.
• I want to launch — A launch is a distribution event, not a finish line.
• I need to manage people — Your job stops being the work and starts being the people doing the work.

Founder glossary — 154 terms explained plainly