(There are plenty more Weekly Roundups<\/a> full of tools to get your business and personal life in check: Streamline Your Habits<\/a>, Message Smarter<\/a>, and\u00a0Gain Peace of Mind<\/a>) The hardest stage of a startup is often just starting. Taking\u00a0your big\u00a0idea from your living room to the outside world takes\u00a0a lot of work, which makes getting those first few customers all the more important.<\/p>\n How I Got My First Three Customers<\/a> is an online collection of stories sharing how entrepreneurs of all kinds got their first users\/customers\/readers, etc. Some of the stories are longer and go in-depth with lots of detail. Others are short and cut right to the chase. Either way, sometimes this is just what you need. While it\u2019s beneficial to go to conferences and lectures, this wraps up a lot of those long talks in a brief story that you can read at your leisure.<\/p>\n Each story ends with \u201cThe Tip\u201d in bold at the bottom which summarizes\u00a0the lesson of the entrepreneur’s early days in one sentence. You can even sign up to receive a PDF of lessons learned by everyone who\u2019s on the site.<\/p>\n The home page is simple to scroll through with icons for each entrepreneur, and their business listed below. Around each icon is a colored circle corresponding to one of three categories: Physical Product, Digital Product or a Service. This makes it super simple to scroll through and read the stories that are most relevant to you and your business.<\/p>\n You can start reading stories now from the <\/i>First 3 Customers website<\/i><\/a>.<\/i><\/p>\n The world of innovation inspiration did not start with Steve Jobs. From Mark Twain to Thomas Edison,\u00a0 innovators have long been\u00a0spreading their knowledge to anyone willing to listen. Startup Quote<\/a> is a Tumblr that you can follow for beautiful, insightful quotes from innovators throughout history until now.<\/p>\n Some of the insight is really specific like this gem<\/a> from Sam Altman<\/a> (Y-Combinator President):<\/p>\n \u201cBe suspicious of any work that is not building product or getting customers. It\u2019s easy to get sucked into an infrastructure rewrite death spiral.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n Other advice is\u00a0more all-encompassing, like\u00a0this quote<\/a> from Charles Darwin:<\/p>\n \u201cIt is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n It\u2019s easy to get addicted\u00a0to the never-ending scroll of this Tumblr and eat up all of the great knowledge it has to offer, not just because of the diverse and clever insight but also because the design of the page itself. It’s simple, thoughtful and easy-to-read. Bright colors pop off of the black background and no matter how prominent the founder, the quote really steals the show.<\/p>\n Even if you\u2019re not a founder or entrepreneur, you can find some helpful tips and motivation to keep you working toward doing what you love. It seems that updates to Startup Quote have been few and far between lately, but there\u2019s nothing like a jump in traffic from Product Hunt to reignite a passion project. Hopefully updates will be more frequent in the future. And you can always submit ideas for quotes right from the home page.<\/p>\n Scroll through inspiration from the <\/i>Startup Quote<\/i><\/a> website right here.<\/i><\/p>\n Everyday there is new information available on the Internet to guide you through your life as a founder, entrepreneur or freelancer, and it can be hard to know what\u2019s good and what\u2019s not. Whether your current go-to is Medium<\/a>, Fast Company<\/a>, or ThinkApps<\/a> (*cough, cough*), there\u2019s a new content source worth adding to your docket that\u2019s curated by some of the best founders in the game.<\/p>\n Foundcy<\/a> is an almost-daily list of what founders are reading (and loving) on the Internet. Next to the icon of each founder, there\u2019s the title of the article they\u2019re posting. Foundcy doesn\u2019t host the article, so when you click the title, it\u2019ll take you to the original post.<\/p>\n This started as a side project for the people who run Accelerated By<\/a>, which is a way to discover the latest promising startups coming out of programs like Y Combinator<\/a>, Techstars<\/a> and 500 Startups<\/a>. With a great pool of resources from their main venture, Foundcy was born.<\/p>\n While the Foundcy team is still responsible for publishing all posts, in the near future, they will open up the platform for founders to post directly in beta.<\/p>\n You can read what founders are reading right now on the <\/i>Foundcy website<\/i><\/a>.<\/i><\/p>\n Highbrow offers you daily courses for subjects that probably have little or nothing to do with your day job \u2014 which is one of the many things that makes it great. When you\u2019re working on your own business it can totally consume every part of your life. Highbrow<\/a> is a welcome break to bring you knowledge on topics that fulfill your personal curiosities.<\/p>\n To use Highbrow, you sign up for one of their (approximately) 10-day courses in everything from \u201cPhilosophical Ideas that Everyone Should Know<\/a>\u201d to \u201cEasy Tips to Eat Healthy<\/a>.\u201d After you choose a course, you\u2019ll get one email every morning on your topic of interest. The email is brief, and if you want you can click through to the full article at its original source on the web.<\/p>\n If you signed up for the previously mentioned Philosophy<\/a> course, then this morning, you may have gotten an email on Plato and learned that one of his main goals was to help people reach Eudaimonia<\/em>, a very particular brand of happiness that accepts the unavoidable toil of life as part of living. Deep, huh?<\/span><\/p>\n What makes Highbrow so inspiring is that it features\u00a0articles with specific insights written in plain language, so you don\u2019t need a reference book nearby to understand the subject at hand. It truly is a daily resource for anyone who wants to learn about anything.<\/p>\n The only catch with Highbrow is that you can only sign up for one course at a time and this constraint is intentional. Co-founder Zavyalov Artem said, \u201c<\/span>We want you to form a good daily habit and not tire yourself out at the same time. Thus, you can subscribe to only one course at a time and take all the courses one by one. We want you to stay with us as long as possible \u2013 we’re playing the long game here.\u201d<\/p>\n Email startups can quickly burn out their audience that\u2019s already getting more emails than they could possibly read each day, so it seems that this one-course-a-day idea is not only key for longevity, but for actually keeping the Highbrow audience committed to learning \u2026 even beyond January.<\/p>\n You can sign up for Highbrow for free right now on <\/i>their website<\/i><\/a>.<\/i><\/p>\n Whether you\u2019re talking to a potential investor, collaborator, or user, your elevator pitch has got to grab a person\u2019s attention and quickly and clearly describe to them what your company does. Why not test out your pitch skills with a computer game that looks like it belongs in an arcade next to Street Fighter<\/a>?<\/p>\n Startup Fighter<\/a> lets you play one of two games to test your startup skills: \u201cGuess that Startup\u201d or \u201cWhich Pitch is Better?\u201d With each artfully pixelated game, two startups are matched against each other, and you either guess the better pitch or match the pitch with the right startup.<\/p>\n Other than testing your knowledge of up-and-coming startups, and playing an arcade game on your computer, Startup Fighter is actually a great way to see examples of pitches and use them to help you come up with your own.<\/p>\n At the bottom of the homepage, there is a complete list of the top startups from each game, so you can see which ones are the most successful, at least from their pitch.<\/p>\n Play the game right now on the <\/i>Startup Fighter website<\/i><\/a>.<\/i><\/p>\n![\"First](\"http:\/\/d1vqbpto5tbbz0.cloudfront.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/First-3.png\")
<\/p>\nHow I Got My First Three Customers<\/h2>\n
Stories from entrepreneurs\u2019 early days<\/h3>\n
![\"Startup](\"http:\/\/d1vqbpto5tbbz0.cloudfront.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/Startup-Quote.png\")
<\/i><\/p>\nStartup Quote<\/h2>\n
Brilliant quotes from founders<\/h3>\n
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![\"Foundcy\"](\"http:\/\/d1vqbpto5tbbz0.cloudfront.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/29230507\/Screen-Shot-2015-02-03-at-1.26.26-PM.png\")
<\/a>
\n<\/i><\/p>\nFoundcy<\/h2>\n
Read what founders are reading<\/h3>\n
![\"Highbrow\"](\"http:\/\/d1vqbpto5tbbz0.cloudfront.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/Highbrow.png\")
<\/i><\/p>\nHighbrow<\/h2>\n
Expand your knowledge daily<\/h3>\n
![\"Startup](\"http:\/\/d1vqbpto5tbbz0.cloudfront.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/12\/Startup-Fighter.png\")
<\/i><\/p>\nJust for fun: Startup Fighter<\/h2>\n
A game of elevator pitches<\/h3>\n