Nobody Knows What They're Doing When They Start. Here's How to Figure It Out.

In 2016, I joined BenchSci as a co-founder and CEO. I had previously co-founded a smaller company in Israel, but nothing at this scale. I didn't have a playbook. I didn't have a network in Canada — I'd moved 15 months earlier. I had a vision and a team and a lot of things I didn't know how to do.

What saved me wasn't talent. It was finding the right resources fast and learning how to use other people's experience without wasting their time.

Eight years later, I get emails and LinkedIn messages from first-time founders at least twice a week. They're at the beginning of their journey, trying to figure out where to start. This post is what I send them. Every resource here is something we actually used at BenchSci.

Start here: How to Start a Startup

In 2014, Y Combinator created a course at Stanford called "How to Start a Startup." They recorded every class and put it on YouTube for free.

I think it's a masterpiece. I still watch it occasionally — it gives me perspective on how we're operating even now. The course is 20 classes long, and world-class entrepreneurs teach each one. If you're starting a company and you haven't watched it, stop reading this and go watch it first.

Three books, in this order

I listen to around 20 books a year. Of everything I've read, three helped most in the early days. Read them in this sequence — each one builds on the last.

Zero to One — Peter Thiel. Every new employee at BenchSci gets a copy of this book. It's the best startup strategy book ever written. The first piece of advice I give almost every entrepreneur I meet is to read it. Most startups get go-to-market wrong, and this book is the clearest guide I've found for thinking about it correctly.

The Hard Thing About Hard Things — Ben Horowitz. Horowitz founded Andreessen Horowitz and built LoudCloud, which he sold for $1.6B. This book is his honest account of what that journey actually felt like — every difficult decision, every thing that almost broke the company. It taught me more about making tough calls than anything else I've read, and it gave me the courage to make them early on when I had no business feeling confident.

Dare to Lead — Brené Brown. Starting a company requires a kind of courage that most people underestimate. The mental and emotional load is real, and founders who don't develop the skills to manage it burn out or make bad decisions under pressure. Brown's book gave me the best tools I've found for that. I'll say it plainly: it made me a better person and a better leader.

VC blogs

Blogs are one of the best sources of tactical, current advice available — and they're free. My team and I still rely on them regularly. The ones worth reading consistently: First Round Capital, OpenView, Y Combinator, and Paul Graham. Between them, they cover almost every stage and problem you'll encounter.

Incubators and accelerators — but choose carefully

Accelerators can be genuinely transformative for first-time founders. They were for us. At BenchSci, we applied to Y Combinator, Techstars, CDL, and FounderFuel. We participated in CDL and FounderFuel, and both changed our trajectory.

CDL gave us invaluable connections to other entrepreneurs and investors. FounderFuel did something different — it forced us to master storytelling, which turned out to be one of the most important skills we built as a company.

One warning: don't give up equity for "office space and advice." Some accelerators aren't worth it. The good ones — YC, Techstars, CDL, FounderFuel — are worth it because they give you access to networks and knowledge that actually move the needle, not just a desk and a mentor who checks in once a month.

Your personal network — and how not to waste it

Asking successful VCs and entrepreneurs for advice is one of the highest-leverage things you can do at any stage. I reached out to even more people in the early days than I do now, and I still reach out to around 20 people a year.

But most first-time founders do this wrong, and it costs them. Here's what I see constantly:

Asking for too much time. Don't ask for more than 30 minutes with someone you don't know. An hour is unreasonable. It signals that you haven't thought carefully about what you actually need.

Asking generic questions. "How do I fundraise?" "I want to start a company — what do I do?" These are terrible questions. Not because they're dumb, but because nobody can answer them usefully in 30 minutes, and they signal that you haven't done the basic research that's freely available online. The founders who get the most out of these conversations come in with specific, considered questions: "I'm trying to figure out how to part ways with a co-founder — how did you handle that?" "I'm evaluating this VC for our seed round and wanted your perspective on them." "What go-to-market approach did you use in the early days in your industry?"

Specific questions get specific, useful answers. Generic questions get generic advice — or no reply at all.

Nobody knows what they're doing when they start. That's not a bug — it's the nature of building something new. The advantage you have is that almost everything you need to figure it out is available, either online or one well-crafted email away.

Use it.