Thinking of starting your own business?

Building a successful name for your startup is not an easy task. It takes a lot of determination, effort and creativity to start with an idea and grow it to profitability.

The hard bleak truth is that nine out of 10 startups will fail. And fewer than 50% of startups will survive for the first 5 years.

So, how can you build a successful business that withstands the test of time?

What are the characteristics of startups that success?

Unfortunately, there’s no single winning formula to success.

But there’s one thing that we can know for certain, founders that learn are more successful.

Even though every entrepreneur’s journey is different, each comes with its own set of obstacles, challenges and setbacks. There’s always something that we can learn from their mistakes, successes and journey starting up.

Considering the fact that not everyone lives near a mentor that they can take lessons from, having a virtual mentor (or read about them) is one of the best ways to emulate, study and learn from the greats.

Whether you’re looking to start your business, or want to learn from the real and inspiring experiences from successful founders, here’s a list of great resources to help and guide you through your startup journey.

With these awesome tools and resources, you will be able to experience an entire person’s entrepreneurial journey in your head, unlock the secrets of their success, learn from their stories, find new ideas and get inspired!

There’s of immense help to me, so I hope you enjoy them as much as I did.

Without further ado, let’s dive in.

9 Epic Tools to Build a Successful Startup

1. Visual Biographies(infographics)

There are loads of great books for entrepreneurs and startups out there.

Visual Biographies is something a little different, it’s not a book. Rather, it’s a beautifully designed website that showcases detailed infographics of successful people in history such as Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs and Albert Einsteins.

Now you can easily read all the important information in a simple and chronological way.

Spare a few minutes to explore and learn from famous people all in one single infographic.

If you’re a visual learner, you’ll definitely love Visual Biographies.

Ever wondered how do your timelines look like?

Visual Biographies allows you to create your own timelines with the built-in infographic maker tool.

For bloggers and marketers, you can use the predefined templates to design attractive infographics for your blog posts, social media, and other marketing campaigns.

It’s all about excellent visual summary– as its name suggests.

2. The Careers of the Founders (timelines)

Nothing beats the ease of reading a timeline of successes and failures of the greatest entrepreneurs.

It’s incredibly inspiring and motivating to see that there is more than one path to success. And also it’s entirely possible to succeed after a failure.

Take some time to read through the timelines of 33 inspirational founders who have made through the thick and thin. From Mark Cuban who started his first business venture, selling garbage bags at the age of 12 to Colonel Harland Sanders, founder of KFC who didn’t achieve success until he was 62.

3. From Millions to Billions

Wondering what age did the world’s richest entrepreneurs make their first billion?

As its name implies, From Millions to Billions makes it easy to find out who is the youngest entrepreneur billionaire and how long it took these entrepreneurs to go from millionaire to billionaire.

Generally, net worth is a yardstick for measuring financial success.

Take a look at this list of 20 billionaires who started with nothing and get inspired!

4. The Speed of a Unicorn (Race to $1 Billion)

If you don’t know, “unicorn” is a term for a billion dollar-valued business.

With The Speed of a Unicorn, you’ll be able to see how quickly the world’s most successful startups reach their $1B valuation.

I like how it presents interesting information and amazing data in a simple, straightforward and understandable way.

There are 4 main data visualizations where you’ll learn about:

How long it took the startup companies to achieve their first billion valuations.
Are unicorns getting faster?
Where do the fastest unicorns live?
What do the fastest unicorns do?

It’s extremely user-friendly, offering great insight for studying companies, markets and industries around the world.

5. Indie Hackers (community)

So they say, we’re the average of the five people we surround ourselves with.

Sometimes, it can be hard to find a real-life mentor or hang out with smarter people.

That’s where Indie Hacker comes into place, offering a transparent platform for aspiring entrepreneurs, successful founders, and developers to share, learn and work together.

Indie Hacker is more than a place to connect with others who are building their startup companies. They also let you learn from the founders behind hundreds of profitable online businesses, share your valuable knowledge, lessons, and insights, ask the experts, expand your audience, and, of course, get inspired.

You might want to check out the interesting interviews, valuable podcasts and discussions too.

6. Maker Stories (Behind the Scenes)

Everyone has a story to tell. And no one can better express his enthusiasm for the product than the founder himself.

It’s an incredibly powerful platform where you can browse and read amazing stories behind products. From the world’s most popular puzzle, the Rubik’s Cube to the Apple’s Best iPad Game of 2014, the Monument Valley, and almost everything in between.

Apart from discovering the talented people and inspiring stories behind products, you will also learn about how did the founders overcome setbacks, challenges and obstacles along the journey to the destination of the product launch.

If you want to tell your maker stories, you can sign up at maker.me. Who knows your story will help, inspire or even change someone else’s life.

7. The Intelligent Entrepreneur (book)

How 3 Harvard Business School graduates learned the 10 rules of entrepreneurship

If you’re thinking of starting a business, this is the entrepreneurship book you really need to read.

Based on 150 interviews with highly successful HBS alumni entrepreneurs, it tells the compelling stories of three successful HBS graduates, Marc, Marla, and Chris who turned down six-figure salaries at big corporations, bet on themselves and finally achieved their dreams.

Aside from building multimillion-dollar wealth, they also created hundreds of jobs and made a huge impact on the world.

As they prevailed through the ups and downs of growing their companies, they learned that starting successful businesses take much more than a ferocious work ethic or a great idea.

So what does it take?

How can you improve the odds of creating great businesses?

Let’s unveil the secrets and start applying the 10 rules of successful entrepreneurship practiced by these 3 HBS graduates and hundreds of other successful entrepreneurs that Murphy has interviewed in this book.

Note: This is not a recipe book with some canned answers. It is rather a book that makes you think, look inward, ask better questions while walking you through the process of starting your own company.

8. A Hacker’s Day (A day in the life as an entrepreneur)

Want to know what a day of an entrepreneur actually looks like?

A Hacker’s Day is a website where you can discover and read interviews with creators, designers, developers, publishers, and entrepreneurs.

As the entrepreneurial journey can be tough and sometimes lonely, it’s great to read about their daily routines, challenges, productivity tips and understand what truly motivate them when things get tough.

9. History Timeline (Map of Contemporaries)

To know our future, understand our present, we must first look into our past.

By scrolling the content horizontally, you can easily trace the lifetimes of all the famous people living at that time, categorized by countries and area of expertizes.

It certainly gives a new perspective on the world, the bigger picture.

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Conclusion

If you’ve been thinking of starting your own business or you’re currently working on your startups, I hope this list of 9 websites will enlighten, inspire and help you in building a dynamic and lasting business.

Do you have tips to share with us? Feel free to comment below

I’ve handpicked a few entrepreneurship guides for you to read next:

If you are interested in learning more about my entrepreneurial journey, Check out this ThinkMaverick Magazine App.

If you ever want tips please follow my Instagram page and ask away.