The Startup Players Handbook: A Roadmap to Building SaaS and Software Companies

Modern startups are on an assembly line from seed to later-stage series financing. As they make that journey, founders need to have a working knowledge of dozens of fields if they’re going to scale a company. SaaS is a unique set of skills across those disciplines.

This book focuses on gaining a working understanding of what specialists will do in those fields as an organization grows and how founders can leverage the basics to get those capabilities started so once professionals are hired in each, they can hit the ground running with authentic materials. Founders will be pulled in a lot of directions as they find success, so the book looks at what to do with each discipline at each stage of growth.

The hardest part to creating a startup is to just start the thing. This book covers when to bootstrap, apply to accelerators, seek seed capital – and where to do those things. It also covers some of the earlier questions like how to write a mission statement, where to find investors, what technical stacks to use, how to HR, how to sell, and more importantly, when a founder should spend time on each discipline. A way to look at the tech stack and the ever-changing landscape to keep technical debt low and the ability to respond to ever-changing market forces high.

What You'll Learn

• The nuts and bolts of which type of corporation to found, impacts to taxes, equity, and of course more philosophy.
• Researching, pricing, and planning to take that wonderful innovation to market and expanding into a portfolio.
• Leadership styles—each has its place and so we look at ways to level up that domain
• Management—going beyond inspiration, from those regularly scheduled meetings to helping people grow to task managemen.
• Basic accounting and finance skills with terms and guidance on revenue treatment

Who This Book Is For

People thinking of or starting a software/SaaS company. Could be useful for first timers or those on their third startup.

About the Author

Charles Edge is the CTO of bootstrappers.mn and the CTO/COO of handrailux.com and a former director at Jamf. He holds 35 years of experience as a developer, administrator, network architect, product manager, entrepreneur, and CTO. He is the author of 20 books and more than 6,000 blog posts on technology, and has served as an editor and author for many publications. Charles also serves on the board of directors for a number of companies and non-profits, and frequently speaks at conferences including DefCon, BlackHat, LinuxWorld, the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference, and a number of Apple-focused conferences. Charles is also the author of krypted.com and a cofounder/host of the MacAdmins Podcast and The History Of Computing podcast.