Founders: Check out Innovation Works’ 20 actionable guides to growing your startup

For this year’s Global Entrepreneurship Week, running through Nov. 14, Pittsburgh startup resource hub Innovation Works wants to make it easier for anyone to become a founder.

This week, the organization published Startup Recipes, a new set of guides on how to start a company on limited resources and capital. The 20 “recipes” are free, DIY instructions on early business fundamentals like building a pitch deck, building a social media presence, hiring a tech team and drafting a positioning statement.

“There’s no shortage of strategic advice for founders out there. What I felt was missing is the tactical side,” said Startup Recipes author and Innovation Works portfolio executive Jim Wrubel in a press release. Instead of the usual tips on pitching to investors or being unafraid of failure in the product development stage, he added, these recipes offer actionable advice on how to even get off the ground once a founder has a solid idea.

“Even something as seemingly simple as ‘register a domain name for your online presence’ can be a complex process,” Wrubel said, giving an example of the minutiae in building a business that these guides address. “What if my company name is taken? I see companies using domain names that don’t end in .com. Should I do that?”

Make no mistake, following these guides aren’t all there is to building a business. But for those looking to launch a company as quickly and as cheaply as possible, these recipes are a great way to get up and running. Here are the links to each of the 20 recipes:

• Validating Your Idea with The Mom Test and SurveyMonkey
• Building a Landing Page with Carrd and Mailchimp
• Competitor Research with Crunchbase, Pitchbook, and Product Hunt
• Building User Personas with Hubspot Make My Persona
• Estimating cost for Injection Molding with Protolabs
• Registering a Domain Name with Namecheap
• Creating a Brand Positioning Statement with Crossing the Chasm
• Gathering customer feedback and designing questionnaires with Typeform
• Make a Product Launch Video with Biteable
• Basic Photo and Image Editing with Pixlr and Squoosh
• Create and Send a Company Update Newsletter With Mailchimp
• Creating Mockups and Social Media Posts with PlaceIt
• Designing a logo with Fiverr
• Building a Pitch Deck with Beautiful.ai
• Registering a Twitter Account For Your Startup
• Registering an Instagram Business/Creator Account For Your Startup
• Registering a LinkedIn Company Page For Your Startup
• Registering a Facebook Page For Your Startup
• Ensuring Email Deliverability With DKIM
• Implementing Whole Disk Encryption with BitLocker and FileVault
• Centralized Password Management with BitWarden
• Implementing Two-factor Authentication with Google Authenticator
• Hiring a software development firm with Clutch
• Designing a competitive compensation package with Indeed, salary.com, and the Holloway Guide

Check out the Startup Recipes Sophie Burkholder is a 2021-2022 corps member for Report for America, an initiative of The Groundtruth Project that pairs young journalists with local newsrooms. This position is supported by the Heinz Endowments.