How Startups Actually Work
Ever wondered how a small idea turns into a big company? Learn the real steps to building a business from scratch, finding your first customers, and growing a team.
Like Duolingo, but for How Startups Actually Work. Tomo turns the whole topic into a game you play five minutes a day, until it actually sticks.
54 levels across 4 sections, about 108 minutes end to end, roughly 22 days at five minutes a day. It moves through The Big Idea and the Problem, Building the Foundation, Finding the Money, and Growing and Scaling Up. It starts from scratch.
Free forever · No credit card · iPhone & Android
Key ideas in How Startups Actually Work
- Founders falling in love with ideas
- Market demand and validated problems
- Willingness to pay as a severity indicator
- Workarounds as proof of pain
- Problem frequency and intensity
- Narrowing focus to high-friction segments
- Product-first failure mode
- Audience budget and means
- Validation through observation
- Inconvenience vs pain point
- Characteristics of a problem worth solving
- Validation requires direct interaction
- Value is created by alleviating real-world friction
- Starting with product vs problem
- Technology is a means to an end
- Minor inconveniences vs critical pain points
You've tried the other tabs
Thirty open tabs. Four facts you actually kept.
You watched. You nodded. By Sunday it was gone.
One answer, then back to scrolling.
Eight weeks. You meant to finish. You didn't.
Tomo gives How Startups Actually Work the Duolingo treatment: levels, streaks, and quick quizzes that test what you just learned. That game loop is what the tabs above never had, so it's the one you actually finish.
Here's what playing it feels like
A real question from this course. Take your best guess.
If you build a fancy solution before checking if anyone has a problem, what is the most likely outcome of your launch?
Get it right to open this lesson and 53 more in the app.
Where How Startups Actually Work takes you
- 1
The Big Idea and the Problem
- Finding a Problem Worth Solving
- Talking to Potential Customers
- Building a Simple Version of Your Product
- Testing if People Actually Want It
- 2
Building the Foundation
- Choosing Your Co-Founders
- Splitting the Ownership Fairly
- Making the Business Legal
- Setting Up Your First Office or Workspace
- Hiring Your First Three Employees
- Creating a Company Culture
- 3
Finding the Money
- Using Your Own Savings
- How Venture Capital Works
- Pitching Your Idea to Investors
- 4
Growing and Scaling Up
- Getting Your First 100 Users
- Marketing on a Tiny Budget
- Dealing with Competition
- Managing a Growing Team
- What Happens During an Exit
4 sections · 18 units · 54 levels. Built to play, not to enroll.
Tomo is in ChatGPT
Tomo is also a ChatGPT plugin: the same playable courses, built and played inside your chat.
Add Tomo to ChatGPT- What to ask
- “Make me a Tomo course on black holes.” “Turn this chat into a Tomo course.”
- What you get
- Quick questions with instant feedback, hearts and stars, ready to play in about a minute.
- Where it goes
- No sign-up to start. Connect your Tomo account and your streak carries on in the app.
You pick the voice
How Startups Actually Work is taught in the Comedian style: learning with the laughs left in. Want a different feel? In the app you can spin up the same topic in any of Tomo's teaching styles. Same facts, totally different vibe.
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Start How Startups Actually Work today.
Download Tomo, search How Startups Actually Work, and play your first lesson in under a minute.