Luca Stirbat
CEO @ ReaktorX & Creative Motion.
We all spend a lot of time glued to our phones, endlessly scrolling on Facebook, Linkedin or Instagram. However, two huge platforms take the cake when it comes to getting us hooked: Youtube and TikTok. We’ve all been there: diving deep into a rabbit hole on youtube looking for how to create intricate cocktails with ingredients in your own house or trying to find out which conspiracy theories are real. We also all know that TikTok works like a time machine: you enter it for 5 minutes and exit 2 hours later without any recollection of where you’ve been.
These are huge time-wasters, yet required for us to clear our minds after a lot of thinking (and overthinking). So we prepared a list of inspiring youtube channels and videos to watch as a startup founder in your downtime to get you moving/motivated for that next sprint.
1. Slidebean
We’re all sleeping on Slidebean right now. With most videos not passing 50k views and yet incredibly good content and production value, Slidebean is the number one channel to follow if you want to understand more about entrepreneurship, startups and validation. The video above is about creating an investor data room, a much needed overview of how this looks and what it requires when you’re raising funds from VC’s.
2. Y Combinator
You’ve probably seen this coming. Y Combinator is the top accelerator in the world and there is a lot of know-how generated from the thousands of startups that passed through their gates, so they launched a youtube channels to share those lessons. Although they might get a bit boring after a while, the content is great and if you pay even 20% attention to it you’ll get some amazing insights. This video is one of the best from them, about features and ideas that can’t/don’t scale.
3. CNBC
Now this might be a bit of a surprise, but hear us out. CNBC, an American news channels, has done some incredible research and their videos give insight into some of the most obscure problems. For example, they did a piece on why Walmart failed in Canada and how the culture affected the business or what are the current technologies being explored for generating energy from waves. One of our favorites is this one, about why cities are starting to give up on cars and how that affects commuting. (an issue which we are also adressing with our startup Cruze).
4. CGP Grey
It might seem silly, but CGP Grey presents some of the most mind-boggling topics in metaphoric, animated, short videos. Although not 100% centered around entrepreneurship or startups, most of his video help in thinking critically and understanding the world around us. Our favorite one however is the one about becoming a pirate, or rather a quartermaster and how a rag-tag team of nobodies organize (similar to a startup team).
5. Our Changing Climate
Our Changing Climate is a top channel to watch regarding our sustainability, ecology and climate impact. Some of their videos edge on the limit of realism and panic-inducing-crisis-everybody-drop-everything-you’re-doing-and-save-the-planet type, but it does shine a light on some of the most hurtful industries to our planet like fast-fashion, car manufacturing and oil and gas production. A sample of this is this video about vertical farming and how we could use it to our advantage in cities and urban areas.
6. Some TED’s
We can’t close the list without some great TED Talks on business. Our top pick is one from Bill Gross, the inventor of the startup studio model, who talks about single biggest reason why startups succeed based on years of research and data from tens of thousands of companies. However, we have a shorter list here (a list within a list) of really great business TED’s to watch while you procastinate:
