Many of the blog posts on this blog are good:
The big thing about startups is that it's very easy to be either too optimistic or too pessimistic about how likely your idea is to succeed, since you're so emotionally invested and since there is so much genuine uncertainty. To combat this, watch for when your estimate of your success prospects change based on limited or no evidence (for example, may be an uninformed friend seems pessimistic) and remind yourself to work based on the moving average of your estimates of how successful you will be (average together how optimistic you were on each of the past three Mondays when deciding how hard to work, assuming you haven't acquired any genuine new and important information in that time).
I think a good general algorithm for startups might go something like this: Write out a description of how you're going to make money, figure out what the biggest uncertainty or pain point is, and then figure out the quickest and cheapest way to learn more about that uncertainty or pain point. Then adapt your plan based on what you've learned and move on to the second biggest uncertainty or pain point.
In case you didn't see this Paul Graham post:
http://lesswrong.com/lw/9ik/a_word_to_the_resourceful/
More stuff:
http://lesswrong.com/lw/2p5/humans_are_not_automatically_strategic/
http://lesswrong.com/lw/fc/you_are_a_brain/
I'd suggest emphasizing how frequently people are overconfident, and browsing less wrong by tag to find more relevant posts. I see rationality as more of a set of attitudes than a set of skills (I don't know that much, some of my thought processes may be defective, etc.)
I have been given the opportunity to prepare a workshop for the General Assembly team in London. General Assembly is geared towards education of entrepreneurs and aspiring entrepreneurs and have been very successful in New York, now expanding to London. The workshops are 90 minutes long, and usually gather anywhere from 15 to 35 people who have paid to attend.
While I considered doing something on concrete coding skills, I think by far the superior alternative (for myself and the audience) is to do a crash course on cognitive bias as it relates to startups, maybe throw in some other topics on rationality in a similar context. I am fairly confident that startups are an excellent testing ground for extreme rationality as they require exceptionally quick assimilation of new skills and knowledge, as well as demand rapid decisions with incomplete information.
So, as part of the brainstorming for this, here are my questions for you:
1.Do you think educating startup founders on cognitive bias/rationality will help them improve their outcomes?
2.Which biases would especially affect startups? Which of these can be mitigated (either by knowing about them or by utilising explicit strategies)?
3.What is a good way to use 90 minutes to get this information across?
4.What prior material exists to introduce rationality in a fast-paced manner? What prior material exists that relates startups to rationality?
5.Other relevant thoughts welcome
Should I go ahead with this, I will of course make the deck available for any others who may want to do similar presentations elsewhere.