Every resource founders actually use, in one library.

What founders use most, ranked by how many answers lean on it.

1. Most market sizing advice online is generic TAM SAM SOM filler. This one is written by an investor, backed by a survey of 30... Pear VC Essay · ~15 min read · Starting Up Market Sizing Guide Ian Taylor In 14 answers
2. Thiel makes the counterintuitive case that dominating a tiny market first is a feature, not a bug: every lasting monopoly... Penguin Random House India Book · ~224 pages · Starting Up Zero to One: Notes on Startups, or How to Build the Future Peter Thiel with Blake Masters In 14 answers
3. The consumer counterpart to finding B2B customers, focused on manually recruiting your first users for a consumer product. It... Lenny's Newsletter Article · Starting Up How to Find Your Early Adopters by Doing Things That Don't Scale Lenny Rachitsky In 14 answers
4. The definitive short read on why disruptive ideas get dismissed as toys, and why that dismissal is your opening. It reframes... cdixon.org Article · ~5 min read · Starting Up The Next Big Thing Will Start Out Looking Like a Toy Chris Dixon In 13 answers
5. A data-backed teardown of how companies like Figma, Gusto, and Vanta actually sourced their earliest customers. Replaces... Lenny's Newsletter Article · ~15 min read · Starting Up How today's fastest-growing B2B startups found their first ten customers Lenny Rachitsky In 13 answers
6. The definitive playbook for network and community-led products, drawn from Andrew Chen's a16z experience and interviews with... Harper Business Book · Book (~368 pages) · Starting Up The Cold Start Problem: How to Start and Scale Network Effects Andrew Chen In 13 answers
7. The canonical, no-nonsense overview of how seed fundraising works, written by a former YC president who has seen thousands of... Y Combinator Startup Library Article · 20 min read · Starting Up A Guide to Seed Fundraising Geoff Ralston In 13 answers
8. Blume's annual report is the single best data-grounded read on what is actually happening in Indian internet and consumption,... Blume Ventures Article · ~180 charts · Starting Up Indus Valley Annual Report 2025 Sajith Pai, Anurag Pagaria and team (Blume Ventures) In 13 answers
9. Most first 100 users advice is vague. This piece is the opposite: it groups the real cold start tactics into seven concrete... Lenny's Newsletter Article · About a 15 minute read · Starting Up How the biggest consumer apps got their first 1,000 users Lenny Rachitsky In 13 answers
10. A plain-language India primer on what an ESOP actually is, how vesting and exercise work, and how it is taxed. ClearTax Article · Wealth What is an ESOP? Meaning, taxation, and how it works ClearTax In 13 answers
11. Battle-tested YC advice on landing your critical first engineering hire, from founders who've done it at scale. It reframes... YC Startup Library Article · Essay · Starting Up How to hire your first engineer (YC Startup Library) Y Combinator (Greg Brockman, Harj Taggar) In 12 answers
12. Currier's whole argument is that founder-market fit is more than the one line on a resume that says 'domain expert'. He breaks... NFX Article · ~12 min read · Starting Up The 4 Signs of Founder-Market Fit James Currier In 12 answers
13. This is the most concrete walkthrough of how to test a niche when you have nothing built yet: put up a page describing the... kromatic.com Essay · ~15 min read · Starting Up Fake Door / Smoke Test Kromatic (The Real Startup Book) In 12 answers
14. A tighter second read that makes the "register early" case concrete: it lists 12 scenarios that force registration regardless... Razorpay Article · 10 min read · Starting Up GST Registration Limits: Thresholds, Mandatory Triggers and Voluntary Registration Razorpay Learn In 12 answers
15. The two ways to fake a product while you test real demand. Do the work by hand in the open (concierge), or hide the manual work... LogRocket Article · ~12 min read · Starting Up Concierge vs. Wizard of Oz MVP LogRocket In 12 answers
16. Once you are testing an idea, this piece gives you concrete signals that tell you whether it is actually working, from... Lenny's Newsletter Article · about 15 min read · Starting Up How to Know If You've Got Product-Market Fit Lenny Rachitsky In 12 answers
17. To say no to the right requests you need feedback you can trust, and this shows how to get it by watching customers rather than... First Round Review Article · 12 min read · Starting Up Get in the Van and Other Tips for Getting Meaningful Customer Feedback Michael Sippey In 12 answers
18. Lenny interviewed founders of Gong, Notion, Figma, Amplitude, Retool and more to trace where their idea actually came from. The... Lenny's Newsletter Article · About 15 min read · Starting Up How the Most Successful B2B Startups Came Up With Their Original Idea Lenny Rachitsky In 12 answers
19. The four MUDRA loan bands for a micro business, given through banks and NBFCs: Shishu up to Rs 50,000, Kishore up to Rs 5 lakh,... mudra.org.in Article · Official page · Starting Up Pradhan Mantri MUDRA Yojana: offerings MUDRA In 12 answers
20. The most thorough plain-language reference on vesting, cliffs, strike prices, and exercise windows. Read it once and stop being... Holloway Guide · Wealth The Holloway Guide to Equity Compensation Holloway In 12 answers
21. The mutual fund industry body investor corner: fund basics, NAVs, and how SIPs work, straight from the source. AMFI Guide · Wealth AMFI: mutual fund investor resources AMFI In 12 answers
22. The nuanced counterweight: PMF isn't a single binary moment, it can be lost, and 'market' is doing more work than founders... a16z.com Article · ~20 min read · Starting Up 12 Things About Product-Market Fit Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) In 11 answers
23. A short, pointed essay on why the best ideas grow organically out of the founder's own life and knowledge, the essence of... paulgraham.com Article · ~5 min read · Starting Up Organic Startup Ideas Paul Graham In 11 answers
24. The foundational text of customer development, 'get out of the building' started here and became the backbone of the Lean... steveblank.com Book · ~370 pages · Starting Up The Four Steps to the Epiphany: Successful Strategies for Products that Win Steve Blank In 11 answers

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