Explore · The library
Every resource founders actually use, in one library.
The essays, videos, podcasts, books and tools behind every answer across eChai's hubs, from starting up to go-to-market, D2C, founder money and AI, each with a note on why it is here.
What founders use most, ranked by how many answers lean on it.
- The talk version of the same idea, covering product scope, feature creep, and how products lose relevance when they try to do... Business of Software Video · 45 min · Starting Up Product Strategy (BoS talk) Des Traynor
- A practical checklist drawn from many product leaders on the exact question of when a feature has earned its removal. It gives... Lenny's Newsletter Article · 10 min read · Starting Up When to sunset a feature Lenny Rachitsky
- A product team's honest account of the ongoing cost every shipped feature adds to engineering, design, support, and the next... HubSpot Product Blog Article · 7 min read · Starting Up On Killing It by Killing Features Daria Marmer
- This treats unshipping as a craft with real upside, not just cleanup, and shows how to use usage data to decide what goes. It... Mixpanel Article · 9 min read · Starting Up The art of removing features and products Neil Rahilly
- Written for solo and small-team founders, this makes the case that saying no and removing features is a survival advantage when... The Bootstrapped Founder Essay · 10 min read · Starting Up The Power of Omission: Killing Features for Fun and Profit Arvid Kahl
- The step-by-step operational side of your question: once you have decided to kill a feature, how do you actually retire it... Product Teacher Article · 9 min read · Starting Up How to Deprecate a Feature Clement Kao
- This gives you the simple two-axis map (how many people use a feature, and how often) that turns a gut feeling into a picture... Intercom Article · 6 min read · Starting Up Prioritising Features: Who'll Use It and How Often (the Feature Audit) Des Traynor
- A short, practical answer on how to actually decline feature requests and keep the product lean, including their line that you... Signal v. Noise Article · 5 min read · Starting Up Ask 37signals: How do you say no? Jason Fried
- A practical playbook for the part founders fear most: removing a feature while keeping the few users who relied on it on your... airfocus Article · 9 min read · Starting Up How to kill product features without losing customers Andrei Tiburca
- A practical piece on the exact failure mode where each big customer gets their own custom feature and the product fragments... The Startup (Kit Merker) Essay · 8 min read · Starting Up How to Avoid the Per-Customer Feature Trap Kit Merker
- A grounded take on the real risk sitting under your question: when one customer is half your revenue, losing them can halve the... SaaStr (Jason Lemkin) Article · 7 min read · Starting Up Customer Concentration is Definitely a Risk. But It's Probably OK. Jason Lemkin
- The practical companion piece: what to actually show and say when your largest account asks where their features sit on the... Aha! Article · 6 min read · Starting Up A Big Customer Wants to See Your Roadmap. Now What? Brian de Haaff
- Shows the healthy version of working closely with big customers: a deliberate design partner program where a handful of... First Round Review Article · 15 min read · Starting Up The Hard Way Pays Off: Inside Sierra's Design Partner Strategy First Round Review
- Practical scripts for turning down or deferring a request without blowing up the relationship, which is the skill you need when... Lenny's Newsletter (Lenny Rachitsky) Article · 10 min read · Starting Up On Saying No Lenny Rachitsky
- Deals with the specific pressure of a request that arrives wrapped in a deal, where sales and a big customer both want a yes... Saeed Khan (On Product Management) Article · 9 min read · Starting Up How to Deal with B2B Sales-Driven Feature Requests Saeed Khan
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Video · 50 min watch · Starting Up
Building for the Enterprise
Aaron Levie
- Goldfein ran engineering at Facebook and VMware and lays out how release process should change as a team grows from one person... First Round Review Article · 20 min read · Starting Up The Right Way to Ship Software Jocelyn Goldfein
- Holman was an early GitHub engineer and this is the single most complete plain English essay on what a healthy deploy looks... zachholman.com Essay · 30 min read · Starting Up How to Deploy Software Zach Holman
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Video · 35 min · Starting Up
How GitHub Uses GitHub to Build GitHub
Zach Holman
- Orosz maps the full spectrum from YOLO shipping (change it in prod and watch) to heavy multi stage verification, and explains... The Pragmatic Engineer Article · 25 min read · Starting Up Shipping to Production Gergely Orosz
- Majors argues that instead of piling on pre deploy gates, you invest in fast deploys, good observability, and quick rollback so... Honeycomb Blog Article · 12 min read · Starting Up I Test in Production Charity Majors
- Flags let you merge and deploy unfinished or risky work while keeping it switched off, so you avoid long lived branches and can... martinfowler.com Article · 30 min read · Starting Up Feature Toggles (aka Feature Flags) Pete Hodgson
- Once a second person is committing, the first real risk is two branches drifting apart, and this essay explains the one habit... martinfowler.com Article · 30 min read · Starting Up Continuous Integration Martin Fowler
- A focused reference on the simplest branching model that works for small teams: short lived branches off one trunk, merged... trunkbaseddevelopment.com Article · Reference site · Starting Up Trunk Based Development Paul Hammant
The hubs
Starting Up
Find an idea, validate it, build, and land your first customers.
GTM
Go-to-market, from breaking in to how the best teams do it.
D2C
Building a direct-to-consumer brand, India-first.
Wealth
Paying yourself, ESOPs, secondaries, and de-risking founder wealth.
How Founders Use AI
How founders actually put AI to work, mapped topic by topic.
Glossary
Plain-language definitions of the startup and VC terms you'll hit.
eChai Partner Brands
The partnership →