Every resource founders actually use, in one library.

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

1. A tight, investor's checklist for the exact decision you are making. Bent leads with choosing a burning idea you cannot stop... Mercedes Bent, Lightspeed (Medium) Article · ~12 min read · Starting Up How to Choose a Startup Idea Mercedes Bent
2. This speaks straight to the kill the lukewarm ones part of the answer. Hedging across several ideas feels safe but actually... Startups.com Article · ~8 min read · Starting Up The Problem With Working on Multiple Ideas at Once Wil Schroter
3. A ready made place to write each idea as a one line problem and score it on the criteria that matter to you. Putting all your... Notion Marketplace Template · Template · Starting Up Idea Rating Scorecard (Notion template) Notion Marketplace
4. An Indian founder podcast episode about the messy stage before you commit, which Aditya Agarwal calls minus one. It treats... The Neon Show Podcast · ~60 min · Starting Up Where Founders Take Figuring Out as Seriously as Building (South Park Commons) Siddhartha Ahluwalia
5. Video · ~20 min · Starting Up Kunal Shah on the Delta 4 Theory (TechSparks talk) Kunal Shah
6. A focused conversation on how consumer motivation and trust differ between India and the West, and what that means for which... Return on India podcast Podcast · ~1 hr · Starting Up Kunal Shah: Exploring Consumer Psychology (Return on India) Return on India and Kunal Shah
7. Video · ~1 hr · Starting Up Paras Chopra in conversation with Kunal Shah (CRED curious) Paras Chopra and Kunal Shah
8. A field study of startups serving low and middle income Indian customers, focused squarely on the price sensitive buyer. It... IIMA Ventures Insights Article · ~12 min read · Starting Up Bharat Startups: The Price Sensitive Customer IIMA Ventures
9. Blank invented the get out of the building idea, and here he makes the sharpest version of the case: until you test your... steveblank.com Article · ~8 min read · Starting Up No Plan Survives First Contact With Customers Steve Blank
10. Bezos separates decisions into one way doors you cannot undo and two way doors you can walk back through. Deciding to build a... Amazon shareholder letter (Jeff Bezos) Essay · ~6 min read (relevant section) · Starting Up 2015 Letter to Shareholders (Two-Way Doors) Jeff Bezos
11. A conversational walkthrough of how to move from a hunch to a tested idea quickly, good for a commute when you do not want to... Lenny's Podcast Podcast · podcast episode · Starting Up Rapidly Test and Validate Any Startup Idea Lenny Rachitsky
12. This is the most concrete method we found for collecting the complaints nobody has fixed when you cannot yet get people on... Solving Product (Amy Hoy and Alex Hillman method) Article · Medium read · Starting Up How to Find New Product Opportunities with a Sales Safari Étienne Garbugli
13. Bob Moesta, one of the originators of Jobs to be Done, shows how to interview people about the struggling moment that made them... Business of Software (Bob Moesta) Video · About 45 min · Starting Up Demand-Side Sales 101 (talk) Bob Moesta
14. This is the honest counterweight to the romance of the naive disruptor, and it maps onto your short answer directly. It shows... Kellogg Insight, Northwestern Article · Medium read · Starting Up Sure, Industry Outsiders Can Bring Fresh Ideas. But Are They Better Entrepreneurs? Kellogg Insight
15. Marty Cagan draws the line cleanly: if you are going to fall in love, fall in love with the problem, not the solution, and get... Silicon Valley Product Group Essay · ~6 min read · Starting Up Discovery: Problem vs. Solution Marty Cagan
16. Choosing between two ideas is a bet under uncertainty, and Duke gives you the mindset for it: judge the decision by its... Annie Duke Book · ~272 pages · Starting Up Thinking in Bets Annie Duke
17. This is the simple artifact your answer describes: list the three or four criteria you both care about, weight them, and score... Smartsheet Template · template · Starting Up Weighted Decision Matrix Templates Smartsheet
18. This is YC's direct answer to your question, walking through how partners spot ideas that only became buildable once models got... Y Combinator Video · ~15 min · Starting Up How To Get AI Startup Ideas Y Combinator
19. This is the direct counter to the fear in your short answer, that a platform update erases your product overnight. Chen argues... Andrew Chen Essay · 20 min read · Starting Up Revenge of the GPT Wrappers: Defensibility in a World of Commoditized AI Models Andrew Chen
20. Before you commit, you need to know whether the value from your AI idea accrues to you or to an incumbent who bolts the feature... Elad Gil Essay · 12 min read · Starting Up AI: Startup Vs Incumbent Value Elad Gil
21. A map of which AI markets already have clear winners and which are still wide open, which is the practical version of asking... Elad Gil Essay · 12 min read · Starting Up AI Market Clarity Elad Gil
22. This explains why niches once dismissed as too small (laundromats, vets, clinics) become real businesses when AI absorbs the... Andreessen Horowitz Article · 15 min read · Starting Up Vertical SaaS: Now with AI Inside Angela Strange and James da Costa
23. The core move in our short answer is decomposing a workflow into steps a model can now do. This piece frames every workflow as... Andreessen Horowitz Article · 15 min read · Starting Up The Rise of Computer Use and Agentic Coworkers Eric Zhou, Yoko Li, Seema Amble, Jennifer Li
24. Once you have spotted the opening, this gives you concrete principles for making it defensible, heavy on proprietary data and... Bessemer Venture Partners Article · 15 min read · Starting Up Ten Principles for Building Strong Vertical AI Businesses Bessemer Venture Partners

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