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.

  1. A plain, no-jargon explainer of building in public for founders who have heard the term but aren't sure what to actually post... Indie Hackers Article · 8 min read · Starting Up What Is Building in Public? (Explained Simply) Indie Hackers
  2. This is the practical rulebook for your actual question. It draws the line between shipping (code deployed) and launching... Lenny's Wiki Article · Starting Up Feature Launches Lenny's Wiki
  3. Two former Amazon VPs explain the PR/FAQ method: writing the press release before you build anything, for far more initiatives... St. Martin's Press Book · ~350 pages · Starting Up Working Backwards: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon Colin Bryar, Bill Carr
  4. Holiday's core argument is that growth hackers don't bolt marketing onto a finished product, they build it into the product and... Portfolio Book · ~176 pages · Starting Up Growth Hacker Marketing: A Primer on the Future of PR, Marketing, and Advertising Ryan Holiday
  5. Michael Seibel lays out a concrete process for shipping as a small team, including deciding on an actual release schedule and... Y Combinator Blog Article · Starting Up How To Build Product As A Small Startup Michael Seibel
  6. This gives you a simple tier system, from a major launch down to a minor one, so you can decide how much noise each thing you... Medium Article · Starting Up The Launch Tier System That Transforms Product Teams Aakash Gupta
  7. Julian Shapiro argues that growth should be designed into the product itself rather than bolted on afterward, so every new... julian.com Article · Starting Up Startup Handbook: Product-Led Acquisition Julian Shapiro
  8. Ries makes the exact distinction our answer rests on: a product launch (making it available) and a marketing launch (making... Startup Lessons Learned (Eric Ries) Essay · 10 min read · Starting Up Don't launch Eric Ries
  9. Godin names the exact failure mode our answer warns about: work that could ship but does not, dressed up as caution. It is... Seth's Blog Essay · 3 min read · Starting Up Project Resistance Seth Godin
  10. A short, sharp distinction that names your exact problem: meeting a real spec is craft, chasing an ever-shifting ideal is... Seth's Blog Essay · 2 min read · Starting Up Perfect is not the same as perfectionism Seth Godin
  11. Clear separates what's optimal from what's actually needed to begin, which is useful when you keep waiting for the landing page... jamesclear.com Essay · 6 min read · Starting Up The Power of Imperfect Starts James Clear
  12. 37signals' own internal rules for when something is done enough to ship, written by a team that has shipped products for over... Basecamp Article · Starting Up Seven Shipping Principles Basecamp
  13. This explains, with the classic committee-and-bikeshed example, exactly why founders fuss over fonts and micro-copy instead of... Effectiviology Article · Starting Up Bikeshedding and the Law of Triviality: Why People Focus on Minor Issues Effectiviology
  14. The actual research behind the claim that a stranger judges your page in seconds, not minutes: visitors form a gut reaction in... Google Research Article · Starting Up Users love simple and familiar designs: why websites need to make a great first impression Javier Bargas-Avila
  15. This is the actual psychology behind your short answer: you overestimate how much other people notice and track you, because... Psychology Today Article · ~7 min · Starting Up All Eyes on Us: The Spotlight Effect Psychology Today
  16. Linear's cofounder makes the case for a running, dated log of what shipped, which turns constant announcing into infrastructure... Linear Essay · ~5 min · Starting Up Startups, Write Changelogs Karri Saarinen
  17. Intercom's own playbook for feature announcements is useful precisely because it treats every release as its own small... Intercom Article · ~10 min · Starting Up A guide to announcing your new features Intercom
  18. A price change is one of the clean, new reasons your short answer points to, and this is a practical, plainly written... Chris Lema Article · ~10 min · Starting Up How to announce pricing changes (without ruining everything) Chris Lema
  19. The longer conversation version of Vohra's waitlist thinking, where he walks through why manual onboarding capacity, not FOMO,... Lenny's Podcast Podcast · 1h 25m · Starting Up Superhuman's secret to success: Ignoring most customer feedback, manually onboarding every new user, obsessing over every detail, and positioning around a single attribute: speed Lenny Rachitsky
  20. Clubhouse's invite-only waitlist is the clearest cautionary tale of using scarcity as a growth trick rather than a real... Medium Article · 7 min read · Starting Up Creating the Illusion of Exclusivity: The Story of Clubhouse Dan DeSimone
  21. Cialdini's chapters on scarcity are the underlying psychology behind why a waitlist feels persuasive at all, and why that... Amazon Book · Book · Starting Up Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, Revised Edition Robert Cialdini
  22. CRED launched invite-only, restricted to people with a credit score above 750, and turned that restriction into both a real... Forbes India Article · 8 min read · Starting Up Inside Cred's growth strategy Manu Balachandran
  23. This short essay explains why fancy language in a launch post reads as a warning sign to your reader, since ornate writing... Paul Graham Essay · 5 min read · Starting Up Write Simply Paul Graham
  24. HN's own posting guidelines tell you plainly what a technical, skeptical audience wants from a launch post: no editorializing,... Y Combinator Article · 5 min read · Starting Up Hacker News Guidelines Y Combinator

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