Every resource founders actually use, in one library.

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

1. A pricing consultant's argument that most companies discount reflexively instead of strategically, with a framework for... Harvard Business Review Article · Starting Up The Art of Discounting Rafi Mohammed
2. A short, sharp reminder that your price tells a story, and that cutting it to close a deal usually just tells the buyer the... Seth's Blog Essay · Starting Up On pricing Seth Godin
3. A free, plain-language contract template built specifically for running a paid pilot, with the scope, fee, and success criteria... Common Paper Template · Starting Up Pilot Agreement Common Paper
4. The other side of the discount question: sometimes a genuinely low price is the right strategy, not a concession. Jason Lemkin... SaaStr Article · Starting Up Dear SaaStr: When Does It Make Sense to Price Low in the Market? Jason Lemkin
5. A practical, no-nonsense walkthrough of what a pipeline is for and how to keep it honest, written by a company that sells CRM... Close Article · Starting Up The Ultimate Sales Pipeline Guide: How to Build, Manage, & Measure Close
6. When a spreadsheet finally starts to strain, this is the most common next step: unlimited contacts, deal tracking, and email... HubSpot Tool · Starting Up Free CRM for Small Business HubSpot
7. A short, honest account of the exact failure mode this question warns about: a solo founder loses a good prospect purely from... Indie Hackers Thread · Starting Up Built a dead-simple pipeline tracker after losing a deal because I forgot to follow up Indie Hackers
8. Welsh shows the exact two-step process he used to build a million-dollar pipeline from cold DMs: find people already talking... Justin Welsh Essay · 10 min read · Starting Up How to Get Replies from Your Dream Customers Justin Welsh
9. This is the LinkedIn half of the question: a simple system using alerts and triggers (funding news, new hires, press mentions)... Justin Welsh Essay · 10 min read · Starting Up How to Find More Customers on LinkedIn Justin Welsh
10. Ferriss writes from the other side of the inbox: what actually gets a reply from someone who gets hundreds of pitches a day.... Tim Ferriss Essay · 5 min read · Starting Up 5 Tips for E-mailing Busy People Tim Ferriss
11. Sethi gives word-for-word scripts and, more usefully, the follow-up move almost nobody does: closing the loop by telling... Ramit Sethi Article · 10 min read · Starting Up How To Connect w/ Busy People (& actually get HAPPY replies) Ramit Sethi
12. A straightforward six-part checklist (subject line, personalization, benefit to them, credibility, one call-to-action, respect... Noah Kagan Article · 8 min read · Starting Up Cold Email Tips: 6 Steps to Write Great Cold Emails Noah Kagan
13. Caponi's argument is that admitting what your product is not good at, early and clearly, closes deals faster than trying to... Todd Caponi Book · Starting Up The Transparency Sale Todd Caponi
14. This book is the practical, step-by-step companion to the essay above, built from Dunford working the same structure with over... April Dunford Book · Starting Up Sales Pitch: How to Craft a Story to Stand Out and Win April Dunford
15. Gallo breaks down, keynote by keynote, how Jobs turned deeply technical hardware into a demo a room full of non-engineers could... Carmine Gallo Book · Starting Up The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs: How to Be Insanely Great in Front of Any Audience Carmine Gallo
16. Video · Starting Up Steve Jobs introduces the original iPhone, Macworld 2007 Apple / Macworld keynote
17. Duarte studies presentations for a living, and this talk (using the Jobs iPhone launch as one of her two case studies) shows... TED (TEDxEast) Video · Starting Up The secret structure of great talks TED (TEDxEast)
18. This essay is not about demos, it is about the underlying test our short answer relies on: if you cannot explain something... Farnam Street Essay · Starting Up Feynman Technique: The Ultimate Guide to Learning Anything Faster Farnam Street
19. The condensed, skimmable version of Blond's YC talk, written up as a thread after he spoke to a live batch. Good for a quick... X (Twitter) Thread · short read · Starting Up How to succeed with founder led sales Sam Blond
20. A practicing operator's version of our own bar: Girdley says you need a proven, repeatable process and something like 15... Michael Girdley Essay · 12 min read · Starting Up Playbook: When & how to hire your first salesperson Michael Girdley
21. Jason Lemkin has watched thousands of SaaS founders make this hire, and this is his running list of what goes wrong. The number... SaaStr Article · 12 min read · Starting Up The Top 10 Mistakes Folks Make Hiring Their First Sales Team Jason Lemkin
22. A free grab-bag of the actual artifacts (email templates, qualification checklists, call scripts) you need to run consistent... Close Template · 9 email templates, 3 checklists, 2 scripts, 5 books · Starting Up The Startup Sales Resource Bundle Close / Steli Efti
23. A plug-and-play spreadsheet for calculating win rate, average deal size, and churn from your own numbers. Use it to actually... HubSpot Tool · spreadsheet tool · Starting Up Sales Metrics Calculator HubSpot
24. Written for the stage right after your first hire works, this explains why hiring account executives before product-market fit... a16z Article · 15 min read · Starting Up Your product won't sell itself: How to build a world-class sales team Jason Rosenthal

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