Every resource founders actually use, in one library.

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

1. Written from the perspective of bootstrapped founders who do not have the luxury of burning cash to reach a broad market, this... Indie Hackers Article · 10 min read · Starting Up How to Identify a Micro-Niche That's Perfect for SaaS Founders Indie Hackers
2. The clearest definition of what a persona actually is and is not, from the field that invented the term. It draws the line... Nielsen Norman Group Article · ~10 min read · Starting Up Personas Make Users Memorable Nielsen Norman Group
3. A two minute primer you can watch before a team meeting to get everyone aligned on what a persona is for. Useful as the thing... Nielsen Norman Group Video · 2 min · Starting Up What Are Personas and Why Should I Care? Kim Flaherty
4. A deeper follow-up conversation on the same theory, with more of the reasoning behind why circumstance matters more than... HBR IdeaCast Podcast · ~25 min · Starting Up Revisiting Jobs to Be Done with Clayton Christensen Clayton Christensen
5. Video · ~35 min · Starting Up Sales Safari Demo, La Conf Paris 2013 Amy Hoy
6. Written by a company that built its CRM specifically for SMB focused sales teams, this is blunt about what changes when your... Close blog Article · 15 min read · Starting Up SMB Sales Strategy: How to Sell to SMB Customers Close
7. Video · ~10 min · Starting Up ET Now Interview with Mr. Harsh Pokharna, Founder of OkCredit Harsh Pokharna
8. Blume pulled lessons from vertical SaaS companies that succeeded by narrowing to one workflow within one type of small... Blume Ventures Essay · 20 min read · Starting Up The Vertical SaaS Secret Playsheet Blume Ventures
9. This is close to a direct answer to your exact question, written by a product discovery coach who works with B2B teams every... Product Talk Essay · Starting Up Ask Teresa: What if Your Buyers Aren't Your Users? Teresa Torres
10. Yoon gives you three concrete tactics for the exact gap in your question: reaching a buyer who is not the one feeling the daily... Harvard Business Review Article · Starting Up How to Market a Product When Your Buyer Isn't Your User Eddie Yoon
11. Written for exactly the founder-market moment you are in: a developer or junior employee uses your product, someone above them... Founder Labs (Substack) Essay · Starting Up How to Sell if Your User is not the Buyer Nate Ritter
12. Rothman untangles three roles founders often blur together: buyer, user, and customer (the one who signs a contract but never... jrothman.com Essay · Starting Up Who to Satisfy? Differentiate Buyers, Users, and Customers for Effective Product Decisions Johanna Rothman
13. This is the product-led growth counter-argument to old-school enterprise sales: design and market for the user first, and let... OpenView Article · Starting Up Why You Should Sell to Users, Not Buyers: A Product-Led Approach to Marketing Ashley Murphy
14. This episode is a direct case study in the buyer/user split: developers are your user and increasingly your champion, but... a16z Podcast Podcast · Starting Up Selling to Developers Andreessen Horowitz
15. Video · Starting Up Building a Global SaaS Empire: Freshworks Founder & CEO Girish Mathrubootham on His Biggest Bets Girish Mathrubootham
16. Postman, founded in Bangalore, is a clean example of designing entirely for the individual developer-user first and only later... Stack Overflow Blog Article · Starting Up Postman's journey and unlocking the power of APIs Abhinav Asthana (interview)
17. This worksheet is built for exactly your situation: choosing one narrow persona to start with when you could plausibly serve... reifyworks.com Template · Starting Up The Initial Ideal Customer Profile (IICP) Worksheet Reify
18. Shapiro's method, asking 100 people representative of your guessed audience whether they'd put down a cash deposit, is a fast,... julian.com Article · about 10 min read · Starting Up Market Pull (Startup Handbook) Julian Shapiro
19. Godin's short post makes the strongest case for going smaller on purpose: pick the smallest group you can delight completely... Seth's Blog Essay · 5 min read · Starting Up The Minimum Viable Audience Seth Godin
20. This thread is founders arguing out this exact question in public, with real numbers from real small businesses about when a... Indie Hackers Thread · 10 min read · Starting Up Is it possible to be "too niche"? Indie Hackers community
21. Kushwaha built Bluestone in Indian jewellery e-commerce, a category everyone assumed was too niche and infrequent to fund a... Prime Venture Partners Podcast Podcast · ~50 min · Starting Up Reasons to Buy, Right Attribution Models & CAC/LTV Fallacy with Gaurav Singh Kushwaha, Founder & CEO Bluestone Prime Venture Partners, with Gaurav Singh Kushwaha
22. Wang argues that the TAM slide investors ask for is often meaningless because Uber and Airbnb both started with tiny quoted... SaaStr Podcast · ~35 min · Starting Up SaaStr Podcast #227: Alexandr Wang, Founder & CEO @ Scale, on Why TAM In The Traditional Sense Barely Matters SaaStr, with Alexandr Wang
23. Zerodha started as a boutique brokerage aimed narrowly at active day traders, a niche the rest of the Indian broking industry... Z-Connect by Zerodha Article · 10 min read · Starting Up Nithin: Zero to Zerodha Nithin Kamath
24. This is the sharpest possible answer to the second half of your question: what to do about the people who show up wanting to... Y Combinator Essay · Starting Up Users You Don't Want Michael Seibel

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