Every resource founders actually use, in one library.

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

1. Kao's bullseye model gives you a visual way to think about exactly the ongoing read your short answer describes: your core... weskao.com Essay · Starting Up Concentric circles of customers: focus on people who already share your worldviews Wes Kao
2. Video · Starting Up Understanding the Jobs to Be Done (the milkshake story) Clayton Christensen
3. This article is squarely about treating the ICP as an ongoing read rather than a document you write once and file away, which... Clarify Article · Starting Up Why your ideal customer profile should evolve with your startup Clarify
4. This is a practical, checklist style piece on diagnosing whether your ICP is actually too broad in the first place, before you... DevriX Article · Starting Up How Narrow Ideal Customer Profiles Can Expand Revenue DevriX
5. Zerodha's founders built specifically for the self-directed retail trader who was fed up with high commissions and clunky... Forbes India Article · Starting Up Bootstrapping to a Billion (Zerodha founder story) Forbes India
6. This is the origin of the '100 people who love you beats a million who sort of like you' idea that underlies your whole short... Inc. Article · Starting Up Airbnb's Brian Chesky: If 100 People Love Your Product, That's Enough Salvador Rodriguez
7. This piece attacks the exact mistake domain experts make: describing a market by job title or industry instead of by the... A Smart Bear Essay · Starting Up Your target market isn't demographic Jason Cohen
8. Coelen explains why founders can't segment their market from a desk using industry reports, they have to talk to real customers... Doctor Market Fit Essay · Starting Up How most founders get their beachhead wrong Jeroen Coelen
9. This piece gives you a checklist for evaluating whether a slice of your industry is a genuine beachhead: urgent problem,... Doctor Market Fit Essay · Starting Up What makes a great beachhead market? Jeroen Coelen
10. This is a practical, tactical follow up to the ICP essays above: once you have named your narrow slice, here is how you... A Smart Bear Essay · Starting Up How do I get my first few customers? Jason Cohen
11. This deck lays out how consumer investors actually think about a target user, closer to a specific behavior and context than a... andrewchen.com Essay · 30 min read (slide deck) · Starting Up Consumer startups are awesome, and here's what I'm looking for at a16z Andrew Chen
12. Bier has built and sold two viral consumer apps by deliberately starting with a narrow, high urgency audience like teenagers... Lenny's Newsletter Podcast · 45 min · Starting Up How to consistently go viral: Nikita Bier's playbook for winning at consumer apps Nikita Bier, interviewed by Lenny Rachitsky
13. This is Bier's own written version of his consumer playbook, useful as a quick reference you can screenshot and revisit. It is... X (Twitter) Thread · 5 min read · Starting Up Nikita Bier's thread on building consumer social apps Nikita Bier
14. This framework treats persona as one of four levers, alongside problem, promise, and product, that you pull when growth or... First Round Article · 20 min read · Starting Up Levels of PMF First Round Capital
15. This is the direct counterargument to our short answer, and reading it will sharpen your thinking either way. It walks through... Harvard Business Review Article · 8 min read · Starting Up When "Scratch Your Own Itch" Is Dangerous Advice for Entrepreneurs N. Taylor Thompson
16. This article names the exact cognitive bias behind the red flag you're asking about: assuming other people think, want, and... Nielsen Norman Group Article · 8 min read · Starting Up You Are Not the User: The False-Consensus Effect Raluca Budiu
17. A founder's first-person account of the exact failure mode in your question: mistaking an audience of people who look and think... Indie Hackers Thread · 8 min read · Starting Up Your build-in-public audience is not your market. I learned the difference the slow way. Indie Hackers
18. This is the counter case, marketplaces where demand was actually the constrained side and defining the ideal buyer first is... Lenny's Newsletter Article · Starting Up Demand driving supply Brian Rothenberg
19. Lauzier has run marketplace growth at Lyft, Thumbtack and Reforge, and this conversation gets into how a precise definition on... Lenny's Podcast Podcast · ~1 hr · Starting Up How marketplaces win: Liquidity, growth levers, quality, and more Benjamin Lauzier
20. Evans and Schmalensee studied why most attempts at multisided platforms fail, and a recurring reason is founders never nailed a... Harvard Business Review Press Book · Starting Up Matchmakers: The New Economics of Multisided Platforms David S. Evans, Richard Schmalensee
21. This warns you against a specific mistake that happens after you correctly anchor on supply: building every feature suppliers... Reforge Blog Article · Starting Up The Supply Features Trap Of Marketplaces Gilad Horev
22. Agarwal describes how OYO had to define its ideal hotel partner precisely, small, underperforming, willing to be upgraded,... SeedToScale (Accel India) Podcast · Starting Up Ritesh Agarwal on Building OYO, the Decacorn of India's Hotel Industry Ritesh Agarwal, hosted by Anand Daniel
23. This traces Urban Company's earliest days recruiting and defining their first service professionals in one city before... SeedToScale Podcast · Starting Up Untold Seed Stories: The First 500 Days of Urban Company Abhiraj Bhal, hosted by Abhinav Chaturvedi
24. Gebbia tells the founding story from the side of the person actually going door to door defining who their first hosts should... How I Built This with Guy Raz, NPR Podcast · ~45 min · Starting Up Airbnb: Joe Gebbia Joe Gebbia, hosted by Guy Raz

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