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. The sharpest strategic interview on where human designers fit as AI eats production work. stratechery.com Article · How Founders Use AI An interview with Figma CEO Dylan Field about design and AI Stratechery (Ben Thompson)
  2. Field's AI Startup School talk, aimed squarely at founders deciding how to staff design. creators.spotify.com Podcast · How Founders Use AI Figma CEO Dylan Field: how AI will transform design Y Combinator Startup Podcast
  3. A VC-grade discussion of design org shapes in the AI era. a16z.com Podcast · How Founders Use AI Figma's Dylan Field on the future of design a16z Podcast
  4. Two people who shaped startup design culture on what founders should still own. figma.com Article · How Founders Use AI Dylan Field and Garry Tan on design, AI, and the power of locking in Figma
  5. Argues AI raises the bar for the hire: easier making means knowing what to make matters more. medium.com Article · How Founders Use AI The founding designer: hiring your first designer in the age of AI Sunit Singh
  6. Why AI startups in particular win by making design a day-one strategic seat. thenextweb.com Article · How Founders Use AI Tingyu Su on treating the founding designer as a strategic hire The Next Web
  7. Rigorous, hype-free assessment of what AI design tools still cannot do. nngroup.com Article · How Founders Use AI AI design tools are marginally better: status update Nielsen Norman Group
  8. The counterweight: where human design judgment remains non-negotiable. nngroup.com Video · How Founders Use AI AI isn't ready for UX design (video) Nielsen Norman Group
  9. Fresh field data on how design teams actually split work between AI and humans. open.spotify.com Podcast · How Founders Use AI Stephen Haney: the 2026 AI design field report Dive Club (Ridd)
  10. A designer's-side view that helps founders understand what they are actually buying when they hire. benvsthemachine.substack.com Article · How Founders Use AI The prototype trap: how designers are accidentally undermining themselves on AI Ben (Ben vs The Machine)
  11. A product-led lens on when taste needs a full-time owner. productled.com Article · How Founders Use AI Taste is the new moat: building in the age of AI with Typeform ProductLed
  12. The market context for why design hires got more strategic, not obsolete. forbes.com Article · How Founders Use AI Why taste is Silicon Valley's new competitive moat Forbes (Josipa Majic)
  13. On why the designer-engineer-PM boundary is dissolving and what that means for your first hires. productschool.com Podcast · How Founders Use AI Dylan Field on design, product, engineering: blurring the lines in the AI era Product School
  14. Survey-backed look at which early hires AI actually displaces (hint: not judgment roles). mercury.com Article · How Founders Use AI How AI is influencing early roles at startups Mercury
  15. Investor guidance on sequencing hires when AI covers the early design work. hsgcap.com Article · How Founders Use AI How to build your startup team in the age of AI HSG
  16. The skeptical rebuttal, useful before you overpay for 'taste' in a hire. medium.com Article · How Founders Use AI Taste is the new moat, and that's the problem Ruiqi Zhou
  17. The most engineering-credible checklist for hardening an AI-built app. stack.convex.dev Guide · How Founders Use AI 6 steps before taking your vibe-coded app to production Convex
  18. A full workflow that builds production discipline in from the first prompt. sitepoint.com Guide · How Founders Use AI Production vibe coding workflow: from prompt to deploy SitePoint
  19. Draws the prototype-versus-production line precisely, then walks the gap. vibengineer.io Article · How Founders Use AI Vibe coded prototype to production: how to harden the demo Vibengineer
  20. A time-boxed two-week plan if you need a launch date, not a philosophy. appstuck.com Guide · How Founders Use AI Vibe coded to production: the 14-day playbook AppStuck
  21. A sober framework for deciding rebuild versus harden. mindstudio.ai Article · How Founders Use AI Is vibe coding good enough for production apps? MindStudio
  22. First-party account of the year vibe-coded apps leaked data, and the safer defaults that followed. supabase.com Article · How Founders Use AI Supabase security retro: 2025 Supabase
  23. The cautionary tale every Lovable and Bolt builder should read before launch. byteiota.com Article · How Founders Use AI Supabase security flaw: 170+ apps exposed by missing RLS byteiota
  24. A checklist mapped to the exact mistakes AI-generated backends make. vibeappscanner.com Guide · How Founders Use AI Supabase security: RLS, service_role and the CVE-2025-48757 patterns Vibe App Scanner

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The hubs

Starting Up Find an idea, validate it, build, and land your first customers. 1327 questions GTM Go-to-market, from breaking in to how the best teams do it. 379 questions D2C Building a direct-to-consumer brand, India-first. 512 questions Wealth Paying yourself, ESOPs, secondaries, and de-risking founder wealth. 165 questions How Founders Use AI How founders actually put AI to work, mapped topic by topic. 360 questions Glossary Plain-language definitions of the startup and VC terms you'll hit. 425 terms