Every resource founders actually use, in one library.

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

1. A short, free checklist you can hold next to your draft while writing your first cold email, not just the subject line but the... Josh Braun Template · Starting Up 15 Cold Email Copywriting Principles Josh Braun In 2 answers
2. Jason Lemkin is the investor on the other end of the email, walking through two real cold emails he actually funded and... SaaStr (Jason Lemkin) Article · Starting Up 2 Cold Emails I Funded For Millions SaaStr (Jason Lemkin) In 2 answers
3. Josh Braun makes a living teaching sales teams to write first lines that could not be pasted into anyone else's inbox, which is... Josh Braun Essay · 5 min read · Starting Up Killer Cold Email Opening Lines Josh Braun In 2 answers
4. This gives you an actual repeatable process (research, write, move on) instead of vague advice to do your homework, which is... Lavender Article · 8 min read · Starting Up How to Build a Cold Email Personalization Process Will Allred In 2 answers
5. Before you send a single cold email to a real prospect, send one to this tool. It gives you a spam score out of 10, checks your... mail-tester.com Tool · Starting Up Mail Tester mail-tester.com In 2 answers
6. McKenzie went from zero consulting clients to a full pipeline using direct, honest outreach with no case studies to point to,... Kalzumeus Software Podcast · 50 min audio · Starting Up Ramit Sethi and Patrick McKenzie on Getting Your First Consulting Client Patrick McKenzie, Ramit Sethi In 2 answers
7. Carlos Espinal is a seed investor who reads cold pitches for a living, and this essay lays out exactly what he needs in the... Medium Essay · ~8 min read · Starting Up The Art of the Cold Outreach for Founders Carlos E. Espinal In 2 answers
8. Video · ~75 min · Starting Up Founder-Led Sales, with Pete Kazanjy Pete Kazanjy, hosted by Lenny Rachitsky In 2 answers
9. Gong analyzed over 100,000 real cold calls to find what actually correlates with booking a meeting, so this is data, not... Gong Article · 12 min read · Starting Up Essential Cold Calling Tips: 17 Proven Techniques for Success Chris Orlob In 2 answers
10. A ready made list of open, past behavior questions you can literally bring into your next call, grouped so you're not... Indie Hackers Template · Starting Up 24 User Interview Questions you can use (free template too!) Joshua Tabansi In 2 answers
11. Video · Starting Up How to Validate an App Idea in 2026 (Customer Interviews, Landing Pages & Reddit) Varun Mayya In 2 answers
12. A comprehensive, practical walkthrough of the whole interview process, recruiting, scripting, running, and synthesizing, from a... User Interviews Article · Starting Up The Ultimate Guide to Doing Kickass Customer Interviews User Interviews In 2 answers
13. The actual one-page canvas, free to print or copy into a doc, so you can fill it in within the hour instead of reading a whole... LEANSTACK Template · Starting Up Lean Canvas template Ash Maurya In 2 answers
14. This is a catalogue of the specific ways founders sabotage their own sessions, including talking too much, asking hypothetical... Nielsen Norman Group Article · Starting Up Why User Interviews Fail Nielsen Norman Group In 2 answers
15. This explains why people behave differently the instant they know you're watching, which is the deeper reason your own presence... Nielsen Norman Group Article · Starting Up The Hawthorne Effect or Observer Bias in User Research Nielsen Norman Group In 2 answers
16. This lays out the practical mechanics of a feedback session, including being neutral when you present the prototype and... Interaction Design Foundation Article · Starting Up Test Your Prototypes: How to Gather Feedback and Maximize Learning Interaction Design Foundation In 2 answers
17. Wilcox gives you a literal five question script built entirely around a recent problem, not your product, which is exactly the... Justin Wilcox, Customer Development Labs Essay · Starting Up How I Interview Customers Justin Wilcox In 2 answers
18. This is the practical way to act on the route around your inner circle entirely part of your short answer: it is a marketplace... Respondent.io Tool · Starting Up Respondent Respondent.io In 2 answers
19. Before writing a single line of code for his fourth startup, Shreesha Ramdas hired a salesperson and ran over 200 interviews to... The Neon Show Podcast · ~50 min · Starting Up 4x Founder Shreesha Ramdas on What to Do Before You Build Your Startup Siddhartha Ahluwalia In 2 answers
20. A two minute companion to the longer HBR piece above, this is the one line version of our short answer you can forward to... Harvard Business Review Article · Starting Up Instead of Surveying Your Customers, Interview Them Harvard Business Review In 2 answers
21. This is the clearest playbook for show, don't ask. The five day structure ends with a rough, facade-level prototype in front of... Jake Knapp, John Zeratsky, Braden Kowitz Book · ~280 pages · Starting Up Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days Jake Knapp In 2 answers
22. A broader companion to the leading questions piece, this covers the shape of a whole interview, from opening rapport to the... Nielsen Norman Group Article · 10 minute read · Starting Up Interviewing Users Jakob Nielsen In 2 answers
23. A short, plain spoken walkthrough of the same mistakes in action, useful if watching an example lands faster for you than... Nielsen Norman Group Video · 6 minutes · Starting Up Five User Interview Mistakes to Avoid (in 5 Minutes) Therese Fessenden In 2 answers
24. Young pushes past surface level feedback into a customer's actual reasoning and guiding principles, which matters once you are... indiyoung.com Book · 250 pages · Starting Up Time to Listen Indi Young In 2 answers

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