Every resource founders actually use, in one library.

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

1. This is the honest counterweight to the romance of the naive disruptor, and it maps onto your short answer directly. It shows... Kellogg Insight, Northwestern Article · Medium read · Starting Up Sure, Industry Outsiders Can Bring Fresh Ideas. But Are They Better Entrepreneurs? Kellogg Insight
2. Marty Cagan draws the line cleanly: if you are going to fall in love, fall in love with the problem, not the solution, and get... Silicon Valley Product Group Essay · ~6 min read · Starting Up Discovery: Problem vs. Solution Marty Cagan
3. Choosing between two ideas is a bet under uncertainty, and Duke gives you the mindset for it: judge the decision by its... Annie Duke Book · ~272 pages · Starting Up Thinking in Bets Annie Duke
4. This is the direct counter to the fear in your short answer, that a platform update erases your product overnight. Chen argues... Andrew Chen Essay · 20 min read · Starting Up Revenge of the GPT Wrappers: Defensibility in a World of Commoditized AI Models Andrew Chen
5. Before you commit, you need to know whether the value from your AI idea accrues to you or to an incumbent who bolts the feature... Elad Gil Essay · 12 min read · Starting Up AI: Startup Vs Incumbent Value Elad Gil
6. A map of which AI markets already have clear winners and which are still wide open, which is the practical version of asking... Elad Gil Essay · 12 min read · Starting Up AI Market Clarity Elad Gil
7. This explains why niches once dismissed as too small (laundromats, vets, clinics) become real businesses when AI absorbs the... Andreessen Horowitz Article · 15 min read · Starting Up Vertical SaaS: Now with AI Inside Angela Strange and James da Costa
8. The core move in our short answer is decomposing a workflow into steps a model can now do. This piece frames every workflow as... Andreessen Horowitz Article · 15 min read · Starting Up The Rise of Computer Use and Agentic Coworkers Eric Zhou, Yoko Li, Seema Amble, Jennifer Li
9. Once you have spotted the opening, this gives you concrete principles for making it defensible, heavy on proprietary data and... Bessemer Venture Partners Article · 15 min read · Starting Up Ten Principles for Building Strong Vertical AI Businesses Bessemer Venture Partners
10. To spot what is newly possible you need to know what the models can suddenly do that they could not before, and this essay maps... Sequoia Capital Essay · 18 min read · Starting Up Generative AI's Act o1: The Reasoning Era Begins Sonya Huang and Pat Grady
11. The clearest argument that idea generation is a muscle, not a gift. Altucher's practice, write ten ideas a day until it becomes... James Altucher Essay · 15 min read · Starting Up The Ultimate Guide for Becoming an Idea Machine James Altucher
12. A working set of prompts that push your thinking to extremes to shake loose non-obvious ideas. When your list feels stale or... A Smart Bear (Jason Cohen) Article · 15 min read · Starting Up Extreme brainstorming questions to trigger new, better ideas Jason Cohen
13. This is the practical mechanics of exactly the habit in our answer: keep a running list of daily annoyances and workarounds,... Founder's Guide Article · 10 min read · Starting Up The Problem List Method: business ideas from real daily frustrations Founder's Guide
14. A short, focused piece on the single skill our answer is built around: noticing what everyone else walks past. It names the... Start as Sprout Article · 8 min read · Starting Up The Quiet Skill of Noticing Problems Start as Sprout
15. This is the counterweight to the venture scale market advice: proof that a small market can be a great business if you are... Rob Walling Essay · Starting Up The Stair Step Method of Bootstrapping Rob Walling
16. Speaks directly to the trap of confusing a giant TAM number with a real business. It explains why investors discount inflated... HSBC Innovation Banking Article · Starting Up Beyond the TAM Slide: What Investors Really Want HSBC Innovation Banking
17. This is the sharpest short essay on why a naive market number lies to you. Evans shows that a new product can either shrink a... Benedict Evans Essay · about 1,200 words · Starting Up Ways to Think About Market Size Benedict Evans
18. Kamps has seen more market-size slides than almost anyone and calls out the exact failures founders repeat, including claiming... TechCrunch Article · Starting Up I Reviewed 1,000+ Pitch Decks. These Are the Most Common Mistakes Haje Jan Kamps
19. This is a real deck with the market slide critiqued line by line, showing how a founder listed the entire sharing economy at... TechCrunch Article · Starting Up Pitch Deck Teardown: BoxedUp's seed deck Haje Jan Kamps
20. This is the deep dive on why the 'next 200 million' users are real but hard to monetize, which is exactly the trap that... sajithpai.com Essay · 20 min read · Starting Up Vernacular Apps, the English Language Premium, and Monetising the Next 200 Million Sajith Pai
21. Redseer gives you an independent view of the internet-to-transacting funnel to cross-check Blume's household numbers. It... Redseer Strategy Consultants Article · 10 min read · Starting Up India's Internet Consumers (700 Mn+ Digital Consumer Funnel) Mukesh Kumar, Redseer
22. The original short essay that named the wedge, the sharp entry point our short answer is really about. Dixon explains how to... Chris Dixon (cdixon.org) Essay · 8 min read · Starting Up The Thin Edge of the Wedge Strategy Chris Dixon
23. Rachitsky turns the wedge from a slogan into a decision, with worked examples like Twilio, Airbnb, and Amazon entering big... Lenny Rachitsky, Lenny's Newsletter Article · 18 min read · Starting Up Picking a Wedge Lenny Rachitsky
24. A practical companion to Dixon and Rachitsky, focused on choosing the exact first customer segment when the broader market is... Nathan Baschez, Every (every.to) Article · 15 min read · Starting Up The Market Wedge: How to Pick Your Initial Market Nathan Baschez, Eric Thompson

Show the next 24