Explore
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.
- A practical walkthrough of reading Reddit communities as a free market signal, including how to pick the right subreddits and... ZoomInfo Article · 12 min read · Starting Up How to Use Reddit for Market Research ZoomInfo
- Your short answer tells founders to design the cheapest test that would move one of them, and this is the clearest write-up of... ModelThinkers Article · 10 min read · Starting Up Riskiest Assumption Test ModelThinkers
- Iskold reduces market size to a single honest formula, number of customers times revenue per customer, and warns against... Startup Hacks (Alex Iskold) Article · 12 min read · Starting Up Everything You Need to Know About Market Sizing Alex Iskold
- Blank's core rule is that there are no facts inside your building, so a disagreement resolved at your desk is not really... Steve Blank Article · varies · Starting Up Customer Discovery (Get Out of the Building) Steve Blank
- Altman argues that a durable edge often lives at the intersection of two or three fields you know, which is good news if you... Sam Altman (blog.samaltman.com) Essay · Medium essay · Starting Up How to Be Successful Sam Altman
- A balanced look at the evidence: deep expertise speeds decisions and credibility, but a large share of billion dollar founders... SaaStr (Jason Lemkin) Article · Medium article · Starting Up How Important Is Domain Expertise in Building a B2B Public Company? The Evidence Is Mixed Jason Lemkin
- Qasar Younis built a company only he could start, stacking a decade of automotive engineering, a Google acquisition, and years... First Round Review Article · 18 min read · Starting Up Applied Intuition's Path to Product-Market Fit (Qasar Younis) First Round Review
- An India-focused early-stage program explains why founder-market fit is the thing to earn before you chase product-market fit.... PedalStart Article · 7 min read · Starting Up Founder-Market Fit: Why It Matters More Than Product-Market Fit Early On PedalStart
- A structured self-assessment for founders who want to grade their own fit honestly rather than wait for an investor to do it.... Tran.vc Article · 9 min read · Starting Up How to Self-Diagnose Founder-Market Fit Tran.vc
- Horowitz explains why founders hold a knowledge advantage no hired CEO can replicate, built from every early decision, hire,... Andreessen Horowitz Article · 8 min read · Starting Up Why We Prefer Founding CEOs Ben Horowitz
- Ali and Kubba give you a framework (money, intelligence, location, education, expertise, status, and luck) to audit the edges... Macmillan Book · 288 pages · Starting Up The Unfair Advantage: How You Already Have What It Takes to Succeed Ash Ali and Hasan Kubba
- Gil, who backed dozens of unicorns, names the founder traits he weights most and why. It is a concise investor-side view of... Elad Blog Article · 6 min read · Starting Up What Are The 2 Most Important Traits in An Entrepreneur? Elad Gil
- A clear explainer of why the earlier the stage, the more the decision rests on the founder rather than the numbers. It names... NTU TEC Article · 8 min read · Starting Up Why Early-Stage Investing Is So Often a Bet on the Founders NTU TEC
- This book makes the research-backed case that a different vantage point is not a handicap but a source of ideas that... Matthew Syed Book · Starting Up Rebel Ideas: The Power of Diverse Thinking Matthew Syed
- Nayar saw demand that the whole industry had written off, because she understood Indian women as customers in a way the... Forbes India Article · Starting Up Falguni Nayar: The Woman Who Redefined Beauty Retail in India Forbes India
- Drawing on many founders who built outside the traditional hubs, this argues that being underestimated and under-resourced... Outsider Inc. Article · Starting Up The Outsider Playbook: Underestimated, Under-Resourced, and Built to Win Ian Hathaway
- A collection of blunt, practical advice from women who built real companies, much of it centered on treating your difference as... NewBeauty Article · Starting Up The Advice 20+ Female Founders Would Give the Next Generation NewBeauty
- A current investor argument that deep industry knowledge, not raw technical ability, is the durable advantage in vertical... CRV Article · 15 min read · Starting Up Vertical AI Companies: Why Domain Expertise Beats General AI CRV
- Haber argues that tools are now widely available, so the scarce ingredient is knowing what is actually useful inside a real... Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) Article · 10 min read · Starting Up Context is King David Haber
- A free, tactical operating manual for the founder skills you never practiced as an employee: making decisions fast, running... Matt Mochary (public Google Doc) Book · ~200 pages · Starting Up The Great CEO Within Matt Mochary
- A compact roundup of Dixon's startup thinking, including founder/market fit and why passion for a problem beats chasing a hot... Andreessen Horowitz Article · ~10 min read · Starting Up 12 Things I Learned from Chris Dixon about Startups Tren Griffin
- This frames founder-market fit as a team question and lists what a strong founding team should be able to answer together about... Techstars Article · ~8 min read · Starting Up High Performing Founding Teams: The Five Questions Every Rockstar Founding Team Can Answer Martin Schilling and Brian Daly
- A seed investor explains what he actually looks for as founder-market fit and how he weighs it across a whole team rather than... Tom Wilson (Medium) Article · ~9 min read · Starting Up Investing at Founder-Market Fit Tom Wilson
- Gil argues against overlapping expertise and for clear role division, warning that two people setting the same direction leads... Elad Gil (Elad Blog) Essay · ~8 min read · Starting Up How to Choose a Co-Founder Elad Gil
The hubs
Starting Up
Find an idea, validate it, build, and land your first customers.
GTM
Go-to-market, from breaking in to how the best teams do it.
D2C
Building a direct-to-consumer brand, India-first.
Wealth
Paying yourself, ESOPs, secondaries, and de-risking founder wealth.
How Founders Use AI
How founders actually put AI to work, mapped topic by topic.
Glossary
Plain-language definitions of the startup and VC terms you'll hit.
eChai Partner Brands
The partnership →