Every resource founders actually use, in one library.

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

1. Blank argues that market definition, not just customer interviews, is the step founders skip, and that getting it wrong is what... Steve Blank Essay · Starting Up How to Find a Market? Use Jobs to be Done as the Front End of Customer Discovery Steve Blank
2. A direct argument for why the customer is not always right for you, with a framework for deciding which accounts are quietly... Harvard Business Review Article · Starting Up It's Time to Fire Some of Your Customers Anthony K. Tjan
3. Lays out concrete criteria for recognizing a customer relationship that will not get better, so you are not relying on gut feel... Harvard Business Review Article · Starting Up When and Why to Part Ways with a Customer Lior Arussy
4. Traynor breaks down knowing your customer into two concrete questions, who they are and how they decide, instead of a vague... Intercom Article · Starting Up Know Your Customers and How They Decide Des Traynor
5. This lays out the bullseye idea explicitly: most durable products start at the center of a tight, specific market and expand... Reforge Article · 15 min read · Starting Up The 4 Growth Frameworks You Need to Build a $100M Product Reforge
6. Written from the perspective of bootstrapped founders who do not have the luxury of burning cash to reach a broad market, this... Indie Hackers Article · 10 min read · Starting Up How to Identify a Micro-Niche That's Perfect for SaaS Founders Indie Hackers
7. The clearest definition of what a persona actually is and is not, from the field that invented the term. It draws the line... Nielsen Norman Group Article · ~10 min read · Starting Up Personas Make Users Memorable Nielsen Norman Group
8. Written by a company that built its CRM specifically for SMB focused sales teams, this is blunt about what changes when your... Close blog Article · 15 min read · Starting Up SMB Sales Strategy: How to Sell to SMB Customers Close
9. Blume pulled lessons from vertical SaaS companies that succeeded by narrowing to one workflow within one type of small... Blume Ventures Essay · 20 min read · Starting Up The Vertical SaaS Secret Playsheet Blume Ventures
10. This is close to a direct answer to your exact question, written by a product discovery coach who works with B2B teams every... Product Talk Essay · Starting Up Ask Teresa: What if Your Buyers Aren't Your Users? Teresa Torres
11. Yoon gives you three concrete tactics for the exact gap in your question: reaching a buyer who is not the one feeling the daily... Harvard Business Review Article · Starting Up How to Market a Product When Your Buyer Isn't Your User Eddie Yoon
12. Written for exactly the founder-market moment you are in: a developer or junior employee uses your product, someone above them... Founder Labs (Substack) Essay · Starting Up How to Sell if Your User is not the Buyer Nate Ritter
13. Rothman untangles three roles founders often blur together: buyer, user, and customer (the one who signs a contract but never... jrothman.com Essay · Starting Up Who to Satisfy? Differentiate Buyers, Users, and Customers for Effective Product Decisions Johanna Rothman
14. This is the product-led growth counter-argument to old-school enterprise sales: design and market for the user first, and let... OpenView Article · Starting Up Why You Should Sell to Users, Not Buyers: A Product-Led Approach to Marketing Ashley Murphy
15. Postman, founded in Bangalore, is a clean example of designing entirely for the individual developer-user first and only later... Stack Overflow Blog Article · Starting Up Postman's journey and unlocking the power of APIs Abhinav Asthana (interview)
16. Shapiro's method, asking 100 people representative of your guessed audience whether they'd put down a cash deposit, is a fast,... julian.com Article · about 10 min read · Starting Up Market Pull (Startup Handbook) Julian Shapiro
17. Godin's short post makes the strongest case for going smaller on purpose: pick the smallest group you can delight completely... Seth's Blog Essay · 5 min read · Starting Up The Minimum Viable Audience Seth Godin
18. This thread is founders arguing out this exact question in public, with real numbers from real small businesses about when a... Indie Hackers Thread · 10 min read · Starting Up Is it possible to be "too niche"? Indie Hackers community
19. Zerodha started as a boutique brokerage aimed narrowly at active day traders, a niche the rest of the Indian broking industry... Z-Connect by Zerodha Article · 10 min read · Starting Up Nithin: Zero to Zerodha Nithin Kamath
20. This is the sharpest possible answer to the second half of your question: what to do about the people who show up wanting to... Y Combinator Essay · Starting Up Users You Don't Want Michael Seibel
21. 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
22. 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
23. 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
24. 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

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