Every resource founders actually use, in one library.

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

1. This is the origin of the '100 people who love you beats a million who sort of like you' idea that underlies your whole short... Inc. Article · Starting Up Airbnb's Brian Chesky: If 100 People Love Your Product, That's Enough Salvador Rodriguez
2. This piece attacks the exact mistake domain experts make: describing a market by job title or industry instead of by the... A Smart Bear Essay · Starting Up Your target market isn't demographic Jason Cohen
3. Coelen explains why founders can't segment their market from a desk using industry reports, they have to talk to real customers... Doctor Market Fit Essay · Starting Up How most founders get their beachhead wrong Jeroen Coelen
4. This piece gives you a checklist for evaluating whether a slice of your industry is a genuine beachhead: urgent problem,... Doctor Market Fit Essay · Starting Up What makes a great beachhead market? Jeroen Coelen
5. This is a practical, tactical follow up to the ICP essays above: once you have named your narrow slice, here is how you... A Smart Bear Essay · Starting Up How do I get my first few customers? Jason Cohen
6. This deck lays out how consumer investors actually think about a target user, closer to a specific behavior and context than a... andrewchen.com Essay · 30 min read (slide deck) · Starting Up Consumer startups are awesome, and here's what I'm looking for at a16z Andrew Chen
7. This is Bier's own written version of his consumer playbook, useful as a quick reference you can screenshot and revisit. It is... X (Twitter) Thread · 5 min read · Starting Up Nikita Bier's thread on building consumer social apps Nikita Bier
8. This framework treats persona as one of four levers, alongside problem, promise, and product, that you pull when growth or... First Round Article · 20 min read · Starting Up Levels of PMF First Round Capital
9. This is the direct counterargument to our short answer, and reading it will sharpen your thinking either way. It walks through... Harvard Business Review Article · 8 min read · Starting Up When "Scratch Your Own Itch" Is Dangerous Advice for Entrepreneurs N. Taylor Thompson
10. This article names the exact cognitive bias behind the red flag you're asking about: assuming other people think, want, and... Nielsen Norman Group Article · 8 min read · Starting Up You Are Not the User: The False-Consensus Effect Raluca Budiu
11. A founder's first-person account of the exact failure mode in your question: mistaking an audience of people who look and think... Indie Hackers Thread · 8 min read · Starting Up Your build-in-public audience is not your market. I learned the difference the slow way. Indie Hackers
12. This is the counter case, marketplaces where demand was actually the constrained side and defining the ideal buyer first is... Lenny's Newsletter Article · Starting Up Demand driving supply Brian Rothenberg
13. Evans and Schmalensee studied why most attempts at multisided platforms fail, and a recurring reason is founders never nailed a... Harvard Business Review Press Book · Starting Up Matchmakers: The New Economics of Multisided Platforms David S. Evans, Richard Schmalensee
14. This warns you against a specific mistake that happens after you correctly anchor on supply: building every feature suppliers... Reforge Blog Article · Starting Up The Supply Features Trap Of Marketplaces Gilad Horev
15. Elena Verna draws the line between a broad product usage ICP and a narrower sales ICP, and shows how to build both from... Elena Verna, Elena's Growth Scoop Essay · Starting Up I'd Segment That... Elena Verna, Elena's Growth Scoop
16. This explains exactly how to build the retention and behavioral cohorts your short answer relies on: grouping customers by... Amplitude Article · Starting Up Cohort Retention Analysis: Reduce Churn Using Customer Data Amplitude
17. This lays out how to bucket users into occasional, core and power tiers by actual product usage, which is the mechanical... Mixpanel Article · Starting Up User segmentation: A guide to understanding your customers Mixpanel
18. This guide explains how to read a retention curve across different customer cohorts to spot which segment is actually sticking... Reforge Article · Starting Up Evaluate retention cohorts Reforge
19. Supan's High Expectation Customer concept adds a layer your data sort alone won't catch: among your best fit customers, find... Julie Supan, First Round Review Article · Starting Up What I Learned From Developing Branding for Airbnb, Dropbox and Thumbtack Julie Supan, First Round Review
20. This is a clean, practical writeup of the same 40% test methodology, with more detail on how to segment survey respondents... Reforge Article · Starting Up Measure and improve product/market fit with the 40% test Reforge
21. This directly names the trap in your situation: free users are not your ICP, and your real conversion math (about 1 percent)... A Smart Bear (Jason Cohen) Essay · 12 min read · Starting Up Reframing 'Freemium' by charging the marketing department Jason Cohen
22. If your honest read is that this audience will never pay directly, Anderson's book is the map of the models that work anyway:... Chris Anderson Book · ~300 pages · Starting Up Free: The Future of a Radical Price Chris Anderson
23. This names your exact situation as one of six named pivot triggers: customers crave the value proposition but can't or won't... Strategyzer Article · 10 min read · Starting Up The Pivot: 6 Situations When It's Time to Change Your Business Model and Value Proposition Strategyzer
24. A concrete, worked example of exactly the fix in your short answer: the person who feels the pain (student, teacher) is often... Medium Essay · 8 min read · Starting Up Selling to Schools Is B(to)S Earnest Sweat

Show the next 24