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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.

  1. An investor's view of what competitive analysis must prove in a fundraise. qubit.capital Article · How Founders Use AI Market Research & Competitive Analysis for Startups Qubit Capital
  2. Includes the famous sub-$20/month founder stack: BuiltWith alerts, Visualping diffs, Slack. buildmvpfast.com Article · How Founders Use AI AI Competitive Intelligence Tools for Market Monitoring BuildMVPFast
  3. The continuous-discovery authority draws the precise line between AI leverage and AI damage. producttalk.org Article · How Founders Use AI Customer Interview Analysis: Where AI Helps and Hurts Teresa Torres
  4. The credibility-stamped case for AI-scaled qual research, useful for convincing skeptics. hbr.org Article · How Founders Use AI How AI Helps Scale Qualitative Customer Research Harvard Business Review
  5. A design studio benchmarks the tools against human researchers and reports the gaps. ustwo.com Article · How Founders Use AI Putting AI customer research tools to the test ustwo
  6. The definitive tool map from recruiting through synthesis, updated regularly. userinterviews.com Guide · How Founders Use AI 30+ AI Tools for Every Phase of UX Research User Interviews
  7. Survey data on how teams actually use AI in synthesis and the time it saves. lyssna.com Article · How Founders Use AI Research Synthesis Report 2025: AI, Methods & Time Investment Lyssna
  8. An honest map of what AI moderation matches humans on and what it cannot do. getperspective.ai Article · How Founders Use AI AI-Moderated Interviews: How They Work, When to Use Them, and What They Replace Perspective AI
  9. The research frontier on simulating customers, and why to stay skeptical of it. arxiv.org Article · How Founders Use AI Synthetic Founders: AI-Generated Social Simulations for Startup Validation Research arXiv (academic)
  10. A documented 6-weeks-to-8-days discovery compression, step by step. aakashgupta.medium.com Article · How Founders Use AI AI Just Made Product Discovery 10x Faster (Here's the Exact Process) Aakash Gupta
  11. Includes conversational data querying and research patterns from the best PMs. lennysnewsletter.com Article · How Founders Use AI How top PMs increase their leverage with AI Lenny's Newsletter
  12. Torres's actual day-to-day setup for automating research legwork. lennysnewsletter.com Article · How Founders Use AI How I AI: Teresa Torres uses Claude Code as her research and writing system Lenny's Newsletter (How I AI)
  13. The piece that made GEO a category: visibility now means being inside the answer. a16z.com Article · How Founders Use AI How Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) Rewrites the Rules of Search Andreessen Horowitz
  14. The agency's own annotated version with extra implementation detail. graphite.io Article · How Founders Use AI The Ultimate Guide To AEO (Graphite's companion notes) Graphite
  15. Real user behavior data: AI Mode users accept the model's shortlist, so be on it. growth-memo.com Article · How Founders Use AI What Our AI Mode User Behavior Study Reveals about the Future of Search Kevin Indig
  16. 815K query-page pairs show focused pages beat ultimate guides for citations. growth-memo.com Article · How Founders Use AI The science of how AI pays attention Kevin Indig
  17. A skeptical check on the llms.txt trend before you invest time in it. journal.withdaydream.com Article · How Founders Use AI a16z Feature LLMs.txt: Hype vs. Reality Daydream
  18. Google's own positioning of NotebookLM as a grounded research partner. blog.google Article · How Founders Use AI Do your best research with NotebookLM Google
  19. The update that lets NotebookLM gather web sources for you, not just read uploads. blog.google Article · How Founders Use AI NotebookLM adds Deep Research and support for more source types Google
  20. The best mainstream end-to-end guide to what it does and how to start. fastcompany.com Guide · How Founders Use AI The complete guide to NotebookLM Fast Company
  21. A productivity YouTuber's written playbook with real workplace use cases. jeffsu.org Guide · How Founders Use AI NotebookLM: A Comprehensive Guide Jeff Su
  22. Cuts through a year of feature launches to what is actually useful. jeffsu.org Article · How Founders Use AI NotebookLM in 2026: What Changed and What Matters Jeff Su
  23. The launch thread from NotebookLM's editorial director, with a live example. x.com Thread · How Founders Use AI Rolling out audio overviews at NotebookLM Steven Johnson
  24. A rigorous independent tester's verdict on audio overviews. simonwillison.net Article · How Founders Use AI NotebookLM's automatically generated podcasts are surprisingly effective Simon Willison

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The hubs

Starting Up Find an idea, validate it, build, and land your first customers. 1046 questions GTM Go-to-market, from breaking in to how the best teams do it. 352 questions D2C Building a direct-to-consumer brand, India-first. 482 questions Wealth Paying yourself, ESOPs, secondaries, and de-risking founder wealth. 154 questions How Founders Use AI How founders actually put AI to work, mapped topic by topic. 278 questions Glossary Plain-language definitions of the startup and VC terms you'll hit. 390 terms
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