Every resource founders actually use, in one library.

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

1. This piece is useful because it separates the question of who owns the tech stack from job titles and points it at the real... platvix.com Article · ~10 min read · Starting Up Technical Cofounder vs CTO Hire: What to Do If You Are Non-Technical Platvix
2. Samuel Hulick tears down real onboarding flows slide by slide, and the Slack one shows how a product teaches itself inside the... UserOnboard Essay · 79-slide teardown, ~20 min · Starting Up How Slack Onboards New Users (User Onboarding Teardown) Samuel Hulick
3. This is the honest counterweight to just copying everything: it lays out exactly when breaking a convention earns its keep and... Laws of UX Article · 8 min read · Starting Up Familiar vs Novel Jon Yablonski
4. Use this as the checklist you run before you ship. It walks through 18 specific tells that make an early product feel amateur... mockflow.com Article · Long read, 18 mistakes plus a pre-ship checklist · Starting Up 18 Common UI Design Mistakes and How to Fix Them MockFlow
5. If Few's book is the deep dive, this is the practical checklist you can act on this afternoon. It walks through visual... UXPin Studio Blog Article · ~15 min read · Starting Up Dashboard Design Principles: The Definitive Guide UXPin
6. If you cannot yet get your agency or freelancers to ship weekly, the usual reason is the work reaches them half-defined. This... Designli Article · ~12 min read · Starting Up How to Write a Feature Brief: A Guide for Non-Technical SaaS Founders Keith Shields
7. This is the fullest, most honest version of the Reid Hoffman line you have heard quoted ("if you're not embarrassed by the... Next Big Idea Club Essay · ~6 min read · Starting Up The Entrepreneur's Greatest Asset: Embarrassment Eric Ries
8. "Ship ugly" and "wait until it's good" are not the only two options, and this piece gives you the vocabulary to tell them... Eleken Article · ~8 min read · Starting Up MLP vs MVP: Which Should You Build First (and Why)? Eleken
9. This is the cleanest answer we have found to your exact question: it names five buckets a roadmap actually pulls from (new... Intercom Essay · Starting Up Where do product roadmaps come from? Paul Adams
10. Once you accept that not every bug earns roadmap time, you need a repeatable way to decide which ones do, and this piece lays... Plane Article · Starting Up Bug triage process: How to run it and what to prioritise Sneha Kanojia
11. This is the book that gives you a discipline for the problem: build only to test a specific hypothesis, then measure and learn... Crown Business Book · About 336 pages · Starting Up The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses Eric Ries
12. This is the rare sunset guide that walks through a real decision, Pendo retiring its own Trends report when usage fell to about... Pendo Article · About 8 minute read · Starting Up How to effectively remove and retire a feature from your product Mei Luo
13. Gupta's core argument is the mental unlock most founders need: teams are wired to add because launches get rewarded and... Product Growth (Aakash Gupta) Essay · About 15 minute read · Starting Up Addition by Subtraction: The Art of Killing Features Aakash Gupta
14. Patrick McKenzie is one of the clearest writers on the line between bespoke work and a repeatable product, and this essay maps... Kalzumeus Essay · Starting Up What Consulting Companies Can Learn From Product Companies Patrick McKenzie (patio11)
15. Written by a startup CTO, this is the clearest short piece on the exact shift you are facing: the moment it stops being just... Jake Spracher (startup CTO, ex-Apple) Article · 8 to 10 min read · Starting Up Code Review for Startups Jake Spracher
16. This is the rare piece that actually answers the numbers question instead of hand-waving. It tells you to build a pipeline of... justinmckelvey.com Article · ~20 min read · Starting Up Founder-Led Sales: Close Your First 50 Customers Justin McKelvey
17. Walbaum ran ops at Uber, Meta, and Rippling, so he writes from the exact judgment call in the question: when has the manual... The Operator's Handbook Article · Starting Up How to win by doing things that don't scale Torsten Walbaum
18. If the word selling makes you flinch, this essay meets you there. Roy is an engineer who reframes sales as problem solving with... Engineering Sales (Substack) Essay · Short read, roughly 10 minutes · Starting Up I'm Not a Sales Guy. I'm an Engineer Who Learned How to Sell David Roy
19. If you are tempted to get all 10 customers at once with a launch, this piece sets honest expectations using survey data from... Indie Hackers Article · ~8 min read · Starting Up What Results Can You Expect from a Product Hunt Launch? Vasyl Holiney
20. This is the tactical playbook for actually doing what the framing essays recommend: pick one city and one vertical, then... Sharetribe Marketplace Academy Article · Article, roughly 12 to 15 minutes · Starting Up Focus your marketplace on one city and one vertical Juho Makkonen (Sharetribe)
21. Where the Altman essay tells you why retention matters, this one gets concrete about the first weeks: it argues churn... Appcues Article · ~15 min read · Starting Up How to reduce customer churn: a 3-stage SaaS retention framework Katryna Balboni
22. A plain, practical breakdown of what a soft launch is actually for (testing, feedback, fixing before the crowd shows up) versus... The LaunchPad Agency Article · Approx 10 minute read · Starting Up What is a Soft Launch vs. a Hard Launch? A Comprehensive Guide Sean Angus
23. Before you tweak the page again, this gives you a concrete test to check whether it even communicates. You show someone the... Maze Article · ~10 min read · Starting Up Five-Second Testing: Step-by-Step Guide + Example Maze
24. The embarrassment you feel comes from thinking a launch is a one time coronation, and this piece quietly dismantles that. Arvid... The Bootstrapped Founder Essay · Long read (full interview essay), about 25 minutes · Starting Up Marc Louvion, Becoming a Product Launch Beast Arvid Kahl

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