Every resource founders actually use, in one library.

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

1. From the Google Ventures team, this shows how to go from a fuzzy idea to a tested prototype in a single week. The core move is... Jake Knapp (jakeknapp.com) Book · Approx. 275 pages · Starting Up Sprint: Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Five Days Jake Knapp, John Zeratsky, Braden Kowitz In 2 answers
2. Facebook's first design VP explains what design actually is beneath the surface of pretty screens. She frames it as solving a... The Year of the Looking Glass Essay · 8 minute read · Starting Up Why Design Julie Zhuo In 2 answers
3. This answers the flip side of the question, how much design to do yourself versus when to bring in a real designer. It lays out... First Round Review Article · 30 minute read · Starting Up The Ultimate Guide to the Founding Designer Role First Round Review In 2 answers
4. This is the single best starting point if you think design just means making things look nice. Riley wrote it as an open letter... Wells Riley Essay · 15 min read · Starting Up Startups, This Is How Design Works Wells Riley In 2 answers
5. Graham argues that good design is not just personal opinion, it has real properties (simplicity, honesty, solving the hard... Paul Graham Essay · 25 min read · Starting Up Taste for Makers Paul Graham In 2 answers
6. The book behind the site, and worth it if you want the reasoning, not just the rules. Yablonski walks through familiar apps and... Laws of UX Book · Approx. 150 pages · Starting Up Laws of UX: Using Psychology to Design Better Products and Services Jon Yablonski In 2 answers
7. The law in the author's own words, with the reasoning and the stakes spelled out. Nielsen explains why users transfer... Jakob Nielsen (Substack) Essay · 7 min read · Starting Up Jakob's Law of the Internet User Experience Jakob Nielsen In 2 answers
8. Concrete rules for writing the words on your buttons and menus so nobody has to decode them. It covers using a verb plus a noun... Nielsen Norman Group Article · ~9 min read · Starting Up UI Copy: UX Guidelines for Command Names and Keyboard Shortcuts Anna Kaley In 2 answers
9. A short interview where Kunal Shah argues margins come from desire, which design creates, rather than from utility alone. It is... Outlook Business Article · Starting Up Margins Are Earned from Desire, Not Utility, says CRED founder Kunal Shah Kunal Shah In 2 answers
10. Practical guidance from someone who has placed many founding designers, on when the hire actually pays off and how to run the... Andy Budd Article · Starting Up How to Hire Your First Founding Designer (and Not Regret It Later) Andy Budd In 2 answers
11. Kapoor, a builder at Figma, breaks down the habits that let small teams keep a fast shipping rhythm without collapsing into... Lenny's Newsletter (Mihika Kapoor) Article · 20 min read · Starting Up How to ship like a startup Mihika Kapoor In 2 answers
12. A runaway roadmap is usually a list of every decent idea, and this piece is the antidote. Build half a product that is great... Basecamp (37signals) Essay · ~3 min read · Starting Up Getting Real: Half, Not Half-Assed Jason Fried, David Heinemeier Hansson In 2 answers
13. A clear tour of roadmap styles that shows exactly why a feature by date roadmap sets you up to over promise. Torres contrasts... Product Talk Article · ~15 min read · Starting Up Product Roadmaps: How the Best Product Teams Plan for Uncertainty Teresa Torres In 2 answers
14. Cagan makes the sharpest version of the argument: replace a list of features with a small set of outcomes you are trying to... Silicon Valley Product Group Essay · ~10 min read · Starting Up The Alternative to Roadmaps Marty Cagan In 2 answers
15. A short, quotable case that the cadence at which you ship defines your company, and that shipping small and often is safer than... Intercom Blog Essay · 8 min read · Starting Up Shipping is your company's heartbeat Darragh Curran, Intercom In 2 answers
16. This gives you the actual checklist a request has to clear before it earns a yes, starting with whether it fits the vision and... Intercom (Des Traynor) Essay · 10 min read · Starting Up Rarely say yes to feature requests Des Traynor In 2 answers
17. Cutler names the exact trap your short answer warns about: shipping feature after feature while nobody measures whether any of... Cutle.fish Essay · Starting Up 12 Signs You're Working in a Feature Factory John Cutler In 2 answers
18. Explains how to keep every change ready to release at any time, which is the technical backbone of a weekly staging link. It... DORA (Google Cloud) Article · ~10 min read · Starting Up Continuous delivery DORA (Google Cloud) In 2 answers
19. This is the warning label for treating every customer request as a build order. Chen shows how a team can keep shipping... andrewchen.com Essay · Starting Up This is the Product Death Cycle Andrew Chen In 2 answers
20. This is the canonical source for the claim that the customers you already have are far cheaper to keep than the ones a shiny... Harvard Business Review Article · Starting Up The Value of Keeping the Right Customers Amy Gallo In 2 answers
21. This is the concrete how-to for collecting problems on purpose. It walks through Amy Hoy's Sales Safari method, where you... O'Reilly (Scott Hurff) Article · About 12 min read · Starting Up How to Create Products People Want (Sales Safari) Scott Hurff In 2 answers
22. Savoia, a former Google innovation lead, argues most ideas fail because they were never 'the right it', and he gives you cheap... Alberto Savoia Book · 256 pages · Starting Up The Right It Alberto Savoia In 2 answers
23. The most cited annual snapshot of the Indian startup and consumer economy, with hard numbers on income distribution, the thin... Blume Ventures Article · Long report · Starting Up Indus Valley Annual Report 2024 Sajith Pai, Anurag Pagaria, Kunal Bajaj In 2 answers
24. Maurya names the exact failure in this question: founders ask what problems their solution can solve instead of what problems... Love the Problem (Medium) Article · ~8 min read · Starting Up The Problem With Problems Ash Maurya In 2 answers

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