Every resource founders actually use, in one library.

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

1. The canonical account of how disruptive technologies start out worse and cheaper, get ignored by incumbents, then improve until... Clayton Christensen (Harvard Business School) Book · Book (~280 pages) · Starting Up The Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail Clayton M. Christensen In 2 answers
2. Nat Turner (who sold two companies he built this way) shares a systematic, repeatable method for finding ideas without... First Round Review (review.firstround.com) Article · ~15 min read · Starting Up 90% of Feedback is Crap: How to Find the Next Big Startup Idea First Round Review In 2 answers
3. A deep read on why new consumer products catch on before anyone can explain them, driven by status and attention rather than... eugenewei.com Essay · 45 min read · Starting Up Status as a Service (StaaS) Eugene Wei In 2 answers
4. Willison is a working engineer who writes plainly about what the technology can and cannot reliably do, which is the single... simonwillison.net Article · ~30 min · Starting Up Things we learned about LLMs in 2024 Simon Willison In 2 answers
5. This is the ongoing, free version of Mollick's testing: regular posts that run real experiments and show the results, good and... oneusefulthing.org Article · 10 to 15 min per post · Starting Up One Useful Thing Ethan Mollick In 2 answers
6. A customer acquisition playbook that helps you commit to a growth lane and get world class at it, backed by case studies. It is... First Round Review Article · Starting Up Drive Growth by Picking the Right Lane: A Customer Acquisition Playbook for Consumer Startups Dan Hockenmaier, Lenny Rachitsky In 2 answers
7. A YC founder explains how his team cut their MVP build time from three months to hours once they committed to shipping the... Y Combinator Blog Article · Starting Up The Art of Shipping Early and Often David Mack In 2 answers
8. This one short official answer kills the single most common Product Hunt myth: that you should mobilize everyone you know to... Product Hunt Help Center Article · Starting Up Can I ask my community/friends/family to upvote a product? Product Hunt Help Center In 2 answers
9. Written by the founder of ConvertKit, this book is squarely about the sequence your short answer describes: build an audience... nathanbarry.com Book · Book · Starting Up Authority: Become an Expert, Build a Following, and Gain Financial Independence Nathan Barry In 2 answers
10. Press is one of the easiest excuses to relaunch that founders under-use, and this guide teaches you to treat it as ongoing... Y Combinator (YC Startup Library) Article · Starting Up Getting press for your startup Y Combinator In 2 answers
11. Godin's core claim is that marketing is the generous act of telling a true story to people who want to hear it, not... Seth Godin Book · ~256 pages · Starting Up This Is Marketing: You Can't Be Seen Until You Learn to See Seth Godin In 2 answers
12. Slack iterated privately with a small team for months, using what they learned to earn a preview release that then turned into... First Round Review Article · 20 min read · Starting Up From 0 to $1B: Slack's Founder Shares Their Epic Launch Strategy First Round Review In 2 answers
13. Written specifically for solo and small-team founders without a marketing budget or audience, this book argues for validating a... Amazon Book · Starting Up Start Small, Stay Small: A Developer's Guide to Launching a Startup Rob Walling In 2 answers
14. A short, no-nonsense walkthrough of which handful of numbers actually matter at your stage, straight from YC's own coaching... Y Combinator Startup Library Article · 10 min read · Starting Up Key Startup Metrics Y Combinator Startup Library In 2 answers
15. This breaks founder sales into seven distinct conversation types, from qualifying to first contact to asking for a referral, so... SaaStock Article · ~7 min read · Starting Up The 7 Essential Customer Conversations According to Steli Efti Steli Efti In 2 answers
16. Kracov, a first-time founder at Dock, wrote this after six months of running his own sales calls, and it's refreshingly honest... kracov.co Essay · ~10 min read · Starting Up How I've approached founder-led sales Alex Kracov In 2 answers
17. Jason Lemkin's argument is that a single first rep gives you almost no signal: you can't tell if a slow start is the person,... SaaStr Article · 10 min read · Starting Up When You Hire Your First Sales Rep, Just Make Sure You Hire Two Jason Lemkin In 2 answers
18. Roberge built HubSpot's sales org from zero using data instead of instinct, and this is his framework for hiring, training, and... Mark Roberge Book · 250 pages · Starting Up The Sales Acceleration Formula: Using Data, Technology, and Inbound Selling to go from $0 to $100 Million Mark Roberge In 2 answers
19. Chargebee's first real customer was Freshworks, and they got in the door because a cofounder happened to live in the same... SeedToScale (Accel) Essay · Starting Up The Early Story of Chargebee: Why it's Better to Start with People, not Ideas SeedToScale (Accel) In 2 answers
20. A direct answer to the exact question in the title: yes, charge for pilots, and here's roughly how much. Jason Lemkin argues... SaaStr Article · Starting Up Dear SaaStr: Should We Charge for Pilots and How Much? Jason Lemkin In 2 answers
21. A Hustle Fund investor who reads hundreds of cold emails walks through, line by line, what makes her actually reply versus... Elizabeth Yin Essay · 5 min read · Starting Up How to write a cold-email Elizabeth Yin In 2 answers
22. Dunford, who wrote the book on product positioning, breaks down how to build a pitch around the buyer's specific situation... Lenny's Newsletter Article · Starting Up How to build a killer sales pitch April Dunford In 2 answers
23. Josh Braun teardowns real cold emails line by line and explains exactly why each sentence works or doesn't, which is more... Josh Braun (LinkedIn) Thread · Starting Up This cold email hits all the right notes Josh Braun (LinkedIn) In 2 answers
24. This collection was built for asking strangers for small favors like introductions and advice, which is a gentler version of... 80,000 Hours Article · Starting Up The Best Email Scripts for Cold-Emailing Benjamin Todd In 2 answers

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