Every resource founders actually use, in one library.

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

1. A real Indian founder announcing the shutdown of his own venture, in his own words, having stayed conservative enough with... LinkedIn Essay · 8 min read · Starting Up How we shut down Bluelearn and returned 70% of capital Harish Uthayakumar
2. This is the sharpest answer to your exact question because it refuses to let 'pivot' mean 'any change.' It sorts pivots along... Kromatic Blog Article · 12 min read · Starting Up The Taxonomy of the Lean Startup Pivot Kromatic (Tristan Kromer)
3. The Groww story is the India-specific proof of your thesis. The founders' 2016 robo-advisor never found fit, but before they... Contrary Research Article · 20 min read · Starting Up Groww: Business Breakdown and Founding Story Contrary Research
4. This is the operator's manual for running an acqui-hire or asset sale when you are almost out of cash, which is exactly the... Kruze Consulting Article · 12 min read · Starting Up What is an Acqui-Hire? A Startup Guide Healy Jones, Kruze Consulting
5. This is the rare honest, first-hand Indian founder account of engineering a soft landing instead of a hard shutdown, with the... Inverted Passion Essay · 15 min read · Starting Up 2024 Wrapped: Shutting Down Nintee and Returning Investor Money Paras Chopra
6. This is the clearest breakdown of where the money and the IP actually go in an asset sale versus a wind-down, so you can see... Heavybit Article · 14 min read · Starting Up The Acqui-Hire Is No Longer a Distress Sale Heavybit
7. Before writing much code, Pilot's founders asked fellow founders one costly question: would you pay us 100 dollars a month to... First Round Review Article · 20 min read · Starting Up Pilot's Path to Product-Market Fit First Round Review (with Jessica McKellar, CTO of Pilot)
8. When a strategy fight has calcified into a standoff, this walks through the mechanics of getting unstuck: name what each of you... Lenny's Newsletter Article · ~15 min read · Starting Up Healing your co-founder relationship Lenny Rachitsky (with Matt Mochary)
9. This is the tactical playbook for the interview seat: it tells you to lead with the milestones you actually hit, back the story... Crunchbase News Article · 8 min read · Starting Up Your Startup Failed and Now You're Looking for a Job. Here's What to Do. Jaclyn Robinson
10. This is the exact move your answer prescribes, from the former pro poker player who turned it into a discipline. Duke tells you... Lenny's Newsletter Article · ~25 min read · Starting Up A framework for making better decisions (setting kill criteria in advance) Annie Duke (interviewed by Lenny Rachitsky)
11. This is the honest bootstrapper shutdown account with the actual numbers, not a tidy failure listicle. Draelos self-funded... Glass Box Medicine Article · ~30 min read · Starting Up Why I Shut Down My Bootstrapped Health AI Startup After 7 Years: A Founder's Postmortem Dr. Rachel Draelos (founder and CEO, Cydoc)
12. This is the closest thing to a field manual for your exact question: founders who already shut one thing down and had to decide... First Round Review Article · About a 20 minute read · Starting Up Take Two: Eight Hard-Earned Lessons from Repeat Founders on Starting Over Again First Round Review (Bob Moore, Dan Siroker, Neha Narkhede and others)
13. If you are an Anywhere Founder in India weighing a job after shutting down, this is the ground truth nobody tells you. The Ken... The Ken Article · About a 15 minute read · Starting Up What happens when a failed founder goes job hunting? The Ken
14. This is the cleanest answer to "what do I hire out first." Martell's Replacement Ladder gives you an explicit order: rung one... Buy Back Your Time Book · Book (~272 pages); the Replacement Ladder is one core chapter · Starting Up The Replacement Ladder: Buy Back Your Time Dan Martell
15. Once you have decided to buy hours, this is the operating manual. It walks you through a time audit to find the tasks eating... HubSpot Article · Long-read guide, ~15 min · Starting Up The Founder's Guide to Delegating Effectively to Virtual Assistants HubSpot for Startups
16. This is the honest, first-hand counterweight to the frameworks: real solo founders telling another solo founder not to hire a... Hacker News Article · Discussion thread, ~10 to 15 min to read the top comments · Starting Up Ask HN: As a first-time solopreneur how would you go about hiring the first team Hacker News community
17. This is the anti-fake-team playbook. It argues a solo B2B operator wins by being recognizable for one problem, presenting the... How Solos Scale Article · 15 min read · Starting Up The Micro-Agency Model: How B2B Solopreneurs Build a Real Business Without Headcount How Solos Scale
18. The concrete India checklist for looking legitimate to a larger client without incorporating a fake team. It spells out the... Karbon Card Article · 12 min read · Starting Up Best Business Structure for Freelancers and Solo Founders in India Karbon Card
19. Hard data (not vibes) that a one-person company is a legitimate posture, not a weakness to disguise. Stripe's numbers show top... Stripe Article · 8 min read · Starting Up Solo Founders: The Traits Top Performers Share Stripe
20. An honest investor-side essay that names the real objection and tells you how to kill it. It quotes a16z's Andrew Chen:... a16z Speedrun (Substack) Essay · 15 min read · Starting Up The case for (and against) founding solo Evan Armstrong (guest post, a16z speedrun)
21. A first-hand account from an Indian founder who bootstrapped for two years, then raised alone, so it speaks to the actual... Inc42 Article · 7 min read · Starting Up Learnings From A Single Founder Startup Chandrika Pasricha
22. Lynch runs TinyPilot solo and sets an explicit goal for the year: be able to take a two-week vacation without the business... mtlynch.io Article · Long read (about 25 minutes) · Starting Up My Fourth Year as a Bootstrapped Founder Michael Lynch
23. This is the systems sequel: how Lynch structured the business so no single person (including himself) is a single point of... mtlynch.io Article · Long read (about 30 minutes) · Starting Up My Fifth Year as a Bootstrapped Founder Michael Lynch
24. This is written from the other side of the table: enterprise procurement leaders telling small vendors exactly how to get... Venture Atlanta Article · 12 min read · Starting Up How to Navigate Enterprise Procurement as a Startup (advice from the procurement leaders themselves) Venture Atlanta (panel of enterprise procurement executives)

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