Every resource founders actually use, in one library.

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

1. The full Airbnb origin story, including the moment the founders flew to New York to photograph listings themselves because bad... Product Habits Article · 20 min read · Starting Up How Two Designers Created Airbnb and Turned It Into a Billion-Dollar Company Hiten Shah
2. A short explainer of the Stripe tactic Paul Graham named after the Collison brothers: instead of emailing a signup link, they... This is KP Article · 8 min read · Starting Up The Collison Installation KP
3. A compact guide to interviewing around jobs, pains, and gains without leading the witness. It keeps you from talking about your... Strategyzer Article · ~6 min read · Starting Up A Quick Guide to Asking Good Customer Questions Strategyzer
4. A blunt, founder-written case for charging early customers instead of giving the product away. Shah walks through exactly what... OnStartups (Dharmesh Shah) Article · Starting Up Giving Your Software Away For Free (Startup Reality Distortion Effect #1) Dharmesh Shah
5. A curated set of pricing deep dives from operators who have set prices at real companies. This is the right next step once you... First Round Review Article · Starting Up Our 6 Must Reads on Pricing a Product First Round Review
6. A short, balanced look at whether to charge alpha and early customers, with founders on both sides. The useful conclusion is a... Fast Company Article · Starting Up To Charge or Not to Charge: That's the Question for These Startups Fast Company
7. A founder's story of clinging to free, then flipping to paid and reaching real revenue. It is concrete and relatable if you are... Indie Hackers Article · Starting Up From Refusing to Charge for His Products to Making $500k+ ARR Indie Hackers
8. A clear breakdown of incentive choices (free trial, discount, pilot fee) for getting first traction without simply giving the... Mercury Article · Starting Up Free Trials vs. Discounts: Choosing the Right Startup Incentive Mercury
9. A two time unicorn founder's answer to the exact fear behind giving it away: the belief that a low or zero price wins you... A Smart Bear Article · Starting Up Should I Price My Product Low? Jason Cohen
10. This is the Figma half of your short answer, told with the CEO's own account. Field cold emailed designers he admired and... Fortune Article · 5 min read · Starting Up How Dylan Field cold-emailed his heroes to build Figma Fortune
11. Fishkin pushes back on the fuzzy way founders talk about fit and argues for tracking concrete behaviors like usage, retention,... SparkToro Article · 12 min read · Starting Up Product-Market Fit is a Broken Concept. There's a Better Way. Rand Fishkin
12. Your question is really about a denominator, and this piece gives realistic stage-by-stage conversion benchmarks. It helps you... Close.com Article · ~12 min read · Starting Up Understanding Your Sales Funnel Conversion Rate Steli Efti
13. Hoffman turns the Airbnb story into four transferable lessons, including the crucial one about when to stop. The manual,... Reid Hoffman (Medium) Essay · 12 min read · Starting Up How to Scale a Magical Experience: 4 Lessons from Airbnb's Brian Chesky Reid Hoffman
14. A short, honest founder writeup that echoes the heart of our answer: a handful of real conversations with people in your target... Indie Hackers Thread · approx 10 min read · Starting Up How I got my first 100 users Alexander Chen
15. Early sales is not about volume, it is about finding the few customers who want your vision badly enough to bet on an unproven... Andreessen Horowitz Article · Starting Up When Sales Isn't Just Selling: Advice for Founders in Early Markets Martin Casado
16. This reframes early customers as something you win through effort rather than something you stumble onto, which directly... Medium Article · Starting Up Early Stage Sales: Why Every Startup's First Customers Are Won, Not Found DC
17. A calm, practical guide to founder-led selling from zero, built around the idea that you close early deals through warm... Stripe Atlas Article · Starting Up Your first 10 customers Patrick McKenzie
18. If you are unsure whether it is your price stopping the sale, start here: figure out which order of magnitude you are in (a 10... Naomi Ionita, Lenny's Newsletter Article · Starting Up How to price your product Naomi Ionita
19. Sometimes the stall is your pitch: you demo features instead of framing the problem and the cost of not solving it. Dunford... April Dunford, Lenny's Newsletter Article · Starting Up A step-by-step guide to crafting a sales pitch that wins April Dunford
20. Practical scripts for the exact moment interest collides with price, so you have something better than a nervous discount. It... HubSpot Article · Starting Up 14 responses to the objection "Your price is too high" Davidson Hang
21. A companion breakdown of how early users became paying customers, including companies that had no paid plan at launch and... Lenny's Newsletter Article · ~15 min read · Starting Up How today's fastest-growing B2B businesses turned their early users into paying customers Lenny Rachitsky
22. A grounded walkthrough of where first customers realistically come from, starting with the people you already know. It treats... Startups.com Article · ~15 min read · Starting Up How to find the first 100 customers for your startup Startups.com
23. A concrete, tactical guide to working through your own network toward paying customers without awkward pitches. It walks... UniTel Voice Article · ~15 min read · Starting Up How to Get Your First 10 Paying Customers Using Your Personal Network UniTel Voice
24. The other half of the problem: once you have supply, how do you get the first buyers so sellers do not churn out of an empty... Lenny's Newsletter Article · 15 min read · Starting Up Cracking the Chicken-and-Egg Problem: Growing Initial Demand (Part 4) Lenny Rachitsky

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