Every resource founders actually use, in one library.

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

1. Bezos separates decisions into one way doors you cannot undo and two way doors you can walk back through. Deciding to build a... Amazon shareholder letter (Jeff Bezos) Essay · ~6 min read (relevant section) · Starting Up 2015 Letter to Shareholders (Two-Way Doors) Jeff Bezos
2. A conversational walkthrough of how to move from a hunch to a tested idea quickly, good for a commute when you do not want to... Lenny's Podcast Podcast · podcast episode · Starting Up Rapidly Test and Validate Any Startup Idea Lenny Rachitsky
3. This is the most concrete method we found for collecting the complaints nobody has fixed when you cannot yet get people on... Solving Product (Amy Hoy and Alex Hillman method) Article · Medium read · Starting Up How to Find New Product Opportunities with a Sales Safari Étienne Garbugli
4. Bob Moesta, one of the originators of Jobs to be Done, shows how to interview people about the struggling moment that made them... Business of Software (Bob Moesta) Video · About 45 min · Starting Up Demand-Side Sales 101 (talk) Bob Moesta
5. This is the honest counterweight to the romance of the naive disruptor, and it maps onto your short answer directly. It shows... Kellogg Insight, Northwestern Article · Medium read · Starting Up Sure, Industry Outsiders Can Bring Fresh Ideas. But Are They Better Entrepreneurs? Kellogg Insight
6. Marty Cagan draws the line cleanly: if you are going to fall in love, fall in love with the problem, not the solution, and get... Silicon Valley Product Group Essay · ~6 min read · Starting Up Discovery: Problem vs. Solution Marty Cagan
7. Choosing between two ideas is a bet under uncertainty, and Duke gives you the mindset for it: judge the decision by its... Annie Duke Book · ~272 pages · Starting Up Thinking in Bets Annie Duke
8. This is the simple artifact your answer describes: list the three or four criteria you both care about, weight them, and score... Smartsheet Template · template · Starting Up Weighted Decision Matrix Templates Smartsheet
9. This is YC's direct answer to your question, walking through how partners spot ideas that only became buildable once models got... Y Combinator Video · ~15 min · Starting Up How To Get AI Startup Ideas Y Combinator
10. This is the direct counter to the fear in your short answer, that a platform update erases your product overnight. Chen argues... Andrew Chen Essay · 20 min read · Starting Up Revenge of the GPT Wrappers: Defensibility in a World of Commoditized AI Models Andrew Chen
11. Before you commit, you need to know whether the value from your AI idea accrues to you or to an incumbent who bolts the feature... Elad Gil Essay · 12 min read · Starting Up AI: Startup Vs Incumbent Value Elad Gil
12. A map of which AI markets already have clear winners and which are still wide open, which is the practical version of asking... Elad Gil Essay · 12 min read · Starting Up AI Market Clarity Elad Gil
13. This explains why niches once dismissed as too small (laundromats, vets, clinics) become real businesses when AI absorbs the... Andreessen Horowitz Article · 15 min read · Starting Up Vertical SaaS: Now with AI Inside Angela Strange and James da Costa
14. The core move in our short answer is decomposing a workflow into steps a model can now do. This piece frames every workflow as... Andreessen Horowitz Article · 15 min read · Starting Up The Rise of Computer Use and Agentic Coworkers Eric Zhou, Yoko Li, Seema Amble, Jennifer Li
15. Once you have spotted the opening, this gives you concrete principles for making it defensible, heavy on proprietary data and... Bessemer Venture Partners Article · 15 min read · Starting Up Ten Principles for Building Strong Vertical AI Businesses Bessemer Venture Partners
16. To spot what is newly possible you need to know what the models can suddenly do that they could not before, and this essay maps... Sequoia Capital Essay · 18 min read · Starting Up Generative AI's Act o1: The Reasoning Era Begins Sonya Huang and Pat Grady
17. The clearest argument that idea generation is a muscle, not a gift. Altucher's practice, write ten ideas a day until it becomes... James Altucher Essay · 15 min read · Starting Up The Ultimate Guide for Becoming an Idea Machine James Altucher
18. A working set of prompts that push your thinking to extremes to shake loose non-obvious ideas. When your list feels stale or... A Smart Bear (Jason Cohen) Article · 15 min read · Starting Up Extreme brainstorming questions to trigger new, better ideas Jason Cohen
19. A tool that scans forums, search trends, and communities to surface pre-researched idea candidates, with a free idea of the... IdeaBrowser (Greg Isenberg) Tool · Web tool · Starting Up IdeaBrowser Greg Isenberg
20. This is the practical mechanics of exactly the habit in our answer: keep a running list of daily annoyances and workarounds,... Founder's Guide Article · 10 min read · Starting Up The Problem List Method: business ideas from real daily frustrations Founder's Guide
21. A short, focused piece on the single skill our answer is built around: noticing what everyone else walks past. It names the... Start as Sprout Article · 8 min read · Starting Up The Quiet Skill of Noticing Problems Start as Sprout
22. Podcast · ~90 min · Starting Up Lessons from 1,000+ YC startups: tar pit ideas and pivoting Dalton Caldwell
23. This is the counterweight to the venture scale market advice: proof that a small market can be a great business if you are... Rob Walling Essay · Starting Up The Stair Step Method of Bootstrapping Rob Walling
24. Speaks directly to the trap of confusing a giant TAM number with a real business. It explains why investors discount inflated... HSBC Innovation Banking Article · Starting Up Beyond the TAM Slide: What Investors Really Want HSBC Innovation Banking

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