Every resource founders actually use, in one library.

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

1. Written for the founder who built the product and is now terrified of the word sales, this argues the skill set is closer to... Y Combinator Startup Library Essay · Starting Up Enterprise sales for hackers Y Combinator Startup Library
2. This book's research finding is counterintuitive and directly useful here: the sales reps who win complex deals are not the... Amazon Book · Starting Up The Challenger Sale: Taking Control of the Customer Conversation Matthew Dixon, Brent Adamson
3. Benn Stancil cofounded a company that sold into large enterprises, and this essay is an unusually honest account of how slow,... Benn Stancil (Substack) Essay · Starting Up So you want to sell to the enterprise? Benn Stancil
4. This is the foundational text on separating people from the problem and negotiating on interests rather than positions, which... Program on Negotiation, Harvard Law School Book · 240 pages · Starting Up Getting to Yes: Negotiating Agreement Without Giving In Roger Fisher, William Ury, Bruce Patton
5. Sabeer Bhatia, who sold Hotmail to Microsoft, traces his negotiating instincts back to haggling in vegetable markets in... tim.blog Essay · 8 min read · Starting Up How to Negotiate like an Indian - 7 Rules Tim Ferriss
6. This is a short, practical guide to making invoice follow up a routine instead of an awkward one off, with an actual cadence:... Chaser Article · 7 min read · Starting Up 7 tips to collect unpaid invoices from customers Chaser
7. If you are registered as an MSME and a customer sits on your invoice past 45 days, this government portal is the actual legal... Ministry of MSME, Government of India Tool · Starting Up MSME SAMADHAAN - Delayed Payment Monitoring System Ministry of MSME, Government of India
8. UPI Autopay lets you set up a recurring mandate on a customer's account so a subscription or installment debits automatically... Razorpay Tool · Starting Up UPI Autopay | Razorpay Razorpay
9. Lemkin's blunt answer is that the founder has to get the first 10 customers personally, through their own network and direct... Jason Lemkin (SaaStr) Article · Starting Up Dear SaaStr: How Do I Get My First 10 Customers? Jason Lemkin (SaaStr)
10. Picks up right where the previous piece leaves off: once you've decided to charge for the pilot, how do you actually structure... SaaStr Article · Starting Up Dear SaaStr: We're Starting a Big Paid Pilot. How Do We Maximize the Chances of Success? Jason Lemkin
11. A pricing consultant's argument that most companies discount reflexively instead of strategically, with a framework for... Harvard Business Review Article · Starting Up The Art of Discounting Rafi Mohammed
12. A short, sharp reminder that your price tells a story, and that cutting it to close a deal usually just tells the buyer the... Seth's Blog Essay · Starting Up On pricing Seth Godin
13. A free, plain-language contract template built specifically for running a paid pilot, with the scope, fee, and success criteria... Common Paper Template · Starting Up Pilot Agreement Common Paper
14. The other side of the discount question: sometimes a genuinely low price is the right strategy, not a concession. Jason Lemkin... SaaStr Article · Starting Up Dear SaaStr: When Does It Make Sense to Price Low in the Market? Jason Lemkin
15. A practical, no-nonsense walkthrough of what a pipeline is for and how to keep it honest, written by a company that sells CRM... Close Article · Starting Up The Ultimate Sales Pipeline Guide: How to Build, Manage, & Measure Close
16. When a spreadsheet finally starts to strain, this is the most common next step: unlimited contacts, deal tracking, and email... HubSpot Tool · Starting Up Free CRM for Small Business HubSpot
17. Built by an Indian company and free for up to three users, this is the CRM a lot of early Indian B2B founders reach for because... Zoho Tool · Starting Up Zoho CRM Free Edition Zoho
18. A short, honest account of the exact failure mode this question warns about: a solo founder loses a good prospect purely from... Indie Hackers Thread · Starting Up Built a dead-simple pipeline tracker after losing a deal because I forgot to follow up Indie Hackers
19. Welsh shows the exact two-step process he used to build a million-dollar pipeline from cold DMs: find people already talking... Justin Welsh Essay · 10 min read · Starting Up How to Get Replies from Your Dream Customers Justin Welsh
20. This is the LinkedIn half of the question: a simple system using alerts and triggers (funding news, new hires, press mentions)... Justin Welsh Essay · 10 min read · Starting Up How to Find More Customers on LinkedIn Justin Welsh
21. Ferriss writes from the other side of the inbox: what actually gets a reply from someone who gets hundreds of pitches a day.... Tim Ferriss Essay · 5 min read · Starting Up 5 Tips for E-mailing Busy People Tim Ferriss
22. Sethi gives word-for-word scripts and, more usefully, the follow-up move almost nobody does: closing the loop by telling... Ramit Sethi Article · 10 min read · Starting Up How To Connect w/ Busy People (& actually get HAPPY replies) Ramit Sethi
23. A straightforward six-part checklist (subject line, personalization, benefit to them, credibility, one call-to-action, respect... Noah Kagan Article · 8 min read · Starting Up Cold Email Tips: 6 Steps to Write Great Cold Emails Noah Kagan
24. Caponi's argument is that admitting what your product is not good at, early and clearly, closes deals faster than trying to... Todd Caponi Book · Starting Up The Transparency Sale Todd Caponi

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