Every resource founders actually use, in one library.

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

1. Fred Wilson has read tens of thousands of cold and warm pitches as an investor, and this short post is his honest account of... AVC (Fred Wilson's blog) Essay · ~3 min read · Starting Up How to Get Your Emails Read Fred Wilson
2. Steli Efti has coached hundreds of early-stage founders through outbound sales, and this free guide states plainly that no one... Close Book · 31 lessons, roughly an hour · Starting Up SaaS Sales for Startup Founders Steli Efti
3. Sajith Pai, a VC at Blume Ventures, wrote publicly about being put off when a founder outsources their own pitch email to a... LinkedIn Thread · 2 min read · Starting Up Always puzzled when I get pitch emails cold from a non-founder Sajith Pai
4. If you decide to send from a separate domain for deliverability reasons, this is the official, no nonsense setup guide for the... Google Workspace Help Article · 10 min setup · Starting Up Set up SPF Google Workspace
5. Video · Starting Up Cold Email is Changing Alex Berman
6. This is the closest thing to a canonical answer to your exact fear: writing to someone who seems too important to reply to you.... Harvard Business Review Article · Starting Up Tips for Cold-Emailing Intimidatingly Powerful People Peter Sims
7. Josh Braun's 4T framework (Trigger, Think, Third-party credibility, Talk) is a repeatable structure for writing an email that... Josh Braun Article · Starting Up Let's Write a Good 4-T Cold Email Josh Braun
8. Jen Abel has coached hundreds of early-stage founders through their first enterprise deals, and this episode is unusually... Lenny's Podcast, with Jen Abel Podcast · Starting Up "Sell the alpha, not the feature": The enterprise sales playbook for $1M to $10M ARR Jen Abel
9. A direct answer to a founder asking almost exactly your question. Lemkin's fix is blunt: fewer, better-targeted emails to the... SaaStr Article · Starting Up Dear SaaStr: Cold Emails Are Not Working for My B2B SaaS Startup. What Am I Doing Wrong? Jason Lemkin
10. Video · Starting Up I Sent 10 Million Cold Emails - These 5 Scripts Made the Most Alex Berman
11. Written from the receiving end by someone who gets a lot of cold email, this lays out exactly what makes an ask easy to say yes... Kalzumeus Software Essay · 10 min read · Starting Up Standing Invitation Patrick McKenzie (patio11)
12. Direct and specific about the ask problem: it points out that asking to 'jump on a call' in the very first email is one of the... Hunter.io Blog Article · 8 min read · Starting Up 8 Cold Email Tips to Improve Your Next Campaign Hunter.io Blog
13. A first-person account of what actually happened across thousands of sends, rather than a generic best-practices list. Useful... Hunter.io Blog Article · 9 min read · Starting Up 5 Lessons I Learned After Sending 12K Cold Emails Irina Maltseva
14. Video · ~12 min · Starting Up How to Write Emails That Get Opened Ramit Sethi
15. An investor walks through, line by line, the actual cold email that got him to say yes to what became a unicorn investment.... The Twenty Minute VC (20VC) Podcast · ~45 min · Starting Up The Contentful Memo: Point Nine's Christoph Janz on the Cold Email That Led to a Unicorn Investment Harry Stebbings
16. The most complete single book on cold email as a repeatable system, from a writer who built his own business almost entirely on... Amazon Book · ~200 pages · Starting Up Cold Email Manifesto: How to Contact Anyone, Make More Sales, and Take Your Company to the Next Level Alex Berman, Robert Indries
17. This is a tactical playbook for turning a handful of happy customers into a channel of their own: reference calls, case... First Round Review Article · Starting Up The Startup's Guide to Customer Advocacy: How to Get Closer to Your Champions Kalina Bryant
18. This is the real time data point behind the ceiling described in the short answer, straight from a community of SaaS founders... SaaStr Article · Starting Up Does Outbound Still Work? 49% Of You Say No Jason Lemkin
19. Written in 1999, this book named the exact tension you are living through: interruption based outreach gets harder every year... Amazon Book · Starting Up Permission Marketing: Turning Strangers into Friends and Friends into Customers Seth Godin
20. Barry built ConvertKit's growth almost entirely on flywheels, content, community, and audience, rather than outbound, and this... nathanbarry.com Essay · Starting Up Creator Flywheels: The Operating System for Your Business Nathan Barry
21. Sheridan's pool company went from near bankruptcy to a category leader by answering every question a buyer might have in public... marcussheridan.com Book · Starting Up They Ask, You Answer: A Revolutionary Approach to Inbound Sales, Content Marketing, and Today's Digital Consumer Marcus Sheridan
22. This is a VC's field guide to the small community half of the short answer: what makes a founder built community actually drive... Bessemer Venture Partners Essay · Starting Up Five laws for community-led growth Bessemer Venture Partners
23. This gives you the actual words to use once you decide to ask happy customers for referrals, timed to the moment right after a... HubSpot Template · Starting Up How to ask for a referral from a client (+ best email templates) HubSpot
24. Warm channels run on proof, and this is the simplest tool for collecting video and text testimonials from customers without... Testimonial.to Tool · Starting Up Testimonial.to Testimonial.to

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