Every resource founders actually use, in one library.

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

1. Cohen goes straight at the founder self-deception in the question: a room full of enthusiastic yeses is not validation unless... A Smart Bear (Jason Cohen) Essay · ~15 min read · Starting Up Yes, but who said they would actually buy the damn thing? Jason Cohen
2. This essay is the clearest explanation of why stated preference and revealed preference diverge, with a concrete example of... UX Tigers Essay · ~10 min read · Starting Up Watch What Users Do, Don't Listen to What They Say Jakob Nielsen
3. Meyer's framework classifies India as a high-context culture, where meaning is layered and read between the lines rather than... Erin Meyer Book · ~280 pages · Starting Up The Culture Map: Breaking Through the Invisible Boundaries of Global Business Erin Meyer
4. This walks through exactly the analysis step your question is stuck on, how to go from a stack of interview notes to a small... Nielsen Norman Group Video · Starting Up Thematic Analysis of Qualitative User Research Data Maria Rosala
5. Affinity diagramming is the literal, hands on version of sorting your transcripts by who the person is and how badly they hurt:... Nielsen Norman Group Article · Starting Up Affinity Diagramming: Collaboratively Sort UX Findings and Design Ideas Rachel Krause and Kara Pernice
6. Paras Chopra describes losing seven to eight months building Wingify's first version without talking to users at all, then the... The Neon Show Podcast · Starting Up How To Build A Successful Startup In India, ft. Paras Chopra (sold Wingify for 200 million dollars) Paras Chopra
7. Chesky describes flying across the country to personally sit in hosts' living rooms because nothing in a survey told them why... Y Combinator Startup Library Video · ~40 min · Starting Up Brian Chesky, Co-Founder and CEO of Airbnb Brian Chesky
8. This is the original milkshake essay: researchers sat in a parking lot and watched who bought milkshakes and when, instead of... Harvard Business Review Essay · ~20 min read · Starting Up Marketing Malpractice: The Cause and the Cure Clayton Christensen, Scott Cook, Taddy Hall
9. Drew Houston did not build Dropbox before testing demand, he filmed a video showing how it would work and posted it to Hacker... Shortform Article · ~10 min read · Starting Up The Original Dropbox MVP Explainer Video Shortform
10. Before building any shoe inventory or logistics, Nick Swinmurn photographed shoes from local stores, posted them online, and... What Is MVP Article · ~10 min read · Starting Up Zappos MVP Case Study: How a Wizard of Oz Test Built a Billion Dollar Shoe Empire What Is MVP
11. A practical walkthrough of building only the button or menu item for a feature that does not exist yet, then measuring who... Amplitude Article · ~10 min read · Starting Up What Is Fake Door Testing: Methods and Best Practices Amplitude
12. This is a reference document more than a read: thirty concrete before and after examples of leading questions rewritten into... CXL Article · 15 minute read · Starting Up Leading Questions: Definition, Types and 30 Examples CXL
13. This walks through Jobs to Be Done interviewing, which is built entirely around reconstructing a real past decision rather than... CXL Article · 18 minute read · Starting Up Customer Interviews: How to Use the Jobs-to-Be-Done Framework CXL
14. This is the academic name and definition for exactly the failure mode in the question: people systematically overstate what... Catalog of Bias Article · 3 minute read · Starting Up Hypothetical bias Catalog of Bias
15. Christensen tells the milkshake story himself: McDonald's asked customers directly how to improve the milkshake and got useless... HBR IdeaCast Podcast · about 35 minutes · Starting Up The Jobs to Be Done Theory of Innovation Clayton Christensen
16. A short, practical rewrite guide showing three specific question types to swap in for what do you want, each anchored to... Medium Essay · 5 minute read · Starting Up Never Ask What They Want: 3 Better Questions to Ask in User Interviews Chuck Liu
17. Moesta invented the 'switch interview' technique and explains here how to reconstruct the exact moment a customer decided to... The SaaS Podcast Podcast · ~50 min · Starting Up 10 Customer Interviews That Reveal Why People Really Buy Omer Khan, Bob Moesta
18. Hearing The Mom Test's author talk through his own framework out loud fills in gaps the book leaves implicit, especially around... The SaaS Podcast Podcast · ~40 min · Starting Up Customer Acquisition Startup Mistakes That Kill Your Idea Omer Khan, Rob Fitzpatrick
19. Garbugli, a three-time B2B founder, lays out the actual questions to ask about business drivers, pain intensity, and who owns... Lean Startup Digest (Medium) Essay · 10 min read · Starting Up B2B Customer Discovery Interview Questions: A Master List Etienne Garbugli
20. If you're selling to businesses rather than consumers, this book adapts customer development to the messier reality of... leanb2bbook.com Book · ~280 pages · Starting Up Lean B2B: Build Products Businesses Want Etienne Garbugli
21. Recruiting is often the actual hard part of this problem, not the conversation itself. This gives you the tactics NN/g uses... Nielsen Norman Group Article · 20 min read · Starting Up How to Recruit Participants for Usability Studies Nielsen Norman Group
22. A short, practical answer to the recruitment problem this question is really asking about: where do I even find these people.... Lean Startup Co. Article · 8 min read · Starting Up We Can't Find Customers to Interview. Now What? Lean Startup Co.
23. One of India's better-known early-stage VCs interviews the author of Jobs to Be Done on why people 'hire' a product, which... Prime Venture Partners Podcast Podcast · ~40 min · Starting Up Stephen Wunker, MD New Markets Advisors, on Building Solutions That Help Your Customers Get Things Done Shripati Acharya, Stephen Wunker
24. Lemkin lays out a specific, staged interview count for B2B SaaS founders: the first five to map the space, the next five to... SaaStr Article · ~10 min read · Starting Up Planning to Do a SaaS Startup? Don't Forget the 20 Interview Rule Jason Lemkin

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