Every resource founders actually use, in one library.

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

1. This episode is a direct case study in the buyer/user split: developers are your user and increasingly your champion, but... a16z Podcast Podcast · Starting Up Selling to Developers Andreessen Horowitz
2. Video · Starting Up Building a Global SaaS Empire: Freshworks Founder & CEO Girish Mathrubootham on His Biggest Bets Girish Mathrubootham
3. Postman, founded in Bangalore, is a clean example of designing entirely for the individual developer-user first and only later... Stack Overflow Blog Article · Starting Up Postman's journey and unlocking the power of APIs Abhinav Asthana (interview)
4. This worksheet is built for exactly your situation: choosing one narrow persona to start with when you could plausibly serve... reifyworks.com Template · Starting Up The Initial Ideal Customer Profile (IICP) Worksheet Reify
5. Shapiro's method, asking 100 people representative of your guessed audience whether they'd put down a cash deposit, is a fast,... julian.com Article · about 10 min read · Starting Up Market Pull (Startup Handbook) Julian Shapiro
6. Godin's short post makes the strongest case for going smaller on purpose: pick the smallest group you can delight completely... Seth's Blog Essay · 5 min read · Starting Up The Minimum Viable Audience Seth Godin
7. This thread is founders arguing out this exact question in public, with real numbers from real small businesses about when a... Indie Hackers Thread · 10 min read · Starting Up Is it possible to be "too niche"? Indie Hackers community
8. Kushwaha built Bluestone in Indian jewellery e-commerce, a category everyone assumed was too niche and infrequent to fund a... Prime Venture Partners Podcast Podcast · ~50 min · Starting Up Reasons to Buy, Right Attribution Models & CAC/LTV Fallacy with Gaurav Singh Kushwaha, Founder & CEO Bluestone Prime Venture Partners, with Gaurav Singh Kushwaha
9. Wang argues that the TAM slide investors ask for is often meaningless because Uber and Airbnb both started with tiny quoted... SaaStr Podcast · ~35 min · Starting Up SaaStr Podcast #227: Alexandr Wang, Founder & CEO @ Scale, on Why TAM In The Traditional Sense Barely Matters SaaStr, with Alexandr Wang
10. Zerodha started as a boutique brokerage aimed narrowly at active day traders, a niche the rest of the Indian broking industry... Z-Connect by Zerodha Article · 10 min read · Starting Up Nithin: Zero to Zerodha Nithin Kamath
11. This is the sharpest possible answer to the second half of your question: what to do about the people who show up wanting to... Y Combinator Essay · Starting Up Users You Don't Want Michael Seibel
12. Kao's bullseye model gives you a visual way to think about exactly the ongoing read your short answer describes: your core... weskao.com Essay · Starting Up Concentric circles of customers: focus on people who already share your worldviews Wes Kao
13. Video · Starting Up Understanding the Jobs to Be Done (the milkshake story) Clayton Christensen
14. This article is squarely about treating the ICP as an ongoing read rather than a document you write once and file away, which... Clarify Article · Starting Up Why your ideal customer profile should evolve with your startup Clarify
15. This is a practical, checklist style piece on diagnosing whether your ICP is actually too broad in the first place, before you... DevriX Article · Starting Up How Narrow Ideal Customer Profiles Can Expand Revenue DevriX
16. Zerodha's founders built specifically for the self-directed retail trader who was fed up with high commissions and clunky... Forbes India Article · Starting Up Bootstrapping to a Billion (Zerodha founder story) Forbes India
17. This is the origin of the '100 people who love you beats a million who sort of like you' idea that underlies your whole short... Inc. Article · Starting Up Airbnb's Brian Chesky: If 100 People Love Your Product, That's Enough Salvador Rodriguez
18. This piece attacks the exact mistake domain experts make: describing a market by job title or industry instead of by the... A Smart Bear Essay · Starting Up Your target market isn't demographic Jason Cohen
19. Coelen explains why founders can't segment their market from a desk using industry reports, they have to talk to real customers... Doctor Market Fit Essay · Starting Up How most founders get their beachhead wrong Jeroen Coelen
20. This piece gives you a checklist for evaluating whether a slice of your industry is a genuine beachhead: urgent problem,... Doctor Market Fit Essay · Starting Up What makes a great beachhead market? Jeroen Coelen
21. This is a practical, tactical follow up to the ICP essays above: once you have named your narrow slice, here is how you... A Smart Bear Essay · Starting Up How do I get my first few customers? Jason Cohen
22. This deck lays out how consumer investors actually think about a target user, closer to a specific behavior and context than a... andrewchen.com Essay · 30 min read (slide deck) · Starting Up Consumer startups are awesome, and here's what I'm looking for at a16z Andrew Chen
23. Bier has built and sold two viral consumer apps by deliberately starting with a narrow, high urgency audience like teenagers... Lenny's Newsletter Podcast · 45 min · Starting Up How to consistently go viral: Nikita Bier's playbook for winning at consumer apps Nikita Bier, interviewed by Lenny Rachitsky
24. This is Bier's own written version of his consumer playbook, useful as a quick reference you can screenshot and revisit. It is... X (Twitter) Thread · 5 min read · Starting Up Nikita Bier's thread on building consumer social apps Nikita Bier

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