Every resource founders actually use, in one library.

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

1. This framework treats persona as one of four levers, alongside problem, promise, and product, that you pull when growth or... First Round Article · 20 min read · Starting Up Levels of PMF First Round Capital
2. This is the direct counterargument to our short answer, and reading it will sharpen your thinking either way. It walks through... Harvard Business Review Article · 8 min read · Starting Up When "Scratch Your Own Itch" Is Dangerous Advice for Entrepreneurs N. Taylor Thompson
3. This article names the exact cognitive bias behind the red flag you're asking about: assuming other people think, want, and... Nielsen Norman Group Article · 8 min read · Starting Up You Are Not the User: The False-Consensus Effect Raluca Budiu
4. A founder's first-person account of the exact failure mode in your question: mistaking an audience of people who look and think... Indie Hackers Thread · 8 min read · Starting Up Your build-in-public audience is not your market. I learned the difference the slow way. Indie Hackers
5. This is the counter case, marketplaces where demand was actually the constrained side and defining the ideal buyer first is... Lenny's Newsletter Article · Starting Up Demand driving supply Brian Rothenberg
6. Lauzier has run marketplace growth at Lyft, Thumbtack and Reforge, and this conversation gets into how a precise definition on... Lenny's Podcast Podcast · ~1 hr · Starting Up How marketplaces win: Liquidity, growth levers, quality, and more Benjamin Lauzier
7. Evans and Schmalensee studied why most attempts at multisided platforms fail, and a recurring reason is founders never nailed a... Harvard Business Review Press Book · Starting Up Matchmakers: The New Economics of Multisided Platforms David S. Evans, Richard Schmalensee
8. This warns you against a specific mistake that happens after you correctly anchor on supply: building every feature suppliers... Reforge Blog Article · Starting Up The Supply Features Trap Of Marketplaces Gilad Horev
9. Agarwal describes how OYO had to define its ideal hotel partner precisely, small, underperforming, willing to be upgraded,... SeedToScale (Accel India) Podcast · Starting Up Ritesh Agarwal on Building OYO, the Decacorn of India's Hotel Industry Ritesh Agarwal, hosted by Anand Daniel
10. This traces Urban Company's earliest days recruiting and defining their first service professionals in one city before... SeedToScale Podcast · Starting Up Untold Seed Stories: The First 500 Days of Urban Company Abhiraj Bhal, hosted by Abhinav Chaturvedi
11. Gebbia tells the founding story from the side of the person actually going door to door defining who their first hosts should... How I Built This with Guy Raz, NPR Podcast · ~45 min · Starting Up Airbnb: Joe Gebbia Joe Gebbia, hosted by Guy Raz
12. Podcast · Starting Up Anjali Sardana on Obsession, $11M Funding & Building Pronto at 23 Anjali Sardana
13. Elena Verna draws the line between a broad product usage ICP and a narrower sales ICP, and shows how to build both from... Elena Verna, Elena's Growth Scoop Essay · Starting Up I'd Segment That... Elena Verna, Elena's Growth Scoop
14. This explains exactly how to build the retention and behavioral cohorts your short answer relies on: grouping customers by... Amplitude Article · Starting Up Cohort Retention Analysis: Reduce Churn Using Customer Data Amplitude
15. This lays out how to bucket users into occasional, core and power tiers by actual product usage, which is the mechanical... Mixpanel Article · Starting Up User segmentation: A guide to understanding your customers Mixpanel
16. This guide explains how to read a retention curve across different customer cohorts to spot which segment is actually sticking... Reforge Article · Starting Up Evaluate retention cohorts Reforge
17. This blueprint walks through analyzing your existing customer base with a structured framework to find the patterns that signal... Winning by Design Template · Starting Up How to Uncover Your ICP Winning by Design
18. Supan's High Expectation Customer concept adds a layer your data sort alone won't catch: among your best fit customers, find... Julie Supan, First Round Review Article · Starting Up What I Learned From Developing Branding for Airbnb, Dropbox and Thumbtack Julie Supan, First Round Review
19. This is a clean, practical writeup of the same 40% test methodology, with more detail on how to segment survey respondents... Reforge Article · Starting Up Measure and improve product/market fit with the 40% test Reforge
20. This directly names the trap in your situation: free users are not your ICP, and your real conversion math (about 1 percent)... A Smart Bear (Jason Cohen) Essay · 12 min read · Starting Up Reframing 'Freemium' by charging the marketing department Jason Cohen
21. A practical, runnable four-question survey you can send your current audience this week to find out, empirically, whether they... SurveyMonkey Tool · 10 min read · Starting Up How To Use The Van Westendorp Price Sensitivity Meter SurveyMonkey
22. If your honest read is that this audience will never pay directly, Anderson's book is the map of the models that work anyway:... Chris Anderson Book · ~300 pages · Starting Up Free: The Future of a Radical Price Chris Anderson
23. This names your exact situation as one of six named pivot triggers: customers crave the value proposition but can't or won't... Strategyzer Article · 10 min read · Starting Up The Pivot: 6 Situations When It's Time to Change Your Business Model and Value Proposition Strategyzer
24. A concrete, worked example of exactly the fix in your short answer: the person who feels the pain (student, teacher) is often... Medium Essay · 8 min read · Starting Up Selling to Schools Is B(to)S Earnest Sweat

Show the next 24