Every resource founders actually use, in one library.

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

1. A short, honest essay arguing that cold outbound is both a strong demand signal and a skill you will need anyway. It counters... Pascal Unger (pascalsnotes.substack.com) Essay · ~10 min read · Starting Up Cold Outbound is Under-Appreciated Pascal Unger In 3 answers
2. Written specifically for engineers who would rather ship code than sell. McKenzie, a developer who bootstrapped his own... Kalzumeus Essay · approx 20 min read · Starting Up Marketing Software, For People Who Would Rather Be Building It Patrick McKenzie In 3 answers
3. The one thing you cannot outsource is staying on top of your first conversations, and this is a free CRM that lives inside... streak.com Tool · Starting Up Streak CRM for Gmail Streak In 3 answers
4. A short, direct conversation between two founders on when cold email works, who to send to, and how to write the subject line... The Startup Chat with Steli and Hiten Podcast · 18 min · Starting Up The Startup Chat, Episode 014: Cold Email Steli Efti and Hiten Shah In 3 answers
5. Podcast · Starting Up SaaS Startups: Early Stage Sales, Product Demos and Right to Sell with Jen Abel Jen Abel and Amit Somani In 3 answers
6. Video · 48 min · Starting Up How to Build Products Users Love Kevin Hale In 3 answers
7. Cagan draws a sharp line that saves founders real pain: the thing you use to test a hypothesis is an experiment, not a product... Silicon Valley Product Group Essay · 6 min read · Starting Up Minimum Viable Product Marty Cagan In 3 answers
8. This is the practical, step-by-step manual for the Lean Startup ideas, built around the one-page Lean Canvas and a system for... LeanFoundry Book · 240 pages · Starting Up Running Lean: Iterate from Plan A to a Plan That Works Ash Maurya In 3 answers
9. A clear, jargon-free explainer that corrects the most common misuse of the term, where teams ship a broken product and call it... Nielsen Norman Group Article · 8 min read · Starting Up Minimum Viable Product (MVP): Definition Sara Paul In 3 answers
10. Podcast · 55 min · Starting Up The Mom Test with Rob Fitzpatrick (The Learning Leader Show) Rob Fitzpatrick In 3 answers
11. Beck, a foundational voice in software, adds useful nuance about what minimal really means and why teams so often get it wrong.... Tidy First (Kent Beck) Essay · ~1,000 words · Starting Up Minimum Viable Product Revisited Kent Beck In 3 answers
12. This gives you the sharpest rule for the build versus buy call: if it is a core business function, build it yourself, and if it... Joel on Software Essay · 10 min read · Starting Up In Defense of Not-Invented-Here Syndrome Joel Spolsky In 3 answers
13. This is the canonical case for building less, and its chapters Build Less and Underdo Your Competition speak straight to your... 37signals Book · Short book, readable online · Starting Up Getting Real Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson In 3 answers
14. This one line from LinkedIn's co founder is the mindset that makes buying infrastructure feel safe: the first version is meant... Reid Hoffman (X) Thread · 1 min · Starting Up If you're not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you've launched too late Reid Hoffman In 3 answers
15. This playbook helps you name the single metric that represents the value your product delivers, plus the few inputs that move... Amplitude Template · Guide (PDF) · Starting Up The North Star Playbook Amplitude In 3 answers
16. Concrete, field-tested advice on deciding which debt to pay and how to justify it. Orosz and Franco share practical rules of... The Pragmatic Engineer Article · 20 min read · Starting Up Paying down tech debt Gergely Orosz and Lou Franco In 3 answers
17. Ben Tossell built Makerpad past $200K as a side project entirely on no-code (Webflow, Airtable, Zapier, Memberstack) before... Indie Hackers Podcast · ~60 min · Starting Up Creating a $200k Side Project Without Writing a Line of Code with Ben Tossell Ben Tossell In 3 answers
18. When you need people to feel the flow, not just read a pitch, a clickable Figma prototype gets you there without code. This... Figma Tool · Starting Up Guide to prototyping in Figma Figma In 3 answers
19. Erik Kennedy writes for engineers and founders who were never taught design, and his rules are unusually memorable (light comes... Learn UI Design (Erik Kennedy) Essay · 25 min read · Starting Up 7 Rules for Creating Gorgeous UI Erik D. Kennedy In 3 answers
20. An interactive page that improves an ugly wall of text step by step in front of you, so you feel exactly which changes matter... jgthms.com Tool · 4 min interactive · Starting Up Web Design in 4 Minutes Jeremy Thomas In 3 answers
21. The classic that gives non, designers four principles they will use forever: contrast, repetition, alignment, and proximity.... Robin Williams (Peachpit) Book · 240 pages · Starting Up The Non-Designer's Design Book Robin Williams In 3 answers
22. Facebook's former head of product design on what separates good design from decoration, which reframes polish as clarity and... The Year of the Looking Glass (Julie Zhuo) Essay · 8 min read · Starting Up Good Design Julie Zhuo In 3 answers
23. Levels built profitable products almost entirely by himself, and this handbook is his blunt account of how a solo maker ships,... readmake.com Book · Digital handbook · Starting Up MAKE: The Indie Maker Blueprint Pieter Levels In 3 answers
24. Levels has shipped dozens of profitable products almost entirely solo, using deliberately simple tools plus AI, and he talks in... Lex Fridman Podcast #440 Podcast · 3h 43m · Starting Up Pieter Levels: Programming, Viral AI Startups, and Digital Nomad Life Lex Fridman and Pieter Levels In 3 answers

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