Every resource founders actually use, in one library.

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

1. Most market-sizing advice pushes you to inflate your TAM to look venture-scale. This piece argues the honest opposite: a market... PeakSpan Capital Article · ~10 min read · Starting Up I Was Born in a Small TAM PeakSpan Capital
2. This is the practical companion to the two ideas above: Aulet's beachhead framework gives you a concrete way to judge whether a... Derby Entrepreneurship Center, Tufts University Article · ~15 min read · Starting Up Beachhead Market: Choosing Where to Start and How to Expand Bill Aulet
3. A market-size fight is rarely just about the numbers, it is often power, recognition, and who gets the final say wearing a... The Startup CEO Show Podcast · ~45 min · Starting Up Why Startups Fail Due to Co-Founder Conflict and How to Fix It (with psychologist Matt Jones) Mark MacLeod (host), Matt Jones (guest)
4. Melanie Perkins spent years teaching design software to students before she ever started a company, and Canva came straight out... Lenny's Podcast Podcast · ~90 min · Starting Up The woman behind Canva shares how she built a $42B company from nothing (Melanie Perkins) Lenny Rachitsky
5. This piece makes the founder-market fit case in concrete terms: women often build in sectors they have lived inside (femtech,... The VC Corner Article · ~10 min read · Starting Up Why Women-Owned Startups Deliver 2x Better Returns (and Still Get Ignored) Ruben Dominguez
6. This is a grounded India show where founder Gauri Devidayal interviews women who built real companies (ZestMoney in fintech,... Ladies who Lead Podcast · ~30 min per episode · Starting Up Women on Top in India Gauri Devidayal
7. Peter Thiel's core argument is that every startup should begin with a very small market: a specific group of people,... grahammann.net (Zero to One book notes) Essay · ~15 min read · Starting Up Zero to One: Start Small and Monopolize Peter Thiel (notes by Graham Mann)
8. A concrete look at founders building outside the big startup hubs, from Srinagar to Gorakhpur to Bhubaneswar, several of whom... YourStory Article · ~10 min read · Starting Up Meet five tech players from small-town India solving for both local and global markets YourStory (Startup Bharat)
9. Michael Goldberg's series is built entirely around founders and ecosystems away from the famous hubs, from Cleveland to... Case Western Reserve University (Beyond Silicon Valley) Podcast · ~7 episodes, ~30 min each · Starting Up Beyond Silicon Valley Michael Goldberg
10. Michael Seibel is blunt that many startups die not from competition but because the founders lose the will to keep going, and... YC Startup Library Video · ~10 min · Starting Up Why do startups fail? Michael Seibel
11. Newport's core argument, that rare and valuable skills are built through deliberate practice rather than discovered as a... Hachette Book Group Book · ~304 pages · Starting Up So Good They Can't Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love Cal Newport
12. Russ Fradin has started and sold companies across more than 30 years, so he is exactly the person to ask whether past wins... A Product Market Fit Show Podcast · ~46 min · Starting Up He walked away from $5M ARR, then built a $50M company (Russ Fradin, Founder of Larridin) Russ Fradin
13. This is the clearest short piece on why "I love fintech" falls short: it argues that fit is about a specific problem you cannot... FourWeekMBA Essay · ~8 min read · Starting Up Founder-Problem Fit Gennaro Cuofano
14. Once you accept that "I love fintech" is too broad, this article hands you a concrete way to sharpen it into something... Euro SaaS Edge Article · ~10 min read · Starting Up The Focus Decision Every Founder Avoids Arttu Huhtiniemi
15. Video · ~15 min · Starting Up This Is What Young Founders Should Focus On Dalton Caldwell and Michael Seibel
16. Nitesh Salvi went from late-night poker games in his student dorm to building one of India's larger poker platforms, which is... The Indian Startup Show Podcast · ~1 hr · Starting Up Nitesh Salvi, Founder & CEO of Pocket52, on building India's largest poker platform Neil Patel (host)
17. Video · ~15 min · Starting Up How to Pitch to Investors Michael Seibel
18. This piece walks through concrete Indian startups that copied a hot US model and then did not survive the jump: PepperTap... YourStory Essay · Starting Up Are Indian startups a mere copy of their US counterparts? YourStory
19. This is written for the person deciding whether an AI idea is real, not for the engineer building it, so it stays in plain... Unite.AI Article · ~8 min read · Starting Up Hype vs. Value: Assessing Early-Stage AI Startups for Real Potential Igor Ryabenkiy, Nikolay Kirpichnikov, Sergei Bogdanov and Alexander Korchevsky
20. A demo that works once on stage and a system that holds up for real users are two very different things, and this conversation... AI + a16z Podcast · ~45 min · Starting Up Building Production Workflows for AI Applications Tony Holdstock-Brown, Yoko Li and Derrick Harris
21. This is the essay to read when you want to know whether a trend can carry a real company or is just a feature riding on someone... Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) Essay · ~20 min read · Starting Up The New Business of AI (and How It's Different From Traditional Software) Martin Casado and Matt Bornstein
22. This piece names the exact trap you are worried about: it uses Zynga, which rode Facebook's platform to a huge business and... Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) Essay · ~15 min read · Starting Up On Startups, Platforms, and Innovation Scott Kupor
23. This is a concrete case study of what platform dependency actually looks like from inside the company: Zynga's own filings... Knowledge at Wharton (The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania) Article · ~12 min read · Starting Up Is Zynga's Dependence on Facebook the Key to Its Success, Or Its Downfall? Knowledge at Wharton
24. This is the India-specific version of the question: Kabeer Biswas started Dunzo in 2014 as literally a WhatsApp group, used it... Prime Venture Partners Podcast Podcast · ~30 min · Starting Up Creating Magical Experiences with Kabeer Biswas, CEO & Founder Dunzo Sanjay Swamy

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