Every resource founders actually use, in one library.

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

1. The official rules for posting to Hacker News's Show HN section, worth reading before you try this channel again: it tells you... Hacker News Tool · Starting Up Show HN Guidelines Y Combinator In 2 answers
2. This one short official answer kills the single most common Product Hunt myth: that you should mobilize everyone you know to... Product Hunt Help Center Article · Starting Up Can I ask my community/friends/family to upvote a product? Product Hunt Help Center In 2 answers
3. Written by the founder of ConvertKit, this book is squarely about the sequence your short answer describes: build an audience... nathanbarry.com Book · Book · Starting Up Authority: Become an Expert, Build a Following, and Gain Financial Independence Nathan Barry In 2 answers
4. Press is one of the easiest excuses to relaunch that founders under-use, and this guide teaches you to treat it as ongoing... Y Combinator (YC Startup Library) Article · Starting Up Getting press for your startup Y Combinator In 2 answers
5. Godin's core claim is that marketing is the generous act of telling a true story to people who want to hear it, not... Seth Godin Book · ~256 pages · Starting Up This Is Marketing: You Can't Be Seen Until You Learn to See Seth Godin In 2 answers
6. Slack iterated privately with a small team for months, using what they learned to earn a preview release that then turned into... First Round Review Article · 20 min read · Starting Up From 0 to $1B: Slack's Founder Shares Their Epic Launch Strategy First Round Review In 2 answers
7. Written specifically for solo and small-team founders without a marketing budget or audience, this book argues for validating a... Amazon Book · Starting Up Start Small, Stay Small: A Developer's Guide to Launching a Startup Rob Walling In 2 answers
8. A short, no-nonsense walkthrough of which handful of numbers actually matter at your stage, straight from YC's own coaching... Y Combinator Startup Library Article · 10 min read · Starting Up Key Startup Metrics Y Combinator Startup Library In 2 answers
9. This episode goes directly at the insecurity behind the question: founders worry that selling themselves makes their company... The Startup Chat with Steli & Hiten Podcast · Starting Up Should Founders Be Doing Sales? Will Prospects Take Their Startups Serious? The Startup Chat with Steli & Hiten In 2 answers
10. This breaks founder sales into seven distinct conversation types, from qualifying to first contact to asking for a referral, so... SaaStock Article · ~7 min read · Starting Up The 7 Essential Customer Conversations According to Steli Efti Steli Efti In 2 answers
11. Kracov, a first-time founder at Dock, wrote this after six months of running his own sales calls, and it's refreshingly honest... kracov.co Essay · ~10 min read · Starting Up How I've approached founder-led sales Alex Kracov In 2 answers
12. Jason Lemkin's argument is that a single first rep gives you almost no signal: you can't tell if a slow start is the person,... SaaStr Article · 10 min read · Starting Up When You Hire Your First Sales Rep, Just Make Sure You Hire Two Jason Lemkin In 2 answers
13. Roberge built HubSpot's sales org from zero using data instead of instinct, and this is his framework for hiring, training, and... Mark Roberge Book · 250 pages · Starting Up The Sales Acceleration Formula: Using Data, Technology, and Inbound Selling to go from $0 to $100 Million Mark Roberge In 2 answers
14. Chargebee's first real customer was Freshworks, and they got in the door because a cofounder happened to live in the same... SeedToScale (Accel) Essay · Starting Up The Early Story of Chargebee: Why it's Better to Start with People, not Ideas SeedToScale (Accel) In 2 answers
15. Once you find your champion, the deal usually stalls on a security questionnaire, and do you have a SOC 2 report is often the... Vanta Tool · Starting Up An actionable guide to SOC 2 compliance for startups Vanta In 2 answers
16. A direct answer to the exact question in the title: yes, charge for pilots, and here's roughly how much. Jason Lemkin argues... SaaStr Article · Starting Up Dear SaaStr: Should We Charge for Pilots and How Much? Jason Lemkin In 2 answers
17. A Hustle Fund investor who reads hundreds of cold emails walks through, line by line, what makes her actually reply versus... Elizabeth Yin Essay · 5 min read · Starting Up How to write a cold-email Elizabeth Yin In 2 answers
18. Dunford, who wrote the book on product positioning, breaks down how to build a pitch around the buyer's specific situation... Lenny's Newsletter Article · Starting Up How to build a killer sales pitch April Dunford In 2 answers
19. This one flips the seat. Karthik Chakkarapani is the buyer, a CIO at Zuora who has sat through hundreds of startup pitches, and... The Neon Show Podcast · ~65 min · Starting Up What Startups Can Learn From a $1.7B Company's Chief Information Officer Siddhartha Ahluwalia (host), Karthik Chakkarapani (guest, CIO of Zuora) In 2 answers
20. Podcast · ~70 min · Starting Up Girish Mathrubootham: Biggest Product and Pricing Lessons from Scaling to $597M in ARR Harry Stebbings (host), Girish Mathrubootham (guest) In 2 answers
21. Josh Braun teardowns real cold emails line by line and explains exactly why each sentence works or doesn't, which is more... Josh Braun (LinkedIn) Thread · Starting Up This cold email hits all the right notes Josh Braun (LinkedIn) In 2 answers
22. This collection was built for asking strangers for small favors like introductions and advice, which is a gentler version of... 80,000 Hours Article · Starting Up The Best Email Scripts for Cold-Emailing Benjamin Todd In 2 answers
23. This is a mainstream, practical rundown of the fundamentals: research, subject lines, and why you're writing to this specific... HubSpot Blog Article · Starting Up The Ins and Outs of Cold Emailing That Delivers Results Jay Fuchs In 2 answers
24. This guide's central argument matches our answer exactly: most prospect lists fail at definition, not sourcing, so precision... Clay Tool · Guide + tool · Starting Up How to Build a Targeted Prospect List Clay In 2 answers

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