Every resource founders actually use, in one library.

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

1. The YC essay tells you the rules; this shows you real founders following (and bending) them. These are 13 actual cold emails... OpenVC Blog Article · 12 min read · Starting Up 13 Cold Email Examples Sent to VC Investors OpenVC
2. Clay is the tool most outbound teams reach for when they want research-driven personalization instead of name placeholders. It... Clay Tool · Starting Up Clay Clay Labs, Inc.
3. Video · Starting Up Y Combinator's Brutally Simple Playbook to Get Your First 100 Customers Y Combinator
4. Andrew Chen ran growth at Uber and a16z, and his core idea here, the Law of Shitty Clickthroughs, is exactly why a channel that... andrewchen.substack.com Article · Starting Up Every Marketing Channel Sucks Right Now Andrew Chen
5. Batko is a two-time founder and former Startmate CEO who has received thousands of cold emails, so he writes from the receiving... batko.ai Article · 15 min read · Starting Up Cold Email Templates for Founders: 5 Templates That Get Replies Michael Batko
6. Sometimes your emails are not ignored, they never reach the inbox, and no amount of copy editing fixes a deliverability... instantly.ai Tool · Web app · Starting Up Instantly Cold Email Outreach and Deliverability Instantly
7. This is the piece that separates organic word of mouth from an engineered viral loop, and shows you how to actually design one.... andrewchen.com Essay · Long essay, about 15 minute read · Starting Up What's Your Viral Loop? Understanding the Engine of Adoption Andrew Chen
8. If you decide to run WhatsApp at any real scale, you cannot do it from the plain WhatsApp Business app: you need a... AiSensy Tool · Free plan, paid tiers from about 1,395 rupees per month · Starting Up AiSensy: WhatsApp Business API Platform AiSensy Communications Private Limited
9. This is the cleanest side-by-side we found on what you actually trade away going indirect: margin, customer contact, and... GTM Playbook Article · Long-form article, about a 12 minute read · Starting Up Direct Sales vs. Channel Sales: Choosing Your Route to Market in B2B SaaS James Doman-Pipe
10. Video · Talk, roughly 30 to 45 minutes · Starting Up Partner Ecosystems: Trends, Predictions and Forecast, with Jay McBain Jay McBain
11. If you are asking whether SEO is still worth it, start by learning what good SEO in 2026 actually looks like, and this free... Ahrefs (YouTube) Course · ~2 hours across a short video series · Starting Up SEO Course for Beginners (by Ahrefs) Sam Oh (Ahrefs)
12. SEO feeling slow usually means you are doing it one blog post at a time, and this essay covers the scalable side: generating... Knownful Essay · ~15 minute read · Starting Up What is Programmatic SEO and should your startup use it? Matthis Duarte
13. The only honest way to answer "is SEO working" is to look at real search data, and Google Search Console is the free,... Google Tool · Free web tool · Starting Up Google Search Console Google
14. Most founders pick an ad budget by copying a percentage they read somewhere, which is exactly backwards. Rollins gives you a... Practical Marketing Article · Starting Up How Much Marketing Budget Does A Startup Need? Brandon Rollins
15. Video · Starting Up How to Test Facebook Ads Creatives at Every Budget Dara Denney
16. This lays out the case that your product can be its own distribution, so you sell less by design. It is aimed at exactly the... Bessemer Venture Partners Essay · About a 20 minute read · Starting Up 10 Product-Led Growth Principles Janelle Teng and Ethan Kurzweil (Bessemer Venture Partners)
17. Before you sink 50 to 120 hours into a launch, read this honest first-person account of what a launch actually returned across... Plain Sight Ventures Essay · Short essay, roughly a 6 minute read · Starting Up Is Product Hunt Worth It? Jason Walkow
18. This is the clearest essay on why a flattening cohort retention curve is the thing that actually matters, and it lives on... andrewchen.com Essay · ~12 min read · Starting Up Retention is King Jamie Quint
19. Benchmarks are useless until you can actually plot your own cohort curve, and Mixpanel's free tier lets you build a real... Mixpanel Docs Tool · Docs guide, ~15 min to set up · Starting Up Track user retention with Mixpanel Mixpanel
20. PostHog is one all-in-one product analytics platform (events, funnels, session replay, feature flags) instead of a pile of... PostHog Docs Tool · Starting Up Self-host PostHog PostHog
21. Most first-time founders either track nothing or drown themselves by logging every click, and this piece makes the case for the... Mean CEO Essay · Starting Up Event Tracking Strategy: What to Measure and Why Violetta Bonenkamp
22. Video · Starting Up How to Use PostHog: Step-by-Step Guide for Product Analytics & Session Replay PostHog
23. This is the piece that answers the second half of your question head on: when is it too early to even care. Skok's site is the... For Entrepreneurs (David Skok) Essay · Starting Up Why Early-Stage Startups Should Wait to Calculate LTV:CAC, and How They Should Use It When They Do Jared Sleeper and David Skok
24. US benchmarks quietly assume US ACVs and US venture cash, so they mislead an Indian founder. This piece grounds the numbers in... upGrowth Article · Starting Up CAC Benchmarks for Indian B2B SaaS by ARR Band: The Real Numbers for 2026 Amol Ghemud

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