Book

Start Small, Stay Small: A Developer's Guide to Launching a Startup

Rob Walling · Amazon Paid Intermediate

Written specifically for solo and small-team founders without a marketing budget or audience, this book argues for validating a niche and starting to build an email list before or alongside your build, so you're never launching into total silence again.

  • Start collecting emails from interested people before your product is finished.
  • Pick a niche small enough that a lone founder can become known within it.
  • A few hundred engaged email subscribers beat a large, indifferent following.

It answers 2 questions

  1. How do I find my first 10 customers to sell to when I have zero network and no inbound?
  2. I'm a solo non-technical founder with no audience. How do I launch when I have zero followers to post to?

Read with it

  1. The single best thing ever written on customer conversations. It teaches you to ask about the customer's life and past... momtestbook.com Book · ~130 pages The Mom Test Rob Fitzpatrick
  2. A short, practical field guide to customer discovery: who to talk to, how to find them, and how many. Pairs perfectly with The... talkingtohumans.com Book · ~80 pages (free PDF available) Talking to Humans Giff Constable
  3. The permission slip to recruit users by hand, do things manually, and deliver 'insanely great' experiences to your first few... paulgraham.com Essay · ~15 min read Do Things That Don't Scale Paul Graham
  4. A tactical follow-on covering the channels and motions top B2B startups scale after the first ten. Grounds distribution... Lenny's Newsletter Article · ~15 min read How to win your first 10 B2B customers Lenny Rachitsky
  5. The canonical fake-door test, told by the founder who ran it. Buffer started as a two-page site: one page pitched the tool, a... Buffer Article · ~10 min read Idea to Paying Customers in 7 Weeks: How We Did It Joel Gascoigne
  6. This is the best method for the exact job of learning an industry's language when you cannot yet get face time with people in... Stacking the Bricks (Amy Hoy) Article · video walkthrough Sales Safari in Action Amy Hoy
eChai Partner Brands The partnership →