Starting Up

The resources founders actually use.

Every essay, video, podcast, book and tool behind 1,046 answered founder questions, in one place, each with a note on why it is here.

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

  1. Four YC partners talk through what is actually working in AI companies they fund, including which ideas look like second... Y Combinator Podcast · ~50 min The Truth About Building AI Startups Today (Lightcone Podcast Ep. 1) Garry Tan, Jared Friedman, Diana Hu, Harj Taggar
  2. Isenberg builds a fresh batch of concrete idea candidates on each episode, often mining Reddit threads, comment sections, and... Greg Isenberg Podcast · Ongoing, ~45 min episodes The Startup Ideas Podcast Greg Isenberg
  3. Podcast · ~90 min Lessons from 1,000+ YC startups: tar pit ideas and pivoting Dalton Caldwell
  4. This long, unhurried conversation is the best audio explanation of the three Indias and why Indian consumer markets behave the... The Seen and the Unseen Podcast · 3 hr A Venture Capitalist Looks at the World (Sajith Pai) Amit Varma with Sajith Pai
  5. An economist presses Pai on the data behind India1, India2, India3, so you hear the assumptions get stress-tested. It is useful... Ideas of India, Mercatus Center Podcast · 1 hr 30 min Sajith Pai on India's Digital Divides Shruti Rajagopalan with Sajith Pai
  6. Manav Garg built Eka, one of India's first vertical SaaS companies serving a narrow, high value market, and here he reflects on... The Neon Show (Neon Fund), hosted by Siddhartha Ahluwalia Podcast · ~90 min B2B SaaS Founders Turned VCs Discuss Indian Software Startups (with Manav Garg) The Neon Show
  7. Podcast · Clip from a longer episode Naval Ravikant on The Joe Rogan Experience Joe Rogan and Naval Ravikant
  8. Horowitz breaks down the traits he looks for in a founder and why conviction and vision matter more than polish. He is candid... a16z Podcast Podcast · 35 min Ben Horowitz on What Makes a Great Founder Ben Horowitz
  9. Weiss grew a community first, then built the product that community told her it wanted, which is the clearest example of a... NPR, How I Built This with Guy Raz Podcast · about 55 min How I Built This: Glossier, Emily Weiss Guy Raz
  10. Wolfe built a product around an experience she understood from the inside, a dynamic that the default founders in her category... NPR, How I Built This with Guy Raz Podcast · about 50 min How I Built This: Bumble, Whitney Wolfe Guy Raz
  11. A founder building a globally competitive software company from Coimbatore, not Bangalore or the Valley, and treating that... The Neon Show Podcast · about 64 min Building Silicon Valley in Coimbatore, with Kovai's Saravana Kumar Siddhartha Ahluwalia
  12. Long interviews where founders retrace how they came to their problem, the raw material of a good 'why you.' Listening to a few... Apple Podcasts (NPR / Wondery) Podcast · ~60 min episodes How I Built This with Guy Raz Guy Raz
  13. One of India's leading storytelling coaches on how founders can tell a story that earns trust. It helps you shape the emotional... Prime Venture Partners Podcast Podcast · ~60 min How Stories Shape Decisions, Trust & Startup Outcomes: A Masterclass with Ameen Haque Ameen Haque with Amit Somani, Prime Venture Partners
  14. Three college friends built Amagi into a company that runs a large share of American TV, and this episode has a segment on how... The Neon Show Podcast · ~60 min Inside the Mind of Baskar Subramanian, Co-Founder, Amagi Baskar Subramanian with Siddhartha Ahluwalia
  15. Nitin Agrawal spent twenty years traveling every corner of rural and small-town India before building for it. He is concrete... Prime Venture Partners Podcast Podcast Money and Opportunity in Bharat, with Nitin Agrawal (Navadhan Capital) Nitin Agrawal and Shivani Kulkarni
  16. The CRED founder frames an insight as the smallest unit of truth that is actionable, and argues the founders who win operate in... SeedToScale INSIGHTS (Accel India) Podcast · 40 min Kunal Shah (CRED) Shares Anecdotes From His Entrepreneurial Journey Kunal Shah
  17. Lieberman takes the Dixon essay and applies it live to a real, current product people were laughing at, which makes the idea... The Founder's Journal, Morning Brew Podcast · 20 min Why The Next Big Thing Looks Like a Toy (ft. Apple Vision Pro) Alex Lieberman
  18. The authors talking through the report's findings, which helps if 132 slides feels heavy and you want the argument in their own... Blume Ventures Podcast · Audio episodes Indus Valley Annual Report (podcast walkthrough) Blume Ventures
  19. Naval's short case that the more you build from who you actually are, the less competition you face, which is the... Naval (nav.al) Podcast · 6 min Escape Competition Through Authenticity Naval Ravikant
  20. Indian early stage investors talk through which trends they think are actually turning in India versus which are still hype,... Prime Venture Partners Podcast Podcast · Approx 45 min 2025 Predictions for Indian Startups, Funding, AI and IPOs Prime Venture Partners
  21. A calm, long-form conversation that models how to hold two ideas at once: AI is genuinely important, and most of the loud... Lenny's Podcast Podcast · ~90 min A rational conversation on where AI is actually going (Benedict Evans) Lenny Rachitsky and Benedict Evans
  22. Two India-based early-stage investors talk through exactly this question: what separates AI hype from defensible value. They... Prime Venture Partners Podcast Podcast · ~45 min AI x SaaS: How PrimeVP Thinks About the Next Wave Shripati Acharya and Gaurav Ranjan
  23. An India-rooted show that asks an experienced investor how to tell a substantive AI company from a wrapper riding the wave. It... The Neon Show (Neon Fund) Podcast · ~60 min What Top 1% Investors Look For in AI Startups Siddhartha Ahluwalia
  24. A tighter, spoken version of Burfield's thinking, useful if you want the core ideas in an hour instead of a full book. It walks... a16z Podcast Podcast The Art of the Regulatory Hack Andreessen Horowitz

Show the next 24

Playbooks

A goal, and the route through it a step at a time.

Find an idea worth pursuing Spot problems worth solving and find the one that actually fits you. 4 steps Validate before you build Get real evidence people want it before you write a line of code. 4 steps Understand your customers Talk to real users, define who you're for, and read the market clearly. 4 steps From idea to first customers The idea-stage spine: find a problem, prove it, talk to customers, and land the first ten. 4 steps Build an MVP without code Ship a first version with no-code tools before you hire anyone. 4 steps Build and launch your first product Turn a validated idea into something real people can use. 6 steps Find and work with developers Hire, brief, and work with builders without getting burned. 4 steps Name and brand your startup Name it, design an identity, and say what it does in a line. 3 steps Build a landing page that converts A page that loads fast, earns trust, and turns visitors into signups. 4 steps Get your first customers The scrappy, unscalable work of going from zero to your first paying users. 5 steps Sell it yourself, founder-led Reach out, run the conversation, and close before you have a sales team. 4 steps Grow with content and SEO Compound reach with content, search, and a founder audience. 3 steps Grow with paid ads Spend that returns: the channels, metrics, and loops behind it. 4 steps Price and package your product Charge for value, package it right, and check the numbers work. 3 steps Bootstrap instead of raising Fund growth from revenue, and keep control of your company. 4 steps Raise your first round Understand the game before you pitch: whether to raise, from whom, and on what terms. 5 steps Find a co-founder, split equity Find the right partner and split equity without regret. 3 steps Set up the company right Incorporate, split equity, protect your IP, and make your first hires. 4 steps Survive founder life Mindset, burnout, the leap, and the parts nobody warns you about. 5 steps Build in India The India-specific playbook: schemes, government, enterprise, and the local market. 5 steps

The questions founders start with

I want to start a startup but I don't have an idea. Where do I even begin? Stop hunting for a billion-dollar idea and start collecting problems. The best ideas come from noticing things that annoy you or people around you ... Beginner 19 resources → What does 'validating an idea' actually mean? Validation is gathering real-world evidence that a specific group of people has a painful problem AND will change their behaviour (pay, sign up, sw... Beginner 20 resources → Do I actually need a co-founder, or can I go solo? You don't strictly need one, but the data says teams outlast solos: complementary skills, shared load, and someone to argue you out of bad calls al... Beginner 3 resources → What actually counts as an MVP, and what's the smallest one I can get away with? An MVP is the least you can build (or fake) to test your single riskiest assumption, not a shrunken version of your dream product. Ask 'what's the ... Beginner 20 resources → How do I talk to customers without them just telling me what I want to hear? Stop pitching and start interrogating their past. Ask about what they actually did last time the problem hit, what it cost them, and what they trie... Beginner 23 resources → How do I actually get my first 10 customers when nobody has heard of me? You go get them by hand, one at a time, email people you already know, people your investors/friends know, and strangers in the exact niche you're ... Beginner 19 resources → How do I decide how much to charge for my product? Stop guessing and stop pricing off your costs, price off the value the customer gets and their willingness to pay. Talk to customers about pricing,... Beginner 3 resources → Should I raise venture capital or bootstrap my startup? Raise VC only if your business needs a big pile of cash to reach escape velocity before someone else does, and if a 10x-in-a-few-years outcome is g... Beginner 3 resources →

Questions for your situation

The Aspiring Founder The Idea-Stage Founder The Builder The Launcher The Grower The Student Founder The Indie Hacker The Technical Solo Founder The Non-Technical Founder The Domain Expert The Women Founder The Anywhere Founder The Corporate Switcher The Repeat Founder
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