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.

This book documents how Indian and other emerging-market entrepreneurs build with severe resource constraints and turn... naviradjou.com Book Jugaad Innovation Navi Radjou, Jaideep Prabhu, Simone Ahuja
A concrete case study of a founder team that got out of the metro bubble and found a market (women resellers in smaller towns)... YourStory Article UpClose: How Meesho Turned Housewives Into Entrepreneurs YourStory
Savoia's pretotyping approach forces you to define, before you show anyone anything, exactly what a real reaction would look... pretotyping.org Book · ~80 pages Pretotype It Alberto Savoia
If a cofounder or teammate is going to sit in on the session, this is the two-minute brief you send them beforehand. It spells... Nielsen Norman Group Article Observer Guidelines for Usability Research Nielsen Norman Group
This names biases beyond the obvious one: task-selection bias (users assume whatever you ask them to find must exist), social... MeasuringU Article 9 Biases in Usability Testing Jeff Sauro
This lays out the practical mechanics of a feedback session, including being neutral when you present the prototype and... Interaction Design Foundation Article Test Your Prototypes: How to Gather Feedback and Maximize Learning Interaction Design Foundation
Useful once you've run a few in-person sessions and want to test with more people than you can personally sit with. It's honest... Maze Article Moderated vs. Unmoderated Usability Testing: Which One is Right for You? Maze
Written for solo and early founders rather than VC backed teams, this is blunt about why family and friends are usually the... Indie Hackers Article How To Validate a Business Idea Indie Hackers
Kahl argues that half of good customer discovery is ignoring the wrong people, and he is explicit that supportive friends and... Arvid Kahl, The Bootstrapped Founder Essay Problem Validation: Making Sure You're Talking to the Right People Arvid Kahl
This thread is a candid, unfiltered discussion of a question every founder eventually asks out loud: how do you actually get a... Hacker News Thread Ask HN: How to Actually "Talk to Your Customers"? Hacker News
Nick Swinmurn tested whether people would actually buy shoes online by photographing shoes he did not own and buying them at... Alex Ponomarev Article · 8 min read How Zappos Built a Product By Faking It Alex Ponomarev
The book's central case study of an entrepreneur with six beta commitments and zero dollars spent on development is a direct... Nathan Furr and Paul Ahlstrom Book · ~230 pages Nail It Then Scale It Nathan Furr, Paul Ahlstrom
Young's method pushes you past what people say they do and toward the reasoning underneath it, the guiding thoughts and... Rosenfeld Media Book Mental Models: Aligning Design Strategy with Human Behavior Indi Young
This article names the specific ways a survey misleads you: people rush through it, answer the way that feels acceptable rather... Harvard Business Review Article Customer Surveys Are No Substitute for Actually Talking to Customers Graham Kenny
Cohen has run this exact process since before he sold his first company, and he is unusually candid about the mechanics: write... A Smart Bear Essay The Iterative-Hypothesis Customer Development Method Jason Cohen
A checklist you can run your actual call script against before you place the calls. It catches the specific phrasing habits,... Nielsen Norman Group Article · ~8 min read 6 Mistakes When Crafting Interview Questions Maria Rosala
Cohen goes straight at the founder self-deception in the question: a room full of enthusiastic yeses is not validation unless... A Smart Bear (Jason Cohen) Essay · ~15 min read Yes, but who said they would actually buy the damn thing? Jason Cohen
This essay is the clearest explanation of why stated preference and revealed preference diverge, with a concrete example of... UX Tigers Essay · ~10 min read Watch What Users Do, Don't Listen to What They Say Jakob Nielsen
Meyer's framework classifies India as a high-context culture, where meaning is layered and read between the lines rather than... Erin Meyer Book · ~280 pages The Culture Map: Breaking Through the Invisible Boundaries of Global Business Erin Meyer
If you are tempted to dump 20 transcripts into an AI tool and ask for the pattern, read this first. It explains why AI defaults... Lenny's Newsletter Article How to Do AI Analysis You Can Actually Trust Caitlin Sullivan
Affinity diagramming is the literal, hands on version of sorting your transcripts by who the person is and how badly they hurt:... Nielsen Norman Group Article Affinity Diagramming: Collaboratively Sort UX Findings and Design Ideas Rachel Krause and Kara Pernice
This is the original milkshake essay: researchers sat in a parking lot and watched who bought milkshakes and when, instead of... Harvard Business Review Essay · ~20 min read Marketing Malpractice: The Cause and the Cure Clayton Christensen, Scott Cook, Taddy Hall
Drew Houston did not build Dropbox before testing demand, he filmed a video showing how it would work and posted it to Hacker... Shortform Article · ~10 min read The Original Dropbox MVP Explainer Video Shortform
Before building any shoe inventory or logistics, Nick Swinmurn photographed shoes from local stores, posted them online, and... What Is MVP Article · ~10 min read Zappos MVP Case Study: How a Wizard of Oz Test Built a Billion Dollar Shoe Empire What Is MVP

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

eChai Partner Brands The partnership →