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. A globally-branded accelerator with an India-based program, giving founders a clear, concrete reference point for the classic... Techstars Article · Program page Techstars Bangalore Accelerator Techstars In 3 answers
  2. A crisp, practical counterweight to NDA paranoia that lays out when a confidentiality agreement is genuinely useful versus when... LinkedIn Article · ~6 min read Startups don't need NDAs: why nobody will steal your idea Startup community (LinkedIn) In 3 answers
  3. A clear, regularly-updated Indian explainer that maps the practical, sector-agnostic registrations most founders hit first,... ClearTax Article · ~12 min read Licenses & Registrations Required to Start a Business in India ClearTax In 3 answers
  4. A brutally honest primary account of taking the VC 'go big or go home' leap and the freedom of choosing a leaner path instead,... sahillavingia.com Essay · ~4,500 words Reflecting on My Failure to Build a Billion-Dollar Company Sahil Lavingia In 3 answers
  5. A concrete, honest breakdown of how founders actually pay their own bills while building, savings, a working partner,... FutureSight Ventures Article · ~1,800 words 7 Ways Founders Fund Their Personal Runway John Carbrey In 3 answers
  6. First Round Review is a primary, canonical startup-operations source, and this is a tactical playbook on landing high-caliber... First Round Review Article · long Snag the Best Advisors for Your Startup, from Best-selling Authors to Fortune 500 CEOs First Round Review In 3 answers
  7. Most mentorship advice is vibes; this is evidence, First Round analyzed 100 real matches and distilled what separated the... First Round Review Article · long We Studied 100 Mentor-Mentee Matches, Here's What Makes Mentorship Work First Round Review In 3 answers
  8. The definitive essay on why place shapes ambition and what a startup hub actually gives you, 'an audience, and a funnel for... paulgraham.com Essay · medium Cities and Ambition Paul Graham In 3 answers
  9. A16z's framing of how modern enterprise software is sold: bottom-up product adoption layered with top-down sales, using... Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) Essay · ~15 min read Growth+Sales: The New Era of Enterprise Go-to-Market Peter Lauten & Martin Casado In 3 answers
  10. Sometimes the two ideas are a proxy for a deeper problem: you have no agreed way to make a call when you disagree. This HBR... Harvard Business Review Article · ~8 min read Cofounders Need to Learn How to (Productively) Disagree Evelyn Nam In 3 answers
  11. Andrew Chen ran rider growth at Uber and now invests at a16z, so this is the canonical breakdown of how marketplaces get off... andrewchen.com Essay · ~20 min read Required reading for marketplace startups: The 20 best essays Andrew Chen In 3 answers
  12. This is the cleanest short explanation of the two manual-first MVPs and, more importantly, how they differ, which is where most... Mind the Product Article · ~8 min read Wizard of Oz vs Concierge Testing: Behind the Curtain or Behind the Desk? Amanda White In 3 answers
  13. When you are building outside the big startup hubs, the honest question is not "what is the theory" but "what actually worked... Indie Hackers Article · ~15 min read Indie hackers share how they got their first 10, 100, and 1,000 customers James Fleischmann In 3 answers
  14. This is written by Visible, a platform that sits on the investor side of the table, so it explains bottom-up sizing the way a... Visible.vc Article · ~10 min read Bottom-Up Market Sizing: What It Is and How to Do It Angelina Graumann In 3 answers
  15. This lays out both the top-down (start from a big industry number) and bottom-up (build up from your own price times likely... HubSpot Blog Article · ~12 min read TAM, SAM & SOM: What Do They Mean & How Do You Calculate Them? Clifford Chi In 3 answers
  16. When two cofounders disagree on how big the market is, the fastest way out is to stop arguing opinions and turn the... First Round Review Article · ~12 min read The 6 Decision-Making Frameworks That Help Startup Leaders Tackle Tough Calls First Round Review (featuring Elliot Shmukler) In 3 answers
  17. This is written by an early-stage Indian investor (founder of Gemba Capital), so you get the assessment from the exact side of... Adith Podhar (Gemba Capital) Essay · ~12 min read How to Assess Founder Market Fit: A Framework Adith Podhar In 3 answers
  18. A dominant player with 80 percent share is almost always over-serving its most profitable customers and quietly ignoring the... Harvard Business Review Essay · About 20 minute read What Is Disruptive Innovation? Clayton M. Christensen, Michael E. Raynor, and Rory McDonald In 3 answers
  19. Sajith Pai is an India VC, and he tells on himself here: he passed on WhiteHat Jr. by trusting a headline India TAM number,... sajithpai.com Essay TAM: Notes & Thoughts Sajith Pai In 3 answers
  20. This is the canonical warning against throwing away working code and rebuilding from scratch, told through Netscape's rewrite... Joel on Software Essay · ~10 min read Things You Should Never Do, Part I Joel Spolsky In 3 answers
  21. If your worry is whether the product itself is the problem, the honest signal is the shape of your retention curve, and Balfour... brianbalfour.com Essay The Never Ending Road To Product Market Fit Brian Balfour In 3 answers
  22. Most migration writing is either no-code hype or agency sales pitches. This one gives you an actual checklist to run before you... AlterSquare Essay When to Migrate Off Bubble (or Any No-Code Tool): The Decision Framework Huzefa Motiwala In 3 answers
  23. This is the canonical explanation of what a reviewer actually means when they flag your inherited code as risky. Fowler frames... martinfowler.com Essay · About a 10 minute read Technical Debt Martin Fowler In 3 answers
  24. This is the one principle that answers your worry head on: users spend most of their time on other apps, so they expect yours... Laws of UX Essay · 5 min read Jakob's Law Jon Yablonski (principle by Jakob Nielsen) In 3 answers

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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