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. This is the direct answer to the pressure problem in the question: if a public roadmap scares you because of dates you cannot... prodpad.com Article Why I Invented the Now-Next-Later Roadmap Janna Bastow In 2 answers
  2. If you take emails or money from people in India, the DPDP Act is the law your privacy page now has to answer to, and this EY... EY India Article · ~15 min read Decoding the Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 EY India In 2 answers
  3. The reason technical founders write copy that experts respect but nobody acts on has a name, and this book coined it: the curse... Random House Book Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die Chip Heath and Dan Heath In 2 answers
  4. This is the rare cold email guide that gives you a concrete structure instead of vague advice about being personal. It walks... Clay Article · ~20 min read B2B Cold Email Copywriting: The Complete Guide Mishti Sharma In 2 answers
  5. If you are a founder or designer writing your own product copy without a UX writer on the team, this is the most practical... Smashing Magazine Article · About a 20 minute read How To Improve Your Microcopy: UX Writing Tips For Non-UX Writers Irina Silyanova In 2 answers
  6. Google tells you what to aim for, but Handley teaches you the actual craft of getting there: how to write something a human... Ann Handley Book Everybody Writes: Your Go-To Guide to Creating Ridiculously Good Content Ann Handley In 2 answers
  7. This is the primary-source study most vernacular-content stats you'll see online actually trace back to, so it's worth reading... KPMG in India / Google Article · 68-page PDF report Indian Languages: Defining India's Internet KPMG in India and Google In 2 answers
  8. This is the honest, founder-written version of what selling to Indian SMBs actually looks like: high-touch, relationship-first,... Blume Ventures Article Selling Smart: The Insider's Guide to SaaS Success in India Blume Ventures In 2 answers
  9. Once you have even one happy customer, this is how you turn that into the proof that wins the next one. Amy Saper (who did... Uncork Capital on Medium Article · About a 12 minute read Let Your Customers Do Your Marketing: A Practical Guide to Creating Customer Case Studies and Testimonials Amy Saper (Uncork Capital) In 2 answers
  10. India does not have one launch button, so this is a useful starting point precisely because it shows ten real companies... Medium Article · ~10 min read How These 10 Indian Companies Got Their First 1000 Customers Harkirat Singh In 2 answers
  11. This is the short, canonical essay that names the exact trap: people switch into a stiff, impressive-sounding written voice... paulgraham.com Essay Write Like You Talk Paul Graham In 2 answers
  12. This is the clearest argument for why a launch should not be a single spike: if you share the process continuously, every day... Austin Kleon Book · 224 pages Show Your Work! 10 Ways to Share Your Creativity and Get Discovered Austin Kleon In 2 answers
  13. If you want to fix the follow-up mindset for good, this is the book, and this is the author's own page for it. Blount is blunt... jebblount.com (official) Book · ~320 pages Fanatical Prospecting Jeb Blount In 2 answers
  14. If you want word of mouth to be intentional, start with why people share at all. Berger's research pins it down to six... Jonah Berger (Wharton) Book · Book, about 256 pages Contagious: Why Things Catch On Jonah Berger In 2 answers
  15. The whole game with referrals is timing: ask at the moment someone has just felt the value, not at signup or on a random login.... ReferralCandy Article · Article, about 10 minute read Best Time to Ask for a Referral: Mapping It to the Customer Journey Raul Galera In 2 answers
  16. Ross and Lemkin are the people who wrote the sales-growth playbook most SaaS teams actually copy, so this is a solid grounding... Wiley Book · Book, roughly 350 pages From Impossible to Inevitable: How SaaS and Other Hyper-Growth Companies Create Predictable Revenue Aaron Ross and Jason Lemkin In 2 answers
  17. This is the clearest walk-through of the most famous activation metric ever, Facebook's "7 friends in 10 days", and how it was... Mode Article Facebook's "Aha" Moment Was Simpler Than You Think Benn Stancil In 2 answers
  18. This is the clearest statement of the argument you need before you touch either lever: retention is not one metric among many,... OpenView Essay Retention Is the King of Growth (Brian Balfour, 500 Startups talk) Brian Balfour In 2 answers
  19. This is the essay that reframes the whole question. Instead of asking whether your DAU/MAU is high enough, it tells you to look... Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) Essay The Power User Curve: The Best Way to Understand Your Most Engaged Users Li Jin and Andrew Chen In 2 answers
  20. This is the most direct piece we found on the founder-led versus formal-function question, and it argues hard that most early... First Round Review Article · About a 20 minute read You're Not Ready for a Head of Growth: Run This Founder-Led Growth Playbook Instead Matt Lerner In 2 answers
  21. The three People and Company founders built communities for Nike, Substack, and others, and they organize the whole book around... Stripe Press Book · ~180 pages Get Together: How to Build a Community With Your People Bailey Richardson, Kevin Huynh, Kai Elmer Sotto In 2 answers
  22. A16z boils the whole decision down to one honest rule of thumb: usage-based pricing tends to fit products whose main user is... Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) Essay · About 8 minute read Usage-Based Pricing Is Popular, But Is It Right For You? Our Rule of Thumb Tugce Erten and Mark Regan In 2 answers
  23. A business built on a few big enterprise deals quietly builds a trap: if one account walks, your revenue caves. This piece... Lighter Capital Essay How SaaS Startups Can Minimize Customer Concentration Risk Lighter Capital In 2 answers
  24. When you bolt a services layer onto a product business, the number investors actually stare at is your blended gross margin,... Bottom Up by David Sacks (Substack) Essay · about 12 min read The Gross Margin Problem: Lessons for Tech-Enabled Startups David Sacks In 2 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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