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 is the most direct answer to the second half of your question: where do you actually find these people. The piece walks... Product Talk Article · 15 min read Tools of the Trade: Finding People to Interview Before You Have Customers Melissa Suzuno In 2 answers
This is founders trading real tactics on the exact wall you will hit: getting strangers to say yes to a call. You get honest,... Indie Hackers Thread · 10 min read How do you actually get people to do customer discovery interviews? Indie Hackers In 2 answers
A focused guide on the recruiting outreach itself, with a message template you can adapt. It covers who to ask, how to word the... Wynter Article · 12 min read Customer interviews: How to always get a yes Hannah Shamji In 2 answers
Concrete stories of Indian founders who went to where their customers were before building, like Shiprocket's founder... Penguin Random House India Article · 10 min read How India's Top Startup Founders Validated Their Business Ideas Penguin Random House India In 2 answers
Winters, who led growth at Pinterest and Grubhub, reframes PMF as the point where users stop leaving, and shows how to read it... Casey Accidental (Casey Winters) Essay · ~3,500 words Casey's Guide to Finding Product/Market Fit Casey Winters In 2 answers
This piece makes a sharp point, if traction is weak you are probably not a ten percent tweak away but a two hundred percent... First Round Review Article · ~15 min read The Pivot to Product-Market Fit First Round Review In 2 answers
A practical roundup of demand-testing models, including the 'dry wallet' or pre-sales test where you ask for payment before the... RevenueCat Blog Article · ~15 min read 5 Proven Models for Testing Customer Demand RevenueCat In 2 answers
Design partners are how B2B founders validate with depth, and this gives you a practical way to pick the right ones. The... Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) Article · 12 min read A Framework for Finding a Design Partner Seema Amble and Jennifer Li (a16z) In 2 answers
This is the operational how-to for the depth path: how to structure a design partnership so it produces real validation, not... Common Paper Article · 10 min read How To Work With Design Partners Jake Stein (Common Paper) In 2 answers
A tight, practical breakdown of what a concierge MVP is actually testing, using the Food on the Table example step by step. It... Res Extensa (Coleman McCormick) Article Learning from the Concierge MVP Coleman McCormick In 2 answers
Concrete evidence that building outside Bengaluru, Mumbai, and Delhi is not a handicap but increasingly an advantage, from... YourStory Article How Tier 2 Cities Are Powering India's Next Startups YourStory In 2 answers
Written by the person who grew Superhuman's waitlist past half a million, so it is candid about what a big number does and does... Growth by Gaurav (Substack) Essay The Waitlist Delusion Gaurav Vohra In 2 answers
When incumbents all compete on the same features for the same buyers, this book shows how to redraw the offer so you are not... W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne Book · ~250 pages Blue Ocean Strategy W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne In 2 answers
Before you have any customer stories, your own founder story is the only pitch you have, and this piece shows you how to use... First Round Review Article · ~15 min read The Three Frameworks You Need to Kick-start Sales Whitney Sales In 2 answers
Steli Efti built Close by doing founder sales the hard way, and here he answers the blunt questions founders actually ask about... Stripe Atlas Article · ~20 min read AMA with Steli Efti: Pricing, Selling and Building a Sales Team Steli Efti In 2 answers
A method for finding exactly where your customers already gather online, the forums, subreddits, and groups where they post... Stacking the Bricks Article · ~12 min read How to Find Your Audience's Online Watering Holes Alex Hillman In 2 answers
A practical guide to running an early willingness to pay conversation and building pricing around real buyer personas. Good... First Round Review Article The Price is Right: Essential Tips for Nailing Your Pricing Strategy First Round Review In 2 answers
An entire newsletter dedicated to reverse engineering how companies like Uber, DoorDash, and Spotify got their first thousand... Ali Abouelatta (First 1000 newsletter) Article · Newsletter archive, 10 min per issue First 1000 Ali Abouelatta In 2 answers
Real benchmark data from founders on what a waitlist actually converts to paid, so you can calibrate expectations against your... Lenny's Newsletter Article · 10 min read What is good waitlist conversion? Lenny Rachitsky In 2 answers
A clear, short explainer on why asking friends (or anyone) what they want produces false positives, and how to interview for... NYU Entrepreneurship Article · 8 min read Stop Asking What They Want: Why Customer Discovery Is About Problems, Not Products Frank Rimalovski In 2 answers
When people love it but will not pay, price is often the real blocker, and this piece walks you through pricing conversations... First Round Review Article Pricing Lessons from Working with 30+ Seed and Series A B2B Startups First Round Review In 2 answers
Your short answer says to ask what would have to be true for someone to pay today, and this book is the toolkit for exactly... Chris Voss Book Never Split the Difference Chris Voss In 2 answers
When you want your old network to open doors rather than just buy, this covers how to ask in a way that respects their time and... Kristina Hu (Hu Knows) Article · ~8 min read How to Ask for a Warm Intro Kristina Hu In 2 answers
Since supply is usually the side you bootstrap by hand, this is a focused list of 28 concrete ways real marketplaces did it. It... andrewchen.com Article · 15 min read 28 Ways to Grow Supply in a Marketplace Lenny Rachitsky (via Andrew Chen) In 2 answers

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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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