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.

Most ICP advice assumes a clean B2B buyer, which is exactly what breaks when you sell to Indian small businesses. This piece... LinkedIn Article · ~8 min read Selling to SMBs in India: it's difficult but not impossible Aditi Puri Batra
This is the cleanest breakdown we found of who is actually involved in a purchase: economic buyer, champion, end user,... Dock Article · About a 12 minute read The 6 Types of B2B Buyers (and how to sell to them) The Dock Team
Van der Kooij's Winning by Design frameworks are the practical standard for thinking about who you sell to in a real SaaS deal,... Winning by Design Book · About 211 pages Blueprints for a SaaS Sales Organization: How to Design, Build and Scale a Customer-Centric Sales Organization Jacco van der Kooij and Fernando Pizarro
This is the clearest piece we found on the actual question: when a tight ICP has become too tight and you are leaving real... A Smart Bear Article · About a 15 minute read Adjacency Matrix: How to expand after PMF Jason Cohen
This is the practical step after you accept that not everyone in your industry is your customer. It walks through turning a... Startups.com Article · About 12 minute read The Ideal Client Profile Is Your Startup's North Star (Stop Ignoring It) Ryan Rutan
This piece lays the B2B and B2C cases side by side so you can see that the axis of specificity is genuinely different: B2B... Geeks for Growth Article · About a 10 minute read How Do Startups Market B2B vs B2C Differently? Geeks for Growth
This is the sharpest answer to the actual worry: Cohen names the sample-of-one problem directly and unpacks the seven hidden... A Smart Bear (Jason Cohen, founder of WP Engine) Article · ~2,500 words, 12 minute read "I scratched my own itch" isn't good enough Jason Cohen
Most teams drift not because they disagree on who the customer is, but because nobody wrote down who the customer is NOT. This... M1-Project Article · Roughly a 10 minute read Negative Buyer Persona: What It Is and How to Create One Anton Mart
This gives you a concrete, bottom-up way to check whether your niche can actually fund the next stage, instead of guessing.... ktulrich.com Article · Article, approx. 10 minute read TAM, SAM, SOM, and the Beachhead Market: Estimating Market Size Karl T. Ulrich
This lays the two axes side by side: narrowing by industry (vertical) versus spreading across markets and geographies... Aexus Article · ~8 min read What is the difference between horizontal and vertical GTM strategies? Aexus
Skok names the multi-niche trap head on and backs it with a real portfolio-company story: a startup that chased a 2,500-branch... forEntrepreneurs Essay Focus and Market Segmentation David Skok
Once you have decided it is time to move, this essay is the clearest short read on which direction to move in. Coelen lays out... Doctor Market Fit (Jeroen Coelen) Essay Five expansion strategies from your beachhead market Jeroen Coelen
This is the clearest short case that how you reach customers is a real edge, not an afterthought behind the code. Horowitz... Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) Essay · About a 10 minute read Distribution Ben Horowitz
Stark spends his career arguing that specializing is what lets you raise rates, which is the direct counter to the fear that a... jonathanstark.com Essay · ~5 min read Skill vs Market Specialization Jonathan Stark
This is a concrete, hands-on guide to setting price by the value a buyer gets rather than by your costs, which is exactly the... Paddle Article · ~10 min read What is value-based pricing and how is it applied in SaaS? Paddle
Written by a VC, this makes the case that a small starting market is a strength, not a red flag, which is exactly the reframe... Equal Ventures Essay · Long read (approx. 15 min) Niche is the Next Big Thing Rick Zullo (Equal Ventures)
This is the most direct answer to your question we could find: a step by step method for someone with a job and a few spare... The Bootstrapped Founder Essay · about a 20 minute read Finding an Audience for Your Side Business Arvid Kahl
The faster horse line gets quoted to justify ignoring customers entirely, and that reading is wrong. Vlaskovits, a customer... Harvard Business Review Essay · Short read, about 800 words Henry Ford, Innovation, and That Faster Horse Quote Patrick Vlaskovits
When a customer hands you feature X, the Five Whys is the simplest technique for drilling from that request down to the real... Productboard Article · Short read, about 5 minutes What Are the Five Whys (5 Whys) Productboard
This piece names the exact bias behind the question: once you know a field cold, your brain literally cannot simulate not... SUE Behavioural Design Essay · ~15 min read The Curse of Knowledge at Work: Why Experts Can No Longer Explain Things Simply Astrid Groenewegen
When customers cannot articulate the job, the forces diagram gives you a structure for interpreting their behavior instead.... jobstobedone.org Article · About a 10 minute read The Four Forces of Progress: Push, Pull, Anxiety and Habit Bob Moesta and Chris Spiek
This piece takes on your exact tension: many valid use cases, and the fear that choosing one throws away the rest. It argues... OpinionX Essay · ~15 min read Why Every Startup Needs A Killer Product Use Case Daniel Kyne
Before you frame your job against WhatsApp, you have to see how deep the habit really runs, and this piece shows it concretely:... The India Notes Article · ~15 min read WhatsApp Owns India: A Primer on India's Invisible Business Operating System Dharmesh Ba
Once you know you should ask about real behavior, this guide gives you the concrete phrasing rules to keep your wording from... kantar.com Article Writing unbiased survey questions: complete guide with best practices and examples Kantar

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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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