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. The definitive, brutally honest account of 'The Struggle', the emotional and operational reality of running a company when... HarperBusiness Book · long The Hard Thing About Hard Things Ben Horowitz In 9 answers
  2. Written by a clinical psychologist married to a serial entrepreneur, it pairs real psychological expertise with lived founder... sherrywalling.com Book · long The Entrepreneur's Guide to Keeping Your Sh*t Together Dr. Sherry Walling & Rob Walling In 9 answers
  3. The definitive founder essay on why raw ideas are worth very little and why secrecy is the wrong instinct. Graham's argument... paulgraham.com Essay · ~15 min read Ideas for Startups Paul Graham In 9 answers
  4. Before you build for a home market outside the big startup hubs, you need the real economics, and this is the essay that maps... Sajith Pai (Blume Ventures) Article · ~20 min read The Indus Valley Playbook Sajith Pai In 9 answers
  5. When there is no category report to point at, you have to build the number yourself, and this is the essay that teaches you... Andreessen Horowitz Essay · ~20 min read 16 More Startup Metrics Anu Hariharan, Frank Chen, Jeff Jordan In 9 answers
  6. This is the classic mental model for exactly your question: how customer count trades off against deal size. Janz maps five... The Angel VC Essay · ~12 min read Five ways to build a $100 million business Christoph Janz In 9 answers
  7. The whole worry in your question, that slicing smaller leaves too few buyers, is exactly what Moore's target customer... HarperBusiness (Collins Business Essentials) Book · Approx. 256 pages Crossing the Chasm, 3rd Edition Geoffrey A. Moore In 9 answers
  8. Blomfield (founder of Monzo and GoCarchless, now a YC partner) gives the concrete mechanics of closing that first B2B deal:... Y Combinator Startup Library Article · 25 min read The Sales Playbook for Founders Tom Blomfield In 9 answers
  9. The most systematic step-by-step process for de-risking an idea, built around the Lean Canvas. Where The Lean Startup gives... LEANSTACK Book · ~240 pages Running Lean Ash Maurya In 8 answers
  10. Twenty founders describe the pivotal moments on their path to fit, and a recurring theme is why the right founder for the right... First Round Review Article · ~25 min read The Only Way to Win: Advice for Founders From Founders First Round Review In 8 answers
  11. The most-quoted primary source on why founders should launch fast and iterate, short, canonical, and from the co-founder of YC.... paulgraham.com Article · ~8 min read Startups in 13 Sentences Paul Graham In 8 answers
  12. The official, primary-source guide straight from Product Hunt, it dispels myths and sets realistic expectations, unlike the sea... Product Hunt Article · guide / multi-page Product Hunt Launch Guide Product Hunt In 8 answers
  13. Steli Efti (YC alum, co-founder of Close CRM) is one of the most trusted voices on startup outbound and cold email, practical,... Close Article · article series The Close Sales Blog (Steli Efti on cold email & founder sales) Steli Efti In 8 answers
  14. The canonical, no-nonsense overview of how seed fundraising works, written by a former YC president who has seen thousands of... Y Combinator Startup Library Article · 20 min read A Guide to Seed Fundraising Geoff Ralston In 8 answers
  15. Judging whether people will actually change their behavior comes down to how well you can hear intensity in what they say, and... deployempathy.com Book · Full book, roughly 250 pages Deploy Empathy: A Practical Guide to Interviewing Customers Michele Hansen In 8 answers
  16. This is the book most modern cold outbound advice quietly borrows from, so reading the source is worth it. Its "Cold Calling... Amazon Book · ~208 pages Predictable Revenue: Turn Your Business Into a Sales Machine with the $100 Million Best Practices of Salesforce.com Aaron Ross and Marylou Tyler In 8 answers
  17. When you are the only one selling something like your product, cost-plus and competitor benchmarks give you nothing to anchor... Wiley (2016) Book · Book, ~240 pages Monetizing Innovation: How Smart Companies Design the Product Around the Price Madhavan Ramanujam and Georg Tacke In 8 answers
  18. The single clearest explanation of the two documents Indian founders confuse: the founders' agreement (equity, vesting, roles,... EquityList Article · 15 min read Founders' Agreement: Definition, Key Clauses, and Template for Indian Startups EquityList In 8 answers
  19. The global playbooks assume a US-style buying process; this one is written for the Indian enterprise reality, where the sale... Blume Ventures Article · 25 min read The Rough Guide to Building an Enterprise SaaS Dhandha in India Blume Ventures (with Aakrit Vaish, Haptik) In 8 answers
  20. A hands-on companion to The Mom Test with more structure on who to talk to and how to run the process. Alvarez is strong on... Cindy Alvarez Book · ~240 pages Lean Customer Development Cindy Alvarez In 8 answers
  21. A founder-friendly crash course on planning and running discovery interviews, with tactics from researchers at Zoom, Zapier,... First Round Review Article · 20 min read A UX Research Crash Course for Founders Jane Davis In 8 answers
  22. Consumer PMF advice does not map cleanly onto B2B, where deals are few, considered, and slow, which describes many Indian... Lenny's Newsletter Article · ~3,000 words A guide for finding product-market fit in B2B Lenny Rachitsky In 8 answers
  23. Hall's book gives you the research discipline behind good interviewing: how to avoid leading a witness, how to write a... A Book Apart / Erika Hall Book · ~120 pages Just Enough Research Erika Hall In 8 answers
  24. The definitive book on how VC deals really work, written by two Foundry Group VCs. It demystifies the term sheet term-by-term... Wiley Book · book (~300 pages) Venture Deals: Be Smarter Than Your Lawyer and Venture Capitalist Brad Feld & Jason Mendelson In 7 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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