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.

A working set of prompts that push your thinking to extremes to shake loose non-obvious ideas. When your list feels stale or... A Smart Bear (Jason Cohen) Article · 15 min read Extreme brainstorming questions to trigger new, better ideas Jason Cohen
This is the practical mechanics of exactly the habit in our answer: keep a running list of daily annoyances and workarounds,... Founder's Guide Article · 10 min read The Problem List Method: business ideas from real daily frustrations Founder's Guide
A short, focused piece on the single skill our answer is built around: noticing what everyone else walks past. It names the... Start as Sprout Article · 8 min read The Quiet Skill of Noticing Problems Start as Sprout
This is the counterweight to the venture scale market advice: proof that a small market can be a great business if you are... Rob Walling Essay The Stair Step Method of Bootstrapping Rob Walling
Speaks directly to the trap of confusing a giant TAM number with a real business. It explains why investors discount inflated... HSBC Innovation Banking Article Beyond the TAM Slide: What Investors Really Want HSBC Innovation Banking
This is the sharpest short essay on why a naive market number lies to you. Evans shows that a new product can either shrink a... Benedict Evans Essay · about 1,200 words Ways to Think About Market Size Benedict Evans
Kamps has seen more market-size slides than almost anyone and calls out the exact failures founders repeat, including claiming... TechCrunch Article I Reviewed 1,000+ Pitch Decks. These Are the Most Common Mistakes Haje Jan Kamps
This is a real deck with the market slide critiqued line by line, showing how a founder listed the entire sharing economy at... TechCrunch Article Pitch Deck Teardown: BoxedUp's seed deck Haje Jan Kamps
This is the deep dive on why the 'next 200 million' users are real but hard to monetize, which is exactly the trap that... sajithpai.com Essay · 20 min read Vernacular Apps, the English Language Premium, and Monetising the Next 200 Million Sajith Pai
Redseer gives you an independent view of the internet-to-transacting funnel to cross-check Blume's household numbers. It... Redseer Strategy Consultants Article · 10 min read India's Internet Consumers (700 Mn+ Digital Consumer Funnel) Mukesh Kumar, Redseer
Dunford reframes competitors as competitive alternatives, starting with the status quo of doing nothing, which is the real... April Dunford (aprildunford.com) Article · 12 min read Positioning and Competition April Dunford
The original short essay that named the wedge, the sharp entry point our short answer is really about. Dixon explains how to... Chris Dixon (cdixon.org) Essay · 8 min read The Thin Edge of the Wedge Strategy Chris Dixon
Rachitsky turns the wedge from a slogan into a decision, with worked examples like Twilio, Airbnb, and Amazon entering big... Lenny Rachitsky, Lenny's Newsletter Article · 18 min read Picking a Wedge Lenny Rachitsky
A practical companion to Dixon and Rachitsky, focused on choosing the exact first customer segment when the broader market is... Nathan Baschez, Every (every.to) Article · 15 min read The Market Wedge: How to Pick Your Initial Market Nathan Baschez, Eric Thompson
A founder-facing guide that ties market sizing to the question investors are really asking, and warns against describing only... 22nd Century Frontier Article · ~12 min read How Big Can This Get? A Founder's Guide to Market Sizing Petar Dimov
Blank separates a new market, where customers do something they could not before, from existing and resegmented markets, and... Inc. Article · ~8 min read Defining New Markets Steve Blank
This essay dismantles the seductive but hollow logic of if we just capture one percent of a huge market. It explains why that... Angus Norton, Predict Essay · 9 min read The 1% TAM Myth: Why Most Market Sizing Is Just Theater Angus Norton
A short, plain read on why the one percent capture argument backfires and how to reframe your sizing around real buyers. It... The Venture Crew Article · 8 min read Is the 1% Market Fallacy Holding Your Startup Back? Sahil S
A practical guide from a startup accelerator that walks through gathering the data behind both top-down and bottoms-up... MaRS Discovery District Article · 10 min read How to Estimate Market Size: Business and Marketing Planning for Startups MaRS Discovery District
A short India-focused primer on what a first pitch should cover, including where market size fits and how it shapes how much... Prime Venture Partners Article · 6 min read How to Pitch to a VC Prime Venture Partners
This is the foundational research on how new ideas actually spread through a population, and why some stick while others die.... Simon & Schuster Book · 576 pages Diffusion of Innovations Everett M. Rogers
The gap between a big market and a paying market is willingness to pay, and this piece gives you a rigorous way to actually... Kellogg Insight, Northwestern Article · ~10 min read A Better Way to Measure Customers' Willingness to Pay Kellogg Insight
This tackles the exact case where no budget line exists yet because the problem is new to buyers. Altman argues an unbudgeted... Forbes Article · ~8 min read Why Budget Doesn't Matter in B2B Selling Ian Altman
If your market is real but latent, meaning the pain exists but no one is actively shopping, this is the playbook for creating... Bessemer Venture Partners (Atlas) Article · ~15 min read A B2B Founder's Guide to Generating Demand from Scratch Bessemer Venture Partners

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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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