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.

Christensen explains why capable incumbents rationally ignore small, unproven, low margin new markets, which is exactly the... Harvard Business Review Press / Amazon Book · 288 pages The Innovator's Dilemma Clayton M. Christensen
This is a direct takedown of the round-number thinking our short answer warns against, written for founders who keep reaching... Startups.com Article · ~6 min read Avoid the Lame "1% of the Market" Approach Wil Schroter
A quick, plain read on why capturing one percent of a billion dollar market is a fantasy rather than a plan. It reinforces the... Inc. Article · ~5 min read The 1 Percent Fallacy That Trips Many Entrepreneurs Erik Sherman
This is a direct, practical breakdown of what a real why now looks like and how founders talk themselves into fake ones. It... Lenny's Newsletter Article · 15 min read Why now? Lenny Rachitsky
A stark case of the opposite bet: an entire Indian industry built on a court-defined skill-game loophole that a new law erased... TechCrunch Article India bans real-money gaming, threatening a $23 billion industry TechCrunch
The direct follow up that models your exact case: roughly a hundred customers each paying a million or more (his brontosaurus),... The Angel VC blog, by Christoph Janz Essay · 8 min read Three more ways to build a $100 million business Christoph Janz
Tunguz studied SaaS companies that went public and found there is no single right customer value. Large companies were built on... tomtunguz.com, by Tomasz Tunguz Article · 5 min read The Optimal Average Customer Value for SaaS Startups Tomasz Tunguz
Lemkin's point is that almost everything about your company, from the sales team to support to marketing spend, is set by your... SaaStr, by Jason Lemkin Article · 6 min read Everything is Sort of the Same at a Given ACV Jason Lemkin
If your business is a small number of very large accounts, this is a practical playbook for actually landing them. It lays out... Wiley, by Tom Searcy and Barbara Weaver Smith Book · 240 pages Whale Hunting: How to Land Big Sales and Transform Your Company Tom Searcy and Barbara Weaver Smith
This is the second act in action: once you own a narrow vertical, adding payments and fintech can more than double your... Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) Article · 10 min read Fintech Scales Vertical SaaS Kristina Shen, Kimberly Tan, Seema Amble, Angela Strange
A focused essay on how vertical software companies grow past their first small market by layering on second and third products.... Fractal Software (Medium) Article · 9 min read How Second Acts Unlock Vertical SaaS Fractal Software
Veeva is the definitive proof of your thesis: a company serving only life sciences, with roughly a thousand customers, worth... Compound & Fire (Substack) Article · 15 min read Veeva Systems: Vertical SaaS Quality in Life Sciences Compound & Fire
This is the honest, uncomfortable side of the answer: sometimes the doubters are right and the idea simply cannot reach venture... Lenny's Newsletter Article · 12 min read Your startup idea probably isn't venture-scale Lenny Rachitsky
Cohen, who built two large companies, argues for taking a small slice of a big, growing pie rather than owning a niche that... A Smart Bear (Jason Cohen) Essay · 25 min read What makes a strategy great Jason Cohen
A practical walkthrough of reading Reddit communities as a free market signal, including how to pick the right subreddits and... ZoomInfo Article · 12 min read How to Use Reddit for Market Research ZoomInfo
Your short answer tells founders to design the cheapest test that would move one of them, and this is the clearest write-up of... ModelThinkers Article · 10 min read Riskiest Assumption Test ModelThinkers
Iskold reduces market size to a single honest formula, number of customers times revenue per customer, and warns against... Startup Hacks (Alex Iskold) Article · 12 min read Everything You Need to Know About Market Sizing Alex Iskold
Blank's core rule is that there are no facts inside your building, so a disagreement resolved at your desk is not really... Steve Blank Article · varies Customer Discovery (Get Out of the Building) Steve Blank
Altman argues that a durable edge often lives at the intersection of two or three fields you know, which is good news if you... Sam Altman (blog.samaltman.com) Essay · Medium essay How to Be Successful Sam Altman
A balanced look at the evidence: deep expertise speeds decisions and credibility, but a large share of billion dollar founders... SaaStr (Jason Lemkin) Article · Medium article How Important Is Domain Expertise in Building a B2B Public Company? The Evidence Is Mixed Jason Lemkin
Qasar Younis built a company only he could start, stacking a decade of automotive engineering, a Google acquisition, and years... First Round Review Article · 18 min read Applied Intuition's Path to Product-Market Fit (Qasar Younis) First Round Review
An India-focused early-stage program explains why founder-market fit is the thing to earn before you chase product-market fit.... PedalStart Article · 7 min read Founder-Market Fit: Why It Matters More Than Product-Market Fit Early On PedalStart
A structured self-assessment for founders who want to grade their own fit honestly rather than wait for an investor to do it.... Tran.vc Article · 9 min read How to Self-Diagnose Founder-Market Fit Tran.vc
Horowitz explains why founders hold a knowledge advantage no hired CEO can replicate, built from every early decision, hire,... Andreessen Horowitz Article · 8 min read Why We Prefer Founding CEOs Ben Horowitz

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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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