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. Wardley shows how every component evolves from genesis to commodity, and that this direction is predictable even when the... Bits or Pieces? (Simon Wardley) Essay · ~15 min read On Mapping and the Evolution Axis Simon Wardley
  2. A clean, free reference that defines the terms precisely, with the classic disruption diagram. If HBR is paywalled for you,... Christensen Institute Article · 10 min read Disruptive Innovation Theory Christensen Institute
  3. Thompson shows where the toy and disruption story breaks down: in consumer markets, good enough does not always win, because... Stratechery Essay · 15 min read What Clayton Christensen Got Wrong Ben Thompson
  4. Thompson names a third path beyond sustaining and disruptive: products that make the old thing obsolete rather than slowly... Stratechery Essay · 12 min read Obsoletive Ben Thompson
  5. Altman treats idea generation as a skill you build by surrounding yourself with high-idea-flux people and looking for the... Sam Altman (blog.samaltman.com) Essay · ~7 min read Idea Generation Sam Altman
  6. A curated starting path into the deepest single body of writing on the Indian consumer, market structure, and startup models.... sajithpai.com Article · Curated index Begin Here: Sajith Pai's essays on India Sajith Pai
  7. The annual read on where capital is actually flowing in India, by stage and sector, with the macro tailwinds behind it. It... Bain & Company Article · Report India Venture Capital Report 2025 Bain & Company with IVCA
  8. A demand-side view of who India's shoppers will be by 2030, segmented by income and behaviour, with the mass consumer doing... Redseer Strategy Consultants Article · Report The Indian Consumer at 2030 Redseer
  9. A specific argument that selling software to Indian businesses, long dismissed as too small, is becoming a real market driven... SaaSBoomi Article · Long article India's 100 Billion Dollar Domestic Software Opportunity SaaSBoomi
  10. A book written by the founders who built India's global SaaS wave (Zoho, Freshworks, Chargebee and others), pooling how they... SaaSBoomi Book · Book The India SaaS Story SaaSBoomi founders (Manav Garg and community)
  11. The long-view case for what India could become, from the person who then went on to build much of its digital infrastructure.... Penguin Book · Book, ~500 pages Imagining India: The Idea of a Renewed Nation Nandan Nilekani
  12. A view of how India's internet business models are maturing, from land-grab growth toward monetisation and unit economics that... Redseer Insights Article · Long article The Evolving Playbook of India's Internet Economy Redseer
  13. A concrete worked example of AI aimed at a famously boring niche, accounting, rather than at a flashy consumer app. It shows... Andreessen Horowitz Article · 12 min read The Rise of Vertical AI in Accounting Andreessen Horowitz
  14. This gives you the vocabulary for the moment a trend makes a job newly urgent. An inflection point is when customers who... Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) Article · 12 min read Using Inflection Points to Overcome Startup Distribution Challenges Andreessen Horowitz (a16z)
  15. A sharp piece on how building English-first quietly locks Indian startups out of their next few hundred million users. It makes... Scroll.in Article The English tax is stopping India's startups from reaching their next billion users Sajith Pai
  16. A digital anthropologist's fieldwork on how people in India, China, and Brazil actually use the internet, which is often... Payal Arora (Harvard University Press) Book The Next Billion Users: Digital Life Beyond the West Payal Arora
  17. A practical, hands-on checklist of frameworks, sources, and search techniques for finding trends before others, including how... Startup GTM (Substack) Article Find trends before others: Frameworks, Techniques, Sources and Prompts Ayush Poddar
  18. A deliberate rebuttal to the safe advice, arguing that in deep tech the only way to own a category is to commit before it is... Michael Dempsey (Medium) Essay · 12 min read If You're Not Too Early, You're Too Late Michael Dempsey
  19. Evans is the clearest writer on separating what a technology can actually do from the story being told about it. He repeatedly... ben-evans.com Essay · 10 to 20 min each Essays by Benedict Evans Benedict Evans
  20. Willison is a working engineer who writes plainly about what the technology can and cannot reliably do, which is the single... simonwillison.net Article · ~30 min Things we learned about LLMs in 2024 Simon Willison
  21. Mollick is a business professor who tests AI hands-on and reports what actually works, not what a vendor promises. The book... Penguin Random House Book · ~256 pages Co-Intelligence: Living and Working with AI Ethan Mollick
  22. This is the ongoing, free version of Mollick's testing: regular posts that run real experiments and show the results, good and... oneusefulthing.org Article · 10 to 15 min per post One Useful Thing Ethan Mollick
  23. A short, neutral explainer of the pattern nearly every technology follows: a burst of inflated expectations, a trough of... Wikipedia Article · ~10 min Gartner Hype Cycle Wikipedia
  24. Our answer tells you to ask builders what breaks in production, and this is a concrete checklist of what that actually means.... startupctobook.com Article · ~20 min Technical Due Diligence Preparation Guide (The Startup CTO's Field Guide) Gareth Price

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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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