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. When you want to go deeper than headlines, this is a curated map of the resources that actually explain modern AI, sorted from... Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) Article · curated list AI Canon Derrick Harris, Matt Bornstein, Guido Appenzeller
  2. A trend only matters against the real market you are selling into, and this annual report is the clearest sober picture of... Blume Ventures Article · ~130 slides Indus Valley Annual Report Sajith Pai and team
  3. A free, focused essay version of the inflection idea if you do not want the whole book yet. It explains why timing and a... Pattern Breakers (Substack) Article · ~12 min read How Inflections Let Startups Change The Rules Mike Maples Jr.
  4. This directly addresses the fork in your question: are you entering a known market or betting a new one will grow. It lays out... NFX Article · ~14 min read Reinventing Existing vs. Creating New Markets Pete Flint
  5. Data from hundreds of startup post-mortems showing how often failure traces to no real market need or a trend that never... CB Insights Article · ~20 min read The Top Reasons Startups Fail CB Insights
  6. This is the constructive version of your strategy: use a single feature or channel to pull people in cheaply, then give them a... cdixon.org Essay Come for the tool, stay for the network Chris Dixon
  7. Chen watched a whole generation of startups build on Facebook's platform and then get squeezed as the platform protected... andrewchen.com Essay Why developers are leaving the Facebook platform Andrew Chen
  8. Jin makes the case that the durable way to build on platforms is owning your audience, your monetization, and your direct... andrewchen.com (guest essay) Essay The Passion Economy and the Future of Work Li Jin
  9. This piece gives you a simple spectrum for judging how exposed you are, using the Zynga and Facebook story as the cautionary... Entrepreneur Article The Spectrum of Platform Risk Tiger Henderson
  10. A clean, structured guide to spotting where your platform exposure lives and building a more resilient business around it. It... Stripe Article Platform risk: How to identify it, assess it, and build a more resilient business Stripe
  11. Written for small builders, this walks through real cases (Reddit, Twitter, and Meta API changes) where a pricing or policy... Micro SaaS Bytes (Medium) Article Platform Dependency Risks: What Indie Hackers Must Know Mohit Rathore
  12. An investor's short, blunt take on why platform risk makes a company harder to back and how founders can reduce it. It helps... itamarnovick.com Article Startup anti-pattern #3: platform risk Simeon Simeonov
  13. The full, sourced account of how a single API pricing change killed thriving third party apps like Apollo in a matter of weeks.... Wikipedia Article Reddit API controversy Wikipedia
  14. This is the strategic backbone: how platform businesses take power from traditional pipeline businesses by orchestrating a... Harvard Business Review Article Pipelines, Platforms, and the New Rules of Strategy Marshall Van Alstyne, Geoffrey Parker, Sangeet Paul Choudary
  15. A working seed investor answers plainly whether you can build a huge company away from Silicon Valley, and where the real... elizabethyin.com Article Can you build a unicorn business outside the Silicon Valley? Elizabeth Yin
  16. A VC framework for choosing where to build, weighing talent, customers, capital and cost against the kind of company you are.... NFX Article Where To Build Your Startup James Currier
  17. Lenny gathers how strong product people build intuition for what will work, which is really a method for reading signals and... Lenny's Newsletter Article How to develop product sense Lenny Rachitsky
  18. This is the closest thing to a playbook for building where government sets the rules, drawn from real cases like 23andMe,... Penguin Random House Book Regulatory Hacking: A Playbook for Startups Evan Burfield with J.D. Harrison
  19. Omojola built inside two of the most regulated spaces there are, payments (Cash App) and healthcare (Carbon Health), and here... First Round Review Article Finding Startup Ideas and Building in Heavily-Regulated Spaces Ayo Omojola (First Round Review)
  20. This is the serious study behind the buzzwords, documenting how Uber, Airbnb, and Tesla treated changing the law as part of the... Southern California Law Review Essay Regulatory Entrepreneurship Elizabeth Pollman and Jordan M. Barry
  21. A short, readable interview with Elizabeth Pollman that distils the academic work into founder-sized takeaways. If the full... The Regulatory Review Article On Startups and Regulatory Entrepreneurship The Regulatory Review
  22. Blank pushes back on easy optimism and lays out why regulated markets are genuinely hard, which is the counterweight you need... Medium (Steve Blank) Article Even the Smartest VCs Sometimes Get it Wrong: Bill Gurley and Regulated Markets Steve Blank
  23. Before you can read a change as opportunity you need to know which rules even touch your business, and this is a plain-language... TechCrunch Article Startup Law A to Z: Regulatory Compliance Daniel McKenzie
  24. ONDC is a government-built shift that unbundles Indian e-commerce, and this piece maps where new companies can plug in across... Antler Article Unpacking the ONDC opportunity: India's next startup catalyst Antler

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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