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 DPDP Act made data protection a legal duty for every Indian company from day one, and this piece is honest about both the... Inc42 Article As DPDPA Kicks In, Are Startups Ready For Privacy Compliance Burden? Shraddha Goled
  2. GST was a sweeping tax change, and ClearTax is the clearest case of a startup that read it as demand rather than disruption and... YourStory Article The Turning Point: How ClearTax rode the GST wave YourStory
  3. A short government explainer of the account aggregator system, useful if you want the concept before diving into Sahamati's... Invest India Article Account Aggregator: India's Next Digital Innovation Invest India
  4. Woodbury studies exactly what you have free access to: how your generation actually behaves online and why. He breaks Gen Z... Digital Native (Rex Woodbury) Article · ~15 min read Gen Z Behaviors and The Consumer Renaissance Rex Woodbury
  5. The clearest breakdown of why an app teenagers loved (and adults underrated) became one of the most powerful products in the... Eugene Wei (eugenewei.com) Essay · ~40 min read TikTok and the Sorting Hat Eugene Wei
  6. The founders started Saturn as University of Pennsylvania students and grew it to millions of young users across thousands of... Lenny's Newsletter Article · ~20 min read Lessons on building a viral consumer app: The story of Saturn Lenny Rachitsky
  7. The trap in trend spotting is confident prediction, and Tetlock's research shows the people who are actually good stay... Penguin Random House Book · 352 pages Superforecasting: The Art and Science of Prediction Philip E. Tetlock and Dan Gardner
  8. Before apps, serious thinkers kept a commonplace book, one running log of quotes, observations, and ideas they could mine... RyanHoliday.net Article · 10 min read How and Why to Keep a Commonplace Book Ryan Holiday
  9. Spotting a trend is easy, understanding why it is happening takes more than one lens, and this is Farnam Street's hub on... Farnam Street (fs.blog) Article · 30 min read Mental Models: The Best Way to Make Intelligent Decisions Shane Parrish
  10. Trend spotting improves fast when you publish what you are noticing, because the network corrects you and feeds you better... swyx.io Essay · 12 min read Learn in Public Shawn (swyx) Wang
  11. Evans is a working example of the habit you are trying to build: a weekly pass over the noise that pulls out what actually... ben-evans.com Article · Weekly newsletter Benedict's Newsletter Benedict Evans
  12. Each year a16z partners publish the shifts they expect, and reading it shows you what a finished trend thesis looks like when... Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) Article · 20 min read Big Ideas in Tech 2026 a16z partners
  13. This is a compact, four step framework for turning fuzzy early signals into something you can act on, aimed at operators rather... Fast Company Article · 8 min read A four-step framework to spot weak signals of disruption Fast Company
  14. The short answer asks you to notice the same signal from three unrelated directions, and this essay is about exactly that... nabeelqu.co Essay · 15 min read How to Understand Things Nabeel S. Qureshi
  15. Levels documents committing to ship a new startup every month for a year, in public, mostly to unglamorous silence, until two... levels.io Essay I'm Launching 12 Startups in 12 Months Pieter Levels
  16. This explains why buying upvotes is a waste of money, not just against the rules. Votes are weighted by account quality and... Product Hunt Help Center Article How does Product Hunt ensure fair voting and prevent spam or vote manipulation? Product Hunt Help Center
  17. The nuts-and-bolts mechanics of the submission flow itself: what fields you'll fill in, what's required, and how the process... Product Hunt Help Center Article How to post a product Product Hunt Help Center
  18. A short, practical rundown from someone who's actually gotten featured twice, with the small unglamorous stuff that gets... Indie Hackers Article I launched 2 apps on Product Hunt and both were featured, here's what I learned Indie Hackers
  19. An honest account of a launch that stalled at 200 upvotes and ranked below a blender, and what the founder changed to do better... Indie Hackers Article Notes from a failed Product Hunt launch Indie Hackers
  20. Product Hunt's own founder, talking to YC about what separates launches that land from ones that don't. He's blunt that a clear... Y Combinator Article Ryan Hoover on Product Hunt's Acquisition and Lessons Learned About Startup Launches with Dalton Caldwell Y Combinator
  21. A founder walking through the exact playbook that took his product to #1 Product of the Day, Week, and SaaS Product of the... Tom Dekan Article How we won Product of the Week on Product Hunt Tom Dekan
  22. An Indian solo founder's real account of hitting #1 Product of the Day, with the tactic he says mattered most: personal DMs to... Inbox Pirates Article How we won Producthunt #1 Product of The Day As a Solo Founder (And you can too!) Inbox Pirates
  23. A direct list of the specific mistakes that sink launches, useful to skim right before you hit submit as a final gut check.... Poindeo Article The Product Hunt Playbook: 10 Mistakes That Will Kill Your Launch Poindeo
  24. A working engineer's own account of what actually happened when he posted to Hacker News, including timing, title wording, and... Lucas Costa Essay How to Do a Successful Hacker News Launch Lucas Costa

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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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