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 practical, no-nonsense walkthrough of what a pipeline is for and how to keep it honest, written by a company that sells CRM... Close Article The Ultimate Sales Pipeline Guide: How to Build, Manage, & Measure Close
A short, honest account of the exact failure mode this question warns about: a solo founder loses a good prospect purely from... Indie Hackers Thread Built a dead-simple pipeline tracker after losing a deal because I forgot to follow up Indie Hackers
Welsh shows the exact two-step process he used to build a million-dollar pipeline from cold DMs: find people already talking... Justin Welsh Essay · 10 min read How to Get Replies from Your Dream Customers Justin Welsh
This is the LinkedIn half of the question: a simple system using alerts and triggers (funding news, new hires, press mentions)... Justin Welsh Essay · 10 min read How to Find More Customers on LinkedIn Justin Welsh
Ferriss writes from the other side of the inbox: what actually gets a reply from someone who gets hundreds of pitches a day.... Tim Ferriss Essay · 5 min read 5 Tips for E-mailing Busy People Tim Ferriss
Sethi gives word-for-word scripts and, more usefully, the follow-up move almost nobody does: closing the loop by telling... Ramit Sethi Article · 10 min read How To Connect w/ Busy People (& actually get HAPPY replies) Ramit Sethi
A straightforward six-part checklist (subject line, personalization, benefit to them, credibility, one call-to-action, respect... Noah Kagan Article · 8 min read Cold Email Tips: 6 Steps to Write Great Cold Emails Noah Kagan
Caponi's argument is that admitting what your product is not good at, early and clearly, closes deals faster than trying to... Todd Caponi Book The Transparency Sale Todd Caponi
Steli Efti has run and coached thousands of SaaS demos, and this is the clearest single write-up of what separates a demo that... Close (Steli Efti) Article A Guide to Sales Demos That Sell Close (Steli Efti)
This book is the practical, step-by-step companion to the essay above, built from Dunford working the same structure with over... April Dunford Book Sales Pitch: How to Craft a Story to Stand Out and Win April Dunford
Raskin has coached the sales narratives at Gong, Uber, Dropbox and Square, and this essay is the one everyone in B2B sales... Andy Raskin Essay The Greatest Sales Deck I've Ever Seen Andy Raskin
Gallo breaks down, keynote by keynote, how Jobs turned deeply technical hardware into a demo a room full of non-engineers could... Carmine Gallo Book The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs: How to Be Insanely Great in Front of Any Audience Carmine Gallo
Gong analyzed over 67,000 recorded sales demos and found the actual, measurable habits of the ones that closed, not opinion.... Gong Labs Article Effective strategies for conducting successful sales demos Gong Labs
This essay is not about demos, it is about the underlying test our short answer relies on: if you cannot explain something... Farnam Street Essay Feynman Technique: The Ultimate Guide to Learning Anything Faster Farnam Street
The condensed, skimmable version of Blond's YC talk, written up as a thread after he spoke to a live batch. Good for a quick... X (Twitter) Thread · short read How to succeed with founder led sales Sam Blond
A practicing operator's version of our own bar: Girdley says you need a proven, repeatable process and something like 15... Michael Girdley Essay · 12 min read Playbook: When & how to hire your first salesperson Michael Girdley
Jason Lemkin has watched thousands of SaaS founders make this hire, and this is his running list of what goes wrong. The number... SaaStr Article · 12 min read The Top 10 Mistakes Folks Make Hiring Their First Sales Team Jason Lemkin
Written for the stage right after your first hire works, this explains why hiring account executives before product-market fit... a16z Article · 15 min read Your product won't sell itself: How to build a world-class sales team Jason Rosenthal
Lemkin has watched thousands of SaaS companies go through this exact stage and is blunt about where founder led sales quietly... SaaStr Article Why Founder-Led Sales Breaks Earlier Than You Think Jason Lemkin
Spolsky's classic essay explains why willingness to pay for the identical product varies wildly by customer, using the image of... Joel on Software Essay · ~20 min read Camels and Rubber Duckies Joel Spolsky
Fried's answer is deliberately unromantic: pick a number, put it in front of real people, and let the market correct you... Signal v. Noise (37signals) Essay · ~5 min read How to price something Jason Fried
This lays out the mechanics of anchoring price to the value a customer gets rather than to what competitors charge, which is... Harvard Business Review Article · ~8 min read A Quick Guide to Value-Based Pricing Utpal M. Dholakia
A short, free book written by a bootstrapped software founder specifically for people who have never priced anything before and... Neil Davidson / Red Gate Software Book · ~80 pages Don't Just Roll the Dice: A Usefully Short Guide to Software Pricing Neil Davidson
A concise, practical guide written for founders setting SaaS pricing for the first time, with none of the consulting-firm... Stripe Atlas Guides Article · ~10 min read Pricing low-touch SaaS Patrick McKenzie

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

eChai Partner Brands The partnership →