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 single-page comparison table you want the moment your outreach list spans India, the US, the EU, and a couple of other... Overloop Article · ~7 min read Is Cold Email Illegal? Country-by-Country Legal Guide Overloop
  2. A real founder community arguing, in public, about where cold outreach tips into being annoying: templated openers, I loved... Indie Hackers Thread Indie Hackers, Stop Sending Cold Emails David Delahunty (poster)
  3. This is the article whose title is basically your question, and it answers it directly: find one real point of connection, say... Close Article · 10 min read Cold Emailing: Finding the Balance Between Personalization and Scale Samuel Szuchan
  4. This gives you an actual repeatable process (research, write, move on) instead of vague advice to do your homework, which is... Lavender Article · 8 min read How to Build a Cold Email Personalization Process Will Allred
  5. This is the chapter of the standard founder-led sales handbook that deals directly with cold email, and it gives you real... Holloway Book · 20 min read Founding Sales: Emailing Prospects Pete Kazanjy
  6. The author names the exact failure mode our short answer warns against, calling most personalized cold email mail merge with a... Indie Hackers Thread · 6 min read Your Cold Emails Aren't Personal, Here's Proof (And How We Fixed It) Virgil Nelson
  7. A marketer at Toggl walks through the actual cold emails that turned into 150,000 visits and 60,000 signups, mostly by pitching... Medium Article · 10 min read 10 Cold Email Tips I Used to Get 60,000 App Signups Dunja Lazić
  8. The project itself, an agent that researches a person then drafts a first line, is less important than the comment thread,... Hacker News Thread · 5 min read Show HN: I Built an Agent to Write Personalized Cold Email Opener Hacker News
  9. This is Google's own rulebook for what gets an email into Gmail instead of spam: SPF or DKIM for every sender, SPF, DKIM, and... Google (Gmail/Workspace support) Article Email sender guidelines Google (Gmail/Workspace support)
  10. Postmark is an email delivery company, so this is a working list from people who watch inboxes for a living, not a generic... Postmark Article 13 reasons why your emails go into the spam folder (and what you can do about it) Postmark
  11. Spam complaints are the signal that actually poisons a domain, more than any single email landing in a spam folder. This piece... Postmark Article How to reduce and fix email spam complaints Postmark
  12. Mailgun is one of the infrastructure providers that actually sends the mail, so this is a hands-on, technically accurate... Mailgun Article How to authenticate your email for better delivery rates Mailgun
  13. HubSpot sends a genuinely enormous volume of email and publishes what they tell their own customers to do to stay out of spam.... HubSpot Knowledge Base Article Improve email deliverability HubSpot Knowledge Base
  14. Instantly is built specifically for cold outreach, so this guide is framed around your exact problem rather than transactional... Instantly Article How to Master SPF, DKIM, and DMARC for Cold Email Deliverability Instantly
  15. This directly supports the 'warm up a fresh domain slowly' half of your answer. It lays out why a brand-new domain has zero... Woodpecker Article How to Warm Up a New Domain Before Email Outreach Woodpecker
  16. This is the clearest explanation of exactly the advice in your short answer: keep cold outreach off your main domain so a spam... GlockApps Article Why You Need a Separate Domain for Cold Email Outreach GlockApps
  17. This gives you a week-by-week volume ramp for a new domain alongside the authentication basics, which is more concrete than... Mailshake Article The Ultimate Guide to Email Deliverability Mark Lindquist
  18. Ajay Goel has built email sending software for two decades, so this guide connects deliverability mechanics to the practical... GMass Article The Ultimate Guide to Cold Email Ajay Goel
  19. Al Iverson spent 15 years running deliverability for a major email platform, and this is his running commentary on what mailbox... Al Iverson Article Spam Resource: All Things Deliverability Al Iverson
  20. Written by the team behind one of the most used email finder tools, so it walks through the same order of operations our answer... Hunter.io Blog Article · 10 minute read 10 Ways to Find Anyone's Email Address Ziemek Bućko
  21. A clear rundown from a company that does outreach at scale for its own work, covering lookup tools, pattern guessing, and... Ahrefs Blog Article · 8 minute read 6 Proven Ways To Find Anyone's Email Address Nick Churick
  22. Written from the recipient's side of the inbox by someone who gets hundreds of cold emails a week. It makes the case that... Ahrefs Blog Essay · 12 minute read I Just Deleted Your Outreach Email Without Reading. And NO, I Don't Feel Sorry Tim Soulo
  23. Once you've found or guessed someone's email, this is what to actually put in it, with word for word scripts from a founder who... First Round Review Article · 15 minute read Here are the Scripts for Sales Success: Emails, Calls and Demos That Close Deals Peter Kazanjy
  24. Ferrazzi's core argument is that the people worth reaching are found through relationships, not databases, so a connector who... Keith Ferrazzi Book · about 370 pages Never Eat Alone Keith Ferrazzi

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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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