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. This is YC's curated shelf of talks and essays filtered to market size, so you get partner-level guidance in one place instead... Y Combinator Course YC Startup Library: Market Size collection Y Combinator
  2. Even though your primary build should be bottom-up, you still want a top-down triangulation to check it, and this gives you a... Data-Mania Template Top-Down Market Sizing: Step-by-Step TAM, SAM, SOM (with Examples and Template) Data-Mania
  3. A structured spreadsheet that makes you fill in the number of target customers, your unit economics, and your serviceable and... Scalepath Template · Spreadsheet Free Bottoms-Up TAM Template Scalepath
  4. The government's live registry of registered micro, small, and medium enterprises, filterable by state, district, and activity.... Ministry of MSME, Government of India Tool Udyam Registration Real Time Dashboard Ministry of MSME, Government of India
  5. A searchable directory of suppliers, distributors, and manufacturers by product and city, exactly the distributor list our... IndiaMART Tool IndiaMART Supplier and Distributor Directory IndiaMART
  6. Downloadable district level datasets of registered enterprises you can filter and count yourself. Where the dashboard shows... data.gov.in Tool Udyam MSME Registered Units (Open Data) data.gov.in
  7. Your short answer says to read the earnings calls and annual reports of public companies near your space for real numbers, and... U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Tool SEC EDGAR Full-Text Search SEC
  8. A ready structure for capturing notes across your 20 conversations so patterns actually surface instead of blurring together.... Notion Template · reusable templates Customer Discovery Interview Templates Notion
  9. A large nonprofit network of women and nonbinary investors and founders that runs Female Founder Office Hours, giving you real... All Raise Tool · Community / program All Raise (Female Founder Office Hours) All Raise
  10. YC's curated shelf of talks and essays filtered to women founders, spanning fundraising, self doubt, and building. It is a... Y Combinator Course · Curated collection YC Startup Library: Women Founders Y Combinator
  11. A ready structure for running the customer conversations that prove or disprove your fit, built on The Mom Test rules. Since... Mari Luukkainen (Gumroad) Template · Notion template The Mom Test Customer Interview (Notion template) Mari Luukkainen
  12. When a buyer says yes, you want a clean, standard agreement ready so the pilot becomes signed proof fast. This free,... Common Paper Template · 2 page template Design Partner Agreement (Free Template) Common Paper
  13. A subscription publication that reports one deep story a day on Indian startups, tech, and consumer companies. When a trend is... The Ken Tool The Ken The Ken
  14. The developer forum where a lot of new tools and shifts get discussed before they reach the mainstream tech press. Reading it... Y Combinator Tool Hacker News Y Combinator
  15. Course · ~6.5 hours Making Friends with Machine Learning (full course) Cassie Kozyrkov
  16. A ready to use version of the 40 percent very disappointed survey, so you can measure real attachment instead of guessing from... LearningLoop Template · quick setup Sean Ellis Product-Market Fit Survey Sean Ellis (framework)
  17. The account aggregator framework lets a person share verified financial data with consent, and Sahamati is the ecosystem hub... Sahamati Tool Sahamati (Account Aggregator ecosystem) Sahamati
  18. If ONDC is your opening, this is the primary source for how the network actually works and how to join it, including... ONDC Tool ONDC (official network) ONDC
  19. A crowdsourced list of over a hundred directories and communities where you can list or relaunch a product, useful as a... Indie Hackers Template Relaunch like a pro: 100+ places to launch, relaunch, and list your product Indie Hackers community
  20. This compact guide gives you rules for writing plain, persuasive prose that you can apply the same afternoon: sentence length,... Julian Shapiro Course Writing Well Julian Shapiro
  21. This is a practical swipe file for the one line that decides whether anyone reads your launch post at all, built around... Copyhackers Template 65 Headline Formulas Copyhackers
  22. Buffer's live public hub, real revenue, real decisions, real posts, is a working example of what a company sounds like when it... Buffer Tool Buffer Open Buffer
  23. This gives you the actual email skeletons, teaser, launch day, update, follow-up, that map directly onto the five-beat sequence... HubSpot Blog Template · 10 min read How to Create a Product Launch Email [Outlines + Templates] HubSpot
  24. Ship is a landing page and waitlist tool built specifically for the pre-launch teaser stage of a campaign like the one in the... Product Hunt Tool Ship by Product Hunt: A toolkit for makers to ship awesome products Product Hunt

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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