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. A contract clause is your legal safeguard, but the practical one is making sure the repo lives under an account you control... GitHub Docs Tool · ~10 min read About organizations GitHub
  2. Most agency cost calculators are just email-capture forms that make you wait for a salesperson, but this one actually computes... Smol Launch Tool Free MVP & App Development Cost Calculator Smol Launch
  3. A shared board is the concrete accountability mechanism: every task has an owner, a status, and a due window that everyone can... Linear Tool · Free up to 250 issues, paid from 10 dollars per user per month Linear Linear
  4. You cannot fully remove the risk of one person holding all the knowledge, but you can hedge it, and the cheapest hedge is... GitHub Tool · One template file plus a short guide readme-best-practices: a starter template for project READMEs jehna
  5. If you have no warm intros, you need a pond stocked with people who actually want startup work, and Wellfound (formerly... Wellfound Tool · Ongoing platform Hire Startup Talent on Wellfound Wellfound
  6. UX Writing Hub is a well known home for this craft, and this guide is a browsable reference of real product screenshots showing... UX Writing Hub Tool Microcopy in a Nutshell: Past, Present and Future Anja Wedberg (UX Writing Hub)
  7. This is the practical answer to the scariest part of multilingual design: a button that reads Submit in English can blow out to... Lokalise Tool · Plugin, set up in minutes Lokalise for Figma (localization plugin) Lokalise
  8. A weekly ship cadence needs a container that resets every week on its own, otherwise the discipline lives in your head and... Linear Tool · Docs page plus free tool Cycles (Linear Docs) Linear
  9. When you are chasing your first 10 customers, you do not need Salesforce, you need one place to see who you contacted, who... Notion Marketplace Tool · Free Notion template Simple Sales CRM & Pipeline (Notion template) Laura Miller
  10. If your customers run their business on WhatsApp, you should meet them there instead of dragging them into email or a portal.... Wati Tool Wati (WhatsApp Business API platform) Wati
  11. For Indian B2B, LinkedIn is closer to a real launch surface than Product Hunt ever was, because the decision-makers you are... LinkedIn Tool · Ongoing LinkedIn LinkedIn
  12. Sustaining a drip by hand every single day is where most founders quit, so this is the practical tool that keeps it going:... Typefully Tool · web and mobile app Typefully: write, schedule, and publish social posts and threads Typefully
  13. When the call goes well, the follow-up needs to go out fast, and a reusable structure is what makes that happen without you... Superhuman Blog Template · ~12 min read, 18 templates 18 Sales Follow-Up Email Templates That Actually Get Responses Superhuman
  14. If payments keep landing late, the fix is often to stop relying on the buyer to remember and set up an auto-debit mandate... Razorpay Tool Razorpay e-NACH and e-Mandate for Recurring Payments Razorpay
  15. When you are the only salesperson, the win is getting deals out of your head and into one place today, and HubSpot's free tier... HubSpot Tool HubSpot CRM for Startups (free forever plan) HubSpot
  16. Before a CRM is worth the overhead, a clean spreadsheet is often the honest answer, and this one downloads with no email wall... OnePageCRM Template Free Sales Pipeline Template (Excel and Google Sheets) OnePageCRM
  17. Before you hit send, paste your draft subject in here and it scores it for spam risk, clarity, and curiosity, so you catch the... SuperSend Tool Free Email Subject Line Tester (clarity, curiosity, and spam risk) SuperSend
  18. Knowing the rules is one thing, adding a compliant opt-out and address to your emails without bugging an engineer is another,... Sequenzy Tool Email Footer Generator (CAN-SPAM and GDPR) Sequenzy
  19. Before you send a real campaign, this tests exactly where your email lands across Gmail, Outlook, Yahoo, and others, so you... GlockApps Tool GlockApps Inbox Insight: Email Deliverability and Inbox Placement Test GlockApps
  20. Warming a new domain by hand means sending a trickle of real, replied-to emails for weeks, and this automates that slow ramp... Instantly Tool Instantly Email Warmup Instantly
  21. A guessed or bulk-sourced address is a gamble, and one bounce-heavy send tells Gmail and Outlook you are not a real sender,... zerobounce.net Tool ZeroBounce Email Verifier ZeroBounce
  22. Once you suspect something is dragging replies down, guessing is slow: Smartlead lets you run variant tests inside a single... Smartlead Tool · ~10 min read plus tool Cold Email A/B Testing in Smartlead (Variants + Reply Tracking) Smartlead

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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