Starting Up

The resources founders actually use.

Every essay, video, podcast, book and tool behind 1,327 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 crowdsourced look at what non-technical people are actually building for themselves with AI tools, which is useful evidence... Lenny's Newsletter Article · 12 min read What people are vibe coding (and actually using) Lenny Rachitsky
  2. Video How to Build an App with Google Sheets (No Code, Glide) Glide (YouTube)
  3. Tavel, a marketplace investor at Benchmark, argues that the first thing to solve is user happiness in a small, constrained... Sarah Tavel Essay The Hierarchy of Marketplaces Sarah Tavel
  4. This breaks down the online directory as a business, including how they make money and roughly what they cost to start. It is... Starter Story Article Start an Online Directory: Business Idea Breakdown Starter Story
  5. A practical guide to the directory as a lean side project, covering niche choice, getting the first listings, and monetizing... Side Hustle Nation Article How to Build a Profitable Online Directory Side Hustle Nation
  6. This is the clearest working mental model for exactly your situation: treat the AI as a fast, over-confident pair programmer... Simon Willison's Weblog Essay · 20 min read Here's how I use LLMs to help me write code Simon Willison
  7. Osmani is a Google engineering leader, and this book draws the exact line your question cares about: the spectrum from... O'Reilly (beyond.addy.ie) Book Beyond Vibe Coding: From Coder to AI-Era Developer Addy Osmani
  8. The official starting point for the tool itself, written to get you from install to your first useful edit: sign in, ask Cursor... Cursor Docs Tool Cursor Quickstart Cursor
  9. YC partners discuss how founders in their current batches are shipping products with mostly AI-generated codebases, and what... Y Combinator (Lightcone Podcast) Video Vibe Coding Is The Future Y Combinator
  10. Video Andrej Karpathy: From Vibe Coding to Agentic Engineering Andrej Karpathy
  11. Shipper taught a cohort of non-engineers to build working apps with AI and reports honestly on what clicked and where people... Every Article What I Learned Teaching 100 People To Code with AI Dan Shipper
  12. A firsthand account of a non-engineer hitting the exact wall your short answer warns about: the tools carry you a long way,... Every Essay I Tried AI Coding Tools. Now I Want to Learn to Code. Katie Parrott
  13. A concrete, current walkthrough of how an experienced engineer actually structures work with AI tools day to day: planning... addyosmani.com Article My LLM coding workflow going into 2026 Addy Osmani
  14. From the author of The Phoenix Project and a veteran of Google and Amazon, this is the serious take on moving AI-assisted code... IT Revolution Book Vibe Coding: Building Production-Grade Software With GenAI, Chat, Agents, and Beyond Gene Kim and Steve Yegge
  15. An official, plain checklist for the skill your short answer insists on: reading and testing what the AI writes before you... GitHub Docs Article Review AI-generated code GitHub
  16. The sharpest statement of the tradeoff at the heart of your question: code you do not understand is technical debt the instant... Val Town Blog Essay Vibe code is legacy code Steve Krouse
  17. Another non-engineer, a designer this time, showing concretely how far you can push Cursor to build interactive things without... Lenny's Newsletter Article A designer's guide to Cursor Elizabeth Lin
  18. Cursor's own free tutorials covering AI foundations, coding with agents, and crucially reviewing and testing code, in order.... Cursor Course Cursor Learn: Official Tutorials Cursor
  19. A research study, not a hot take, on the real tradeoff between the speed of vibe coding and the technical debt it piles up. If... arXiv Article Vibe Coding in Practice: Flow, Technical Debt, and Guidelines for Sustainable Use arXiv
  20. This is the clearest short read on the exact idea behind your answer: pick one place everyone agrees is real, and let the rest... Notion Essay · 8 min read Here's why your startup needs a single source of truth Notion
  21. Automation stops being mysterious once you see it as one sentence: when this happens, do that. This official page defines a... Zapier Help Article · 5 min read What is a Zap? Zapier
  22. This is the discipline your answer opens with: draw the flow before you connect a single app. It makes the case that automating... McCary Group Article · 7 min read Map your business process before automating it McCary Group
  23. Once Airtable is your source of truth, this gives you concrete, copyable patterns for syncing it outward to email, Slack,... Zapier Article · 10 min read 9 Airtable automation ideas Zapier
  24. A deep, practitioner-written guide for when native Airtable automations are not enough and you need to decide between built-in... Business Automated Article · 25 min read The complete guide to Airtable automation Business Automated

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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

What are good startup ideas in India right now? The ideas Indian investors are backing in 2026 sit in a few places: AI built into one industry's daily work (vertical AI for B2B, where software fu... Beginner 5 resources → How do I find product-market fit? Narrow until a small group cannot do without you, then widen. Pick the segment where usage is strongest, talk to those people every week, and chang... Intermediate 9 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 → How do I build an MVP for my startup, step by step? Write down the one assumption that kills the idea if it is wrong, then build the cheapest thing that tests it and get it to real users within weeks... Beginner 9 resources → Which tool should I use to analyse qualitative data like interview notes? For a founder with a dozen interviews, Gemini Notebook, which is free, or Claude, free or $20 a month on Pro: load the transcripts, ask for the rec... Beginner 6 resources → How do I get my first client as a freelancer? Your first client is most likely someone who already knows you or someone they know, so start there before marketplaces. 1) Pick one service for on... Beginner 6 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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