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. This is the tightest statement of why hiring is a founder's core job, not a delegated one, and it argues you should spend a... Sam Altman Essay · Short read How to Hire Sam Altman
  2. This is the most direct support for the network-first approach: a concrete system for surfacing the strong people already one... First Round Review Article · Long read The Best Hires Are Right Under Your Nose: Mine Your Network for Early-Stage Hiring Gold Peter Kazanjy
  3. Winning the hire is wasted if your best engineers leave in a year, and this piece digs into why people actually quit. Lack of... First Round Review Article · Long read This is Why People Leave Your Company Carly Guthrie
  4. The recruiting chapter of Elad Gil's handbook is a dense, practical reference on building hiring processes that hold their bar... Elad Gil Book · Full chapter, free online High Growth Handbook: Recruiting, hiring, and managing talent Elad Gil
  5. A step-by-step guide from a startup hiring platform that covers sourcing, referrals, and being open to remote to widen a thin... Wellfound Article · Long read The Complete Guide to Hiring Your First Engineer Ves Todorov
  6. Equity is one of your strongest levers for pulling engineers away from higher-paying options, but only if you can explain it... Qapita Article · Medium read A Basic Guide to Understand ESOPs in India Qapita
  7. The full recruiting chapter of a widely used operator's handbook, free to read online. It covers work-product exercises, fast... High Growth Handbook Article · Medium read High Growth Handbook: Recruiting best practices Elad Gil
  8. Automattic's founder explains, in his own words, why they pay candidates to do real work before hiring and largely skip the... ma.tt (Matt Mullenweg's blog) Essay · Short read Hiring by Audition, Expanded Matt Mullenweg
  9. A concrete script of process and judgment questions a non-technical founder can ask and actually understand the answers to. It... Lightmatter Article · Medium read How to Interview Engineers When You're Not Technical (Part 1) Greg H.
  10. A tidy rundown of alternatives to whiteboard puzzles: portfolio walkthroughs, short representative tasks, and conversations... daily.dev Article · Short read How to Assess Technical Skills During Interviews Without Coding Tests daily.dev
  11. An engineer writes candidly about how non-technical founders get burned, using a case study of a developer who billed excessive... Medium Essay · Medium read How to Vet and Hire Engineers as a non-Technical Founder Jared Wright
  12. A compact three-part filter for a first technical hire: can they reliably ship, do they use current tools well, and did you get... Medium Article · Short read Non-technical guide to evaluating engineers Mike Lerner
  13. A useful counterweight that pokes holes in every method, including take-home projects, which can quietly exclude people who... REWORK (37signals) Podcast · ~30 min episode Hiring Is Not Hazing REWORK (37signals)
  14. A focused chapter aimed squarely at the non-technical reader, on reading communication, asking a candidate to explain why a... Gun.io Article · Short read How to Assess a Developer's Skills Without Technical Knowledge Gun.io
  15. A broad, readable primer covering portfolio reviews, trial projects, and leaning on advisors, written for founders with no... DigitalOcean Article · Medium read Technical hiring for non-technical founders DigitalOcean
  16. Directly titled to this question, it argues for defining the one problem you actually need solved, hiring a pragmatic... Metamindz Article · Medium read How to Hire Your First Developer When You Can't Code Metamindz
  17. Mullenweg's HBR first-person account of switching Automattic to paid tryouts after charming interviews kept misfiring. It is... Harvard Business Review Article · Medium read The CEO of Automattic on Holding Auditions to Build a Strong Team Matt Mullenweg
  18. Video · 9 min How Much Equity to Give Your Cofounder Michael Seibel
  19. The audio version goes deeper on the practical mistakes: unequal splits that breed resentment, forgetting vesting, and treating... Y Combinator Startup School Podcast · 35 min Co-Founder Equity Mistakes to Avoid Michael Seibel
  20. Wasserman studied 10,000 founders and found the counterintuitive result: founders who give away more equity to attract strong... Noam Wasserman Article · 12 min read Rich versus King: The Core Concept Noam Wasserman
  21. The short HBR version of Wasserman's research if you do not want the whole book. It lays out the rich versus king tradeoff... Harvard Business Review Article · 10 min read The Founder's Dilemma Noam Wasserman
  22. This is the benchmark data you need for the early engineer side of the question. Carta shows real grant sizes by hire number... Carta Article · 12 min read How much equity should I give early employees? Carta
  23. A full handbook on option pools and employee grants built on data from thousands of startups. It answers the practical... Index Ventures Article · handbook Rewarding Talent Index Ventures
  24. A practical system for balancing salary and equity so comp stops being a recurring negotiation. It helps you decide how much... First Round Review Article · 15 min read A Counterintuitive System for Startup Compensation Molly Graham

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

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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