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 sharpest short essay on why a naive market number lies to you. Evans shows that a new product can either shrink a... Benedict Evans Essay · about 1,200 words Ways to Think About Market Size Benedict Evans
  2. 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
  3. Kamps has seen more market-size slides than almost anyone and calls out the exact failures founders repeat, including claiming... TechCrunch Article I Reviewed 1,000+ Pitch Decks. These Are the Most Common Mistakes Haje Jan Kamps
  4. Video · 55 min Balaji Srinivasan on Navigating the Idea Maze and Finding a Co-Founder Balaji Srinivasan
  5. Video · 75 min Don Valentine, Sequoia Capital: Target Big Markets Don Valentine
  6. This is the deep dive on why the 'next 200 million' users are real but hard to monetize, which is exactly the trap that... sajithpai.com Essay · 20 min read Vernacular Apps, the English Language Premium, and Monetising the Next 200 Million Sajith Pai
  7. Redseer gives you an independent view of the internet-to-transacting funnel to cross-check Blume's household numbers. It... Redseer Strategy Consultants Article · 10 min read India's Internet Consumers (700 Mn+ Digital Consumer Funnel) Mukesh Kumar, Redseer
  8. This long, unhurried conversation is the best audio explanation of the three Indias and why Indian consumer markets behave the... The Seen and the Unseen Podcast · 3 hr A Venture Capitalist Looks at the World (Sajith Pai) Amit Varma with Sajith Pai
  9. An economist presses Pai on the data behind India1, India2, India3, so you hear the assumptions get stress-tested. It is useful... Ideas of India, Mercatus Center Podcast · 1 hr 30 min Sajith Pai on India's Digital Divides Shruti Rajagopalan with Sajith Pai
  10. The original short essay that named the wedge, the sharp entry point our short answer is really about. Dixon explains how to... Chris Dixon (cdixon.org) Essay · 8 min read The Thin Edge of the Wedge Strategy Chris Dixon
  11. Rachitsky turns the wedge from a slogan into a decision, with worked examples like Twilio, Airbnb, and Amazon entering big... Lenny Rachitsky, Lenny's Newsletter Article · 18 min read Picking a Wedge Lenny Rachitsky
  12. A practical companion to Dixon and Rachitsky, focused on choosing the exact first customer segment when the broader market is... Nathan Baschez, Every (every.to) Article · 15 min read The Market Wedge: How to Pick Your Initial Market Nathan Baschez, Eric Thompson
  13. 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
  14. A founder-facing guide that ties market sizing to the question investors are really asking, and warns against describing only... 22nd Century Frontier Article · ~12 min read How Big Can This Get? A Founder's Guide to Market Sizing Petar Dimov
  15. Video · ~90 min Startup Secrets: Building a Value Proposition Michael Skok
  16. Blank separates a new market, where customers do something they could not before, from existing and resegmented markets, and... Inc. Article · ~8 min read Defining New Markets Steve Blank
  17. A short clip where Gurley explains why top-down TAM estimates are often badly wrong, using Uber and the early cell phone market... Startup Archive Video · 5 min Bill Gurley on Why Founders and Investors Should Not Pay Too Much Attention to TAM Bill Gurley
  18. This essay dismantles the seductive but hollow logic of if we just capture one percent of a huge market. It explains why that... Angus Norton, Predict Essay · 9 min read The 1% TAM Myth: Why Most Market Sizing Is Just Theater Angus Norton
  19. A short, plain read on why the one percent capture argument backfires and how to reframe your sizing around real buyers. It... The Venture Crew Article · 8 min read Is the 1% Market Fallacy Holding Your Startup Back? Sahil S
  20. A practical guide from a startup accelerator that walks through gathering the data behind both top-down and bottoms-up... MaRS Discovery District Article · 10 min read How to Estimate Market Size: Business and Marketing Planning for Startups MaRS Discovery District
  21. A short primer on how real technologies move from ignored to inevitable in an S shaped curve, and why early flatness fools... Andreessen Horowitz Video · 4 min a16z Video: S-curves in Innovation Benedict Evans
  22. This is the foundational research on how new ideas actually spread through a population, and why some stick while others die.... Simon & Schuster Book · 576 pages Diffusion of Innovations Everett M. Rogers
  23. The gap between a big market and a paying market is willingness to pay, and this piece gives you a rigorous way to actually... Kellogg Insight, Northwestern Article · ~10 min read A Better Way to Measure Customers' Willingness to Pay Kellogg Insight
  24. This tackles the exact case where no budget line exists yet because the problem is new to buyers. Altman argues an unbudgeted... Forbes Article · ~8 min read Why Budget Doesn't Matter in B2B Selling Ian Altman

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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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