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 free, tactical operating manual for the founder skills you never practiced as an employee: making decisions fast, running... Matt Mochary (public Google Doc) Book · ~200 pages The Great CEO Within Matt Mochary
  2. 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
  3. A compact roundup of Dixon's startup thinking, including founder/market fit and why passion for a problem beats chasing a hot... Andreessen Horowitz Article · ~10 min read 12 Things I Learned from Chris Dixon about Startups Tren Griffin
  4. Video · ~30 min How To Perfectly Pitch Your Seed Stage Startup Michael Seibel, Y Combinator
  5. One of India's leading storytelling coaches on how founders can tell a story that earns trust. It helps you shape the emotional... Prime Venture Partners Podcast Podcast · ~60 min How Stories Shape Decisions, Trust & Startup Outcomes: A Masterclass with Ameen Haque Ameen Haque with Amit Somani, Prime Venture Partners
  6. This frames founder-market fit as a team question and lists what a strong founding team should be able to answer together about... Techstars Article · ~8 min read High Performing Founding Teams: The Five Questions Every Rockstar Founding Team Can Answer Martin Schilling and Brian Daly
  7. A clear explainer arguing that founder-market fit lives with the people who define and sell the product, and that outsiders can... Feel the Boot Video · ~18 min Founder/Market Fit: Your Startup's Early-Stage Advantage Cofounder Adam (Feel the Boot)
  8. A seed investor explains what he actually looks for as founder-market fit and how he weighs it across a whole team rather than... Tom Wilson (Medium) Article · ~9 min read Investing at Founder-Market Fit Tom Wilson
  9. Gil argues against overlapping expertise and for clear role division, warning that two people setting the same direction leads... Elad Gil (Elad Blog) Essay · ~8 min read How to Choose a Co-Founder Elad Gil
  10. Gil makes the case for co-founders splitting the company into clear areas of ownership so each person drives their domain... Elad Gil (Elad Blog) Article · ~6 min read Founders Should Divide and Conquer Elad Gil
  11. A useful counterweight that questions how much founder-market fit really predicts, arguing that great founders often pursue... Bessemer Venture Partners (Atlas) Article · ~12 min read A Brainstorming Framework for Aspiring Founders Adam Fisher
  12. Three college friends built Amagi into a company that runs a large share of American TV, and this episode has a segment on how... The Neon Show Podcast · ~60 min Inside the Mind of Baskar Subramanian, Co-Founder, Amagi Baskar Subramanian with Siddhartha Ahluwalia
  13. This directly separates insight from years of experience, which matters when you are told you lack the standard background.... Medium (Paul Asel) Essay · 8 min read Experience vs. Insight: What Really Makes a Successful Founder? Paul Asel
  14. The clearest explanation of the access gap, backed by data from real pitch rooms: investors ask women prevention questions... TED Video · 16 min The Real Reason Female Entrepreneurs Get Less Funding Dana Kanze
  15. The written, citable version of the Kanze research, useful when you want the study details and the exact reframing tactic on... Harvard Business Review Article · 9 min read Male and Female Entrepreneurs Get Asked Different Questions by VCs (and It Affects How Much Funding They Get) Dana Kanze, Laura Huang, Mark Conley, E. Tory Higgins
  16. A YC partner's direct notes to women founders on self doubt, asking for what you need, and not shrinking the ambition. It... Y Combinator Essay · 7 min read From Self-Doubt to Starting Up: Words of Wisdom for Women Founders Anu Hariharan
  17. Yin built a fund specifically for founders without the usual pedigree, and her blog is the most tactical writing on raising... elizabethyin.com Article · Blog archive Tactical Fundraising by Elizabeth Yin Elizabeth Yin
  18. A practical book on the inner game of being underestimated: self doubt, harsh feedback, and playing smaller than your ambition.... taramohr.com Book · 304 pages Playing Big: Practical Wisdom for Women Who Want to Speak Up, Create, and Lead Tara Mohr
  19. The reported history of women who built and funded Silicon Valley while being written out of its story, told through four... Penguin Random House Book · 304 pages Alpha Girls: The Women Upstarts Who Took On Silicon Valley's Male Culture Julian Guthrie
  20. Indian founders in aviation, healthcare, and consumer hardware, all male dominated and trust heavy, on how they earned... YourStory (HerStory) Article · 6 min read Women Building High-Trust Businesses in Male-Dominated Sectors YourStory (HerStory)
  21. A concise, practical list on the access side of the problem: owning your story, building investor relationships early,... PwC Article · 7 min read Five Ways Women Founders Can Overcome the Challenges Faced When Fundraising PwC
  22. A data grounded annual read on where women's funding actually stands, from a fund that only backs women. It keeps your... Female Founders Fund Article · 12 min read 2025 Review of Funding for Female Founders Female Founders Fund
  23. 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
  24. 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

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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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