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. Written for small builders, this walks through real cases (Reddit, Twitter, and Meta API changes) where a pricing or policy... Micro SaaS Bytes (Medium) Article Platform Dependency Risks: What Indie Hackers Must Know Mohit Rathore
  2. An investor's short, blunt take on why platform risk makes a company harder to back and how founders can reduce it. It helps... itamarnovick.com Article Startup anti-pattern #3: platform risk Simeon Simeonov
  3. The full, sourced account of how a single API pricing change killed thriving third party apps like Apollo in a matter of weeks.... Wikipedia Article Reddit API controversy Wikipedia
  4. This is the strategic backbone: how platform businesses take power from traditional pipeline businesses by orchestrating a... Harvard Business Review Article Pipelines, Platforms, and the New Rules of Strategy Marshall Van Alstyne, Geoffrey Parker, Sangeet Paul Choudary
  5. A VC framework for choosing where to build, weighing talent, customers, capital and cost against the kind of company you are.... NFX Article Where To Build Your Startup James Currier
  6. Lenny gathers how strong product people build intuition for what will work, which is really a method for reading signals and... Lenny's Newsletter Article How to develop product sense Lenny Rachitsky
  7. Video · ~20 min Delta 4 theory Kunal Shah
  8. Video 2,851 Miles (regulatory capture and startups) Bill Gurley
  9. This is the closest thing to a playbook for building where government sets the rules, drawn from real cases like 23andMe,... Penguin Random House Book Regulatory Hacking: A Playbook for Startups Evan Burfield with J.D. Harrison
  10. A tighter, spoken version of Burfield's thinking, useful if you want the core ideas in an hour instead of a full book. It walks... a16z Podcast Podcast The Art of the Regulatory Hack Andreessen Horowitz
  11. Omojola built inside two of the most regulated spaces there are, payments (Cash App) and healthcare (Carbon Health), and here... First Round Review Article Finding Startup Ideas and Building in Heavily-Regulated Spaces Ayo Omojola (First Round Review)
  12. This is the serious study behind the buzzwords, documenting how Uber, Airbnb, and Tesla treated changing the law as part of the... Southern California Law Review Essay Regulatory Entrepreneurship Elizabeth Pollman and Jordan M. Barry
  13. A short, readable interview with Elizabeth Pollman that distils the academic work into founder-sized takeaways. If the full... The Regulatory Review Article On Startups and Regulatory Entrepreneurship The Regulatory Review
  14. Blank pushes back on easy optimism and lays out why regulated markets are genuinely hard, which is the counterweight you need... Medium (Steve Blank) Article Even the Smartest VCs Sometimes Get it Wrong: Bill Gurley and Regulated Markets Steve Blank
  15. Coinbase built an entire company while the rules were unsettled, and Armstrong describes engaging regulators directly instead... a16z crypto Podcast Leading through uncertainty (with Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong) a16z crypto
  16. Before you can read a change as opportunity you need to know which rules even touch your business, and this is a plain-language... TechCrunch Article Startup Law A to Z: Regulatory Compliance Daniel McKenzie
  17. ONDC is a government-built shift that unbundles Indian e-commerce, and this piece maps where new companies can plug in across... Antler Article Unpacking the ONDC opportunity: India's next startup catalyst Antler
  18. The DPDP Act made data protection a legal duty for every Indian company from day one, and this piece is honest about both the... Inc42 Article As DPDPA Kicks In, Are Startups Ready For Privacy Compliance Burden? Shraddha Goled
  19. The account aggregator framework lets a person share verified financial data with consent, and Sahamati is the ecosystem hub... Sahamati Tool Sahamati (Account Aggregator ecosystem) Sahamati
  20. Sharad Sharma helped architect India Stack, ONDC, and account aggregators, so this conversation explains the intent behind the... The Neon Show Podcast Sharad Sharma on India's Digital Playbook, UPI's Rise and AI's Future The Neon Show (Siddhartha Ahluwalia)
  21. GST was a sweeping tax change, and ClearTax is the clearest case of a startup that read it as demand rather than disruption and... YourStory Article The Turning Point: How ClearTax rode the GST wave YourStory
  22. A short government explainer of the account aggregator system, useful if you want the concept before diving into Sahamati's... Invest India Article Account Aggregator: India's Next Digital Innovation Invest India
  23. Shireesh Joshi ran business at ONDC, so this conversation gives you the operator's view of what the network is trying to do and... Prime Venture Partners (via YourStory) Podcast Decoding ONDC with Chief Business Officer Shireesh Joshi Prime Venture Partners
  24. Woodbury studies exactly what you have free access to: how your generation actually behaves online and why. He breaks Gen Z... Digital Native (Rex Woodbury) Article · ~15 min read Gen Z Behaviors and The Consumer Renaissance Rex Woodbury

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
eChai Partner Brands The partnership →