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 practical rulebook for your actual question. It draws the line between shipping (code deployed) and launching... Lenny's Wiki Article Feature Launches Lenny's Wiki
  2. Two former Amazon VPs explain the PR/FAQ method: writing the press release before you build anything, for far more initiatives... St. Martin's Press Book · ~350 pages Working Backwards: Insights, Stories, and Secrets from Inside Amazon Colin Bryar, Bill Carr
  3. Holiday's core argument is that growth hackers don't bolt marketing onto a finished product, they build it into the product and... Portfolio Book · ~176 pages Growth Hacker Marketing: A Primer on the Future of PR, Marketing, and Advertising Ryan Holiday
  4. Michael Seibel lays out a concrete process for shipping as a small team, including deciding on an actual release schedule and... Y Combinator Blog Article How To Build Product As A Small Startup Michael Seibel
  5. This gives you a simple tier system, from a major launch down to a minor one, so you can decide how much noise each thing you... Medium Article The Launch Tier System That Transforms Product Teams Aakash Gupta
  6. Julian Shapiro argues that growth should be designed into the product itself rather than bolted on afterward, so every new... julian.com Article Startup Handbook: Product-Led Acquisition Julian Shapiro
  7. Ries makes the exact distinction our answer rests on: a product launch (making it available) and a marketing launch (making... Startup Lessons Learned (Eric Ries) Essay · 10 min read Don't launch Eric Ries
  8. Godin names the exact failure mode our answer warns about: work that could ship but does not, dressed up as caution. It is... Seth's Blog Essay · 3 min read Project Resistance Seth Godin
  9. A short, sharp distinction that names your exact problem: meeting a real spec is craft, chasing an ever-shifting ideal is... Seth's Blog Essay · 2 min read Perfect is not the same as perfectionism Seth Godin
  10. Clear separates what's optimal from what's actually needed to begin, which is useful when you keep waiting for the landing page... jamesclear.com Essay · 6 min read The Power of Imperfect Starts James Clear
  11. 37signals' own internal rules for when something is done enough to ship, written by a team that has shipped products for over... Basecamp Article Seven Shipping Principles Basecamp
  12. This explains, with the classic committee-and-bikeshed example, exactly why founders fuss over fonts and micro-copy instead of... Effectiviology Article Bikeshedding and the Law of Triviality: Why People Focus on Minor Issues Effectiviology
  13. The actual research behind the claim that a stranger judges your page in seconds, not minutes: visitors form a gut reaction in... Google Research Article Users love simple and familiar designs: why websites need to make a great first impression Javier Bargas-Avila
  14. This is the actual psychology behind your short answer: you overestimate how much other people notice and track you, because... Psychology Today Article · ~7 min All Eyes on Us: The Spotlight Effect Psychology Today
  15. Linear's cofounder makes the case for a running, dated log of what shipped, which turns constant announcing into infrastructure... Linear Essay · ~5 min Startups, Write Changelogs Karri Saarinen
  16. Intercom's own playbook for feature announcements is useful precisely because it treats every release as its own small... Intercom Article · ~10 min A guide to announcing your new features Intercom
  17. A price change is one of the clean, new reasons your short answer points to, and this is a practical, plainly written... Chris Lema Article · ~10 min How to announce pricing changes (without ruining everything) Chris Lema
  18. The longer conversation version of Vohra's waitlist thinking, where he walks through why manual onboarding capacity, not FOMO,... Lenny's Podcast Podcast · 1h 25m Superhuman's secret to success: Ignoring most customer feedback, manually onboarding every new user, obsessing over every detail, and positioning around a single attribute: speed Lenny Rachitsky
  19. Clubhouse's invite-only waitlist is the clearest cautionary tale of using scarcity as a growth trick rather than a real... Medium Article · 7 min read Creating the Illusion of Exclusivity: The Story of Clubhouse Dan DeSimone
  20. Cialdini's chapters on scarcity are the underlying psychology behind why a waitlist feels persuasive at all, and why that... Amazon Book · Book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, Revised Edition Robert Cialdini
  21. CRED launched invite-only, restricted to people with a credit score above 750, and turned that restriction into both a real... Forbes India Article · 8 min read Inside Cred's growth strategy Manu Balachandran
  22. This short essay explains why fancy language in a launch post reads as a warning sign to your reader, since ornate writing... Paul Graham Essay · 5 min read Write Simply Paul Graham
  23. HN's own posting guidelines tell you plainly what a technical, skeptical audience wants from a launch post: no editorializing,... Y Combinator Article · 5 min read Hacker News Guidelines Y Combinator
  24. Nathan Barry walks through the real, unpolished early drafts of the ConvertKit landing page and how a copywriter's feedback... Nathan Barry Article · 20 min read Step-By-Step Landing Page Copywriting Nathan Barry

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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