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. Visible builds tools for founder-investor communication, so this guide is oriented around what actually gets a reply rather... Visible.vc Article How to Cold Email Investors in 2026 (Templates + Tips) Visible.vc
  2. Streak is a Gmail-based CRM built for exactly this workflow: sending outreach and tracking whether it's actually being opened.... Streak Tool Streak: How to Write a Cold Email to an Investor Streak
  3. Translates the DPDP Act's consent rules into what actually changes for a business, not a legal treatise. It is the piece to... India Briefing (Dezan Shira & Associates) Article · ~8 min read Understanding India's DPDP Consent Management Rules for Businesses India Briefing (Dezan Shira & Associates)
  4. One paragraph of the actual regulation, the one that says direct marketing can count as a legitimate interest under GDPR. When... gdpr-info.eu Article · 1 page GDPR Recital 47: Legitimate Interest and Direct Marketing gdpr-info.eu
  5. The regulator's own explanation of what a compliant commercial email looks like in the US, including the part founders skip:... Federal Trade Commission (FTC) Article CAN-SPAM Act: A Compliance Guide for Business Federal Trade Commission (FTC)
  6. The UK regulator's own walkthrough of the three-part test (purpose, necessity, balancing) that decides whether you can cold... UK Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) Article When Can We Rely on Legitimate Interests? UK Information Commissioner's Office (ICO)
  7. A fill-in-the-blanks worksheet for documenting why your cold outreach counts as a legitimate interest, before a regulator or an... UK Information Commissioner's Office (ICO) Tool Legitimate Interests Assessment (LIA) Template UK Information Commissioner's Office (ICO)
  8. Written by a company that sells a cold email tool, so it is pragmatic rather than legalistic: what to put in your first email... Hunter.io Article · ~6 min read How to Do Cold Emailing After the GDPR Hunter.io
  9. The single-page comparison table you want the moment your outreach list spans India, the US, the EU, and a couple of other... Overloop Article · ~7 min read Is Cold Email Illegal? Country-by-Country Legal Guide Overloop
  10. A real founder community arguing, in public, about where cold outreach tips into being annoying: templated openers, I loved... Indie Hackers Thread Indie Hackers, Stop Sending Cold Emails David Delahunty (poster)
  11. A one-page cheat sheet you can keep open while you write, built to stop you from reaching for the generic first line under... Josh Braun Template · 1 page Cold Email First Sentence Cheat Sheet Josh Braun
  12. This is the article whose title is basically your question, and it answers it directly: find one real point of connection, say... Close Article · 10 min read Cold Emailing: Finding the Balance Between Personalization and Scale Samuel Szuchan
  13. This gives you an actual repeatable process (research, write, move on) instead of vague advice to do your homework, which is... Lavender Article · 8 min read How to Build a Cold Email Personalization Process Will Allred
  14. Lavender scores your draft in real time and flags the lines that read as generic, which is a useful outside check on whether... Lavender Tool Lavender Lavender
  15. This is the chapter of the standard founder-led sales handbook that deals directly with cold email, and it gives you real... Holloway Book · 20 min read Founding Sales: Emailing Prospects Pete Kazanjy
  16. Joanna Wiebe gives you five real cold email structures for different situations, pitching a service, quoting someone's own... Copyhackers Template · 12 min read How to Write a Cold Email: 5 Templates from a Pro Copywriter Joanna Wiebe
  17. The author names the exact failure mode our short answer warns against, calling most personalized cold email mail merge with a... Indie Hackers Thread · 6 min read Your Cold Emails Aren't Personal, Here's Proof (And How We Fixed It) Virgil Nelson
  18. A marketer at Toggl walks through the actual cold emails that turned into 150,000 visits and 60,000 signups, mostly by pitching... Medium Article · 10 min read 10 Cold Email Tips I Used to Get 60,000 App Signups Dunja Lazić
  19. Video How I Write Cold Emails That Get 15%+ Response Rate YouTube (Smartlead)
  20. The project itself, an agent that researches a person then drafts a first line, is less important than the comment thread,... Hacker News Thread · 5 min read Show HN: I Built an Agent to Write Personalized Cold Email Opener Hacker News
  21. Postmark is an email delivery company, so this is a working list from people who watch inboxes for a living, not a generic... Postmark Article 13 reasons why your emails go into the spam folder (and what you can do about it) Postmark
  22. Spam complaints are the signal that actually poisons a domain, more than any single email landing in a spam folder. This piece... Postmark Article How to reduce and fix email spam complaints Postmark
  23. Mailgun is one of the infrastructure providers that actually sends the mail, so this is a hands-on, technically accurate... Mailgun Article How to authenticate your email for better delivery rates Mailgun
  24. HubSpot sends a genuinely enormous volume of email and publishes what they tell their own customers to do to stay out of spam.... HubSpot Knowledge Base Article Improve email deliverability HubSpot Knowledge Base

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 →