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.

Written by a working copywriter who tracks her own reply and conversion rates on real cold pitches, so the advice comes with... Copyhackers Article How to Cold Pitch Effectively and Ethically Bree Weber
Lemlist sends huge volumes of cold email through its platform and publishes some of the more specific length and... lemlist Article Outreach secrets: How to increase your reply rates lemlist
This is the exact question our short answer addresses, asked and answered directly by a B2B investor and operator who reads a... SaaStr Article Dear SaaStr: Is It OK To Have a 5% Response Rate in My Personalized Cold Emails? Jason Lemkin
This one flips the script: a CIO who actually receives startup outreach explains what makes him respond versus delete. Hearing... The Neon Show Podcast What Startups Can Learn from a $1.7B Co. Chief Information Officer (ft. Karthik Chakkarapani, Zuora) Karthik Chakkarapani (guest)
A clear, simply written framing of the reply-rate tiers, broken, average, good, elite, that is easy to hold your own numbers... Apollo.io Article What Is a Good Reply Rate for Cold Outreach in 2026? Apollo.io
This is an actual draft cold email, picked apart line by line by other founders in the comments, which makes it more useful... Indie Hackers Thread · 10 min read The Cold Email I'd Send to Get My First 10 Customers Indie Hackers
Short, practical, and written for a founder with nothing to show yet, which is the exact reader we have in mind. It is written... Hustle Fund Article · 8 min read 5 Cold Email Suggestions from an Expert Hustle Fund
A founder walks through the actual iteration: a first version of the email that flopped, the specific objections they heard... Starter Story Article · 10 min read How We Got Hundreds of Customers Through Creative Cold Emailing Starter Story
A practical piece written for the Indian startup context, with the FreeCharge origin story as its centerpiece: an early cold... YourStory Article · 8 min read The Art of Cold Emailing: Every Startup's Gateway to Marketing YourStory
Barry documents personally emailing bloggers he had researched individually, offering to migrate their email lists by hand for... Nathan Barry Essay · 15 min read Growing ConvertKit to $5,020 in Monthly Recurring Revenue Nathan Barry
Fred Wilson has read tens of thousands of cold and warm pitches as an investor, and this short post is his honest account of... AVC (Fred Wilson's blog) Essay · ~3 min read How to Get Your Emails Read Fred Wilson
Steli Efti has coached hundreds of early-stage founders through outbound sales, and this free guide states plainly that no one... Close Book · 31 lessons, roughly an hour SaaS Sales for Startup Founders Steli Efti
Sajith Pai, a VC at Blume Ventures, wrote publicly about being put off when a founder outsources their own pitch email to a... LinkedIn Thread · 2 min read Always puzzled when I get pitch emails cold from a non-founder Sajith Pai
Video Cold Email is Changing Alex Berman
This is the closest thing to a canonical answer to your exact fear: writing to someone who seems too important to reply to you.... Harvard Business Review Article Tips for Cold-Emailing Intimidatingly Powerful People Peter Sims
Josh Braun's 4T framework (Trigger, Think, Third-party credibility, Talk) is a repeatable structure for writing an email that... Josh Braun Article Let's Write a Good 4-T Cold Email Josh Braun
Jen Abel has coached hundreds of early-stage founders through their first enterprise deals, and this episode is unusually... Lenny's Podcast, with Jen Abel Podcast "Sell the alpha, not the feature": The enterprise sales playbook for $1M to $10M ARR Jen Abel
A direct answer to a founder asking almost exactly your question. Lemkin's fix is blunt: fewer, better-targeted emails to the... SaaStr Article Dear SaaStr: Cold Emails Are Not Working for My B2B SaaS Startup. What Am I Doing Wrong? Jason Lemkin
Video I Sent 10 Million Cold Emails - These 5 Scripts Made the Most Alex Berman
Written from the receiving end by someone who gets a lot of cold email, this lays out exactly what makes an ask easy to say yes... Kalzumeus Software Essay · 10 min read Standing Invitation Patrick McKenzie (patio11)
Direct and specific about the ask problem: it points out that asking to 'jump on a call' in the very first email is one of the... Hunter.io Blog Article · 8 min read 8 Cold Email Tips to Improve Your Next Campaign Hunter.io Blog
A first-person account of what actually happened across thousands of sends, rather than a generic best-practices list. Useful... Hunter.io Blog Article · 9 min read 5 Lessons I Learned After Sending 12K Cold Emails Irina Maltseva
Video · ~12 min How to Write Emails That Get Opened Ramit Sethi
An investor walks through, line by line, the actual cold email that got him to say yes to what became a unicorn investment.... The Twenty Minute VC (20VC) Podcast · ~45 min The Contentful Memo: Point Nine's Christoph Janz on the Cold Email That Led to a Unicorn Investment Harry Stebbings

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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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