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 two minute primer you can watch before a team meeting to get everyone aligned on what a persona is for. Useful as the thing... Nielsen Norman Group Video · 2 min What Are Personas and Why Should I Care? Kim Flaherty
  2. A deeper follow-up conversation on the same theory, with more of the reasoning behind why circumstance matters more than... HBR IdeaCast Podcast · ~25 min Revisiting Jobs to Be Done with Clayton Christensen Clayton Christensen
  3. Video · ~35 min Sales Safari Demo, La Conf Paris 2013 Amy Hoy
  4. Written by a company that built its CRM specifically for SMB focused sales teams, this is blunt about what changes when your... Close blog Article · 15 min read SMB Sales Strategy: How to Sell to SMB Customers Close
  5. Video · ~10 min ET Now Interview with Mr. Harsh Pokharna, Founder of OkCredit Harsh Pokharna
  6. Blume pulled lessons from vertical SaaS companies that succeeded by narrowing to one workflow within one type of small... Blume Ventures Essay · 20 min read The Vertical SaaS Secret Playsheet Blume Ventures
  7. This is close to a direct answer to your exact question, written by a product discovery coach who works with B2B teams every... Product Talk Essay Ask Teresa: What if Your Buyers Aren't Your Users? Teresa Torres
  8. Yoon gives you three concrete tactics for the exact gap in your question: reaching a buyer who is not the one feeling the daily... Harvard Business Review Article How to Market a Product When Your Buyer Isn't Your User Eddie Yoon
  9. Written for exactly the founder-market moment you are in: a developer or junior employee uses your product, someone above them... Founder Labs (Substack) Essay How to Sell if Your User is not the Buyer Nate Ritter
  10. Rothman untangles three roles founders often blur together: buyer, user, and customer (the one who signs a contract but never... jrothman.com Essay Who to Satisfy? Differentiate Buyers, Users, and Customers for Effective Product Decisions Johanna Rothman
  11. This is the product-led growth counter-argument to old-school enterprise sales: design and market for the user first, and let... OpenView Article Why You Should Sell to Users, Not Buyers: A Product-Led Approach to Marketing Ashley Murphy
  12. If your answer is going to be 'follow the money,' this gives you the vocabulary sales teams use to actually find that person.... MEDDICC Article The Economic Buyer MEDDICC
  13. This episode is a direct case study in the buyer/user split: developers are your user and increasingly your champion, but... a16z Podcast Podcast Selling to Developers Andreessen Horowitz
  14. Video How to nail your product positioning April Dunford
  15. Video Building a Global SaaS Empire: Freshworks Founder & CEO Girish Mathrubootham on His Biggest Bets Girish Mathrubootham
  16. Postman, founded in Bangalore, is a clean example of designing entirely for the individual developer-user first and only later... Stack Overflow Blog Article Postman's journey and unlocking the power of APIs Abhinav Asthana (interview)
  17. This worksheet is built for exactly your situation: choosing one narrow persona to start with when you could plausibly serve... reifyworks.com Template The Initial Ideal Customer Profile (IICP) Worksheet Reify
  18. Shapiro's method, asking 100 people representative of your guessed audience whether they'd put down a cash deposit, is a fast,... julian.com Article · about 10 min read Market Pull (Startup Handbook) Julian Shapiro
  19. Godin's short post makes the strongest case for going smaller on purpose: pick the smallest group you can delight completely... Seth's Blog Essay · 5 min read The Minimum Viable Audience Seth Godin
  20. This thread is founders arguing out this exact question in public, with real numbers from real small businesses about when a... Indie Hackers Thread · 10 min read Is it possible to be "too niche"? Indie Hackers community
  21. Kushwaha built Bluestone in Indian jewellery e-commerce, a category everyone assumed was too niche and infrequent to fund a... Prime Venture Partners Podcast Podcast · ~50 min Reasons to Buy, Right Attribution Models & CAC/LTV Fallacy with Gaurav Singh Kushwaha, Founder & CEO Bluestone Prime Venture Partners, with Gaurav Singh Kushwaha
  22. Wang argues that the TAM slide investors ask for is often meaningless because Uber and Airbnb both started with tiny quoted... SaaStr Podcast · ~35 min SaaStr Podcast #227: Alexandr Wang, Founder & CEO @ Scale, on Why TAM In The Traditional Sense Barely Matters SaaStr, with Alexandr Wang
  23. Zerodha started as a boutique brokerage aimed narrowly at active day traders, a niche the rest of the Indian broking industry... Z-Connect by Zerodha Article · 10 min read Nithin: Zero to Zerodha Nithin Kamath
  24. This is the sharpest possible answer to the second half of your question: what to do about the people who show up wanting to... Y Combinator Essay Users You Don't Want Michael Seibel

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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