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. Kao's bullseye model gives you a visual way to think about exactly the ongoing read your short answer describes: your core... weskao.com Essay Concentric circles of customers: focus on people who already share your worldviews Wes Kao
  2. Video Understanding the Jobs to Be Done (the milkshake story) Clayton Christensen
  3. Chargebee's early ICP was startlingly narrow: founder-developers at zero-to-one companies making a build versus buy call, not... SeedToScale (Sequoia Surge) Article How Chargebee made its first million Shekhar Kirani
  4. This article is squarely about treating the ICP as an ongoing read rather than a document you write once and file away, which... Clarify Article Why your ideal customer profile should evolve with your startup Clarify
  5. This is a practical, checklist style piece on diagnosing whether your ICP is actually too broad in the first place, before you... DevriX Article How Narrow Ideal Customer Profiles Can Expand Revenue DevriX
  6. Zerodha's founders built specifically for the self-directed retail trader who was fed up with high commissions and clunky... Forbes India Article Bootstrapping to a Billion (Zerodha founder story) Forbes India
  7. This is the origin of the '100 people who love you beats a million who sort of like you' idea that underlies your whole short... Inc. Article Airbnb's Brian Chesky: If 100 People Love Your Product, That's Enough Salvador Rodriguez
  8. This piece attacks the exact mistake domain experts make: describing a market by job title or industry instead of by the... A Smart Bear Essay Your target market isn't demographic Jason Cohen
  9. This conversation walks through the difference between a persona and a real segment, and why founders default to segmenting by... Lenny's Podcast Podcast April Dunford on product positioning, segmentation, and optimizing your sales process Lenny's Podcast
  10. Coelen explains why founders can't segment their market from a desk using industry reports, they have to talk to real customers... Doctor Market Fit Essay How most founders get their beachhead wrong Jeroen Coelen
  11. This piece gives you a checklist for evaluating whether a slice of your industry is a genuine beachhead: urgent problem,... Doctor Market Fit Essay What makes a great beachhead market? Jeroen Coelen
  12. This is a practical, tactical follow up to the ICP essays above: once you have named your narrow slice, here is how you... A Smart Bear Essay How do I get my first few customers? Jason Cohen
  13. This deck lays out how consumer investors actually think about a target user, closer to a specific behavior and context than a... andrewchen.com Essay · 30 min read (slide deck) Consumer startups are awesome, and here's what I'm looking for at a16z Andrew Chen
  14. Bier has built and sold two viral consumer apps by deliberately starting with a narrow, high urgency audience like teenagers... Lenny's Newsletter Podcast · 45 min How to consistently go viral: Nikita Bier's playbook for winning at consumer apps Nikita Bier, interviewed by Lenny Rachitsky
  15. This is Bier's own written version of his consumer playbook, useful as a quick reference you can screenshot and revisit. It is... X (Twitter) Thread · 5 min read Nikita Bier's thread on building consumer social apps Nikita Bier
  16. This framework treats persona as one of four levers, alongside problem, promise, and product, that you pull when growth or... First Round Article · 20 min read Levels of PMF First Round Capital
  17. This is the direct counterargument to our short answer, and reading it will sharpen your thinking either way. It walks through... Harvard Business Review Article · 8 min read When "Scratch Your Own Itch" Is Dangerous Advice for Entrepreneurs N. Taylor Thompson
  18. This article names the exact cognitive bias behind the red flag you're asking about: assuming other people think, want, and... Nielsen Norman Group Article · 8 min read You Are Not the User: The False-Consensus Effect Raluca Budiu
  19. A founder's first-person account of the exact failure mode in your question: mistaking an audience of people who look and think... Indie Hackers Thread · 8 min read Your build-in-public audience is not your market. I learned the difference the slow way. Indie Hackers
  20. This is the counter case, marketplaces where demand was actually the constrained side and defining the ideal buyer first is... Lenny's Newsletter Article Demand driving supply Brian Rothenberg
  21. Lauzier has run marketplace growth at Lyft, Thumbtack and Reforge, and this conversation gets into how a precise definition on... Lenny's Podcast Podcast · ~1 hr How marketplaces win: Liquidity, growth levers, quality, and more Benjamin Lauzier
  22. Evans and Schmalensee studied why most attempts at multisided platforms fail, and a recurring reason is founders never nailed a... Harvard Business Review Press Book Matchmakers: The New Economics of Multisided Platforms David S. Evans, Richard Schmalensee
  23. This forces you to decide how you will define and select your supply side, not just that you should. It compares three... Andreessen Horowitz Article Marketplace Supply Strategy: Comprehensive, Exclusive, or Curated Casey Winters, Anne Lewandowski
  24. This warns you against a specific mistake that happens after you correctly anchor on supply: building every feature suppliers... Reforge Blog Article The Supply Features Trap Of Marketplaces Gilad Horev

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

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