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. Agarwal describes how OYO had to define its ideal hotel partner precisely, small, underperforming, willing to be upgraded,... SeedToScale (Accel India) Podcast Ritesh Agarwal on Building OYO, the Decacorn of India's Hotel Industry Ritesh Agarwal, hosted by Anand Daniel
  2. This traces Urban Company's earliest days recruiting and defining their first service professionals in one city before... SeedToScale Podcast Untold Seed Stories: The First 500 Days of Urban Company Abhiraj Bhal, hosted by Abhinav Chaturvedi
  3. Gebbia tells the founding story from the side of the person actually going door to door defining who their first hosts should... How I Built This with Guy Raz, NPR Podcast · ~45 min Airbnb: Joe Gebbia Joe Gebbia, hosted by Guy Raz
  4. Podcast Anjali Sardana on Obsession, $11M Funding & Building Pronto at 23 Anjali Sardana
  5. Elena Verna draws the line between a broad product usage ICP and a narrower sales ICP, and shows how to build both from... Elena Verna, Elena's Growth Scoop Essay I'd Segment That... Elena Verna, Elena's Growth Scoop
  6. This explains exactly how to build the retention and behavioral cohorts your short answer relies on: grouping customers by... Amplitude Article Cohort Retention Analysis: Reduce Churn Using Customer Data Amplitude
  7. This lays out how to bucket users into occasional, core and power tiers by actual product usage, which is the mechanical... Mixpanel Article User segmentation: A guide to understanding your customers Mixpanel
  8. This guide explains how to read a retention curve across different customer cohorts to spot which segment is actually sticking... Reforge Article Evaluate retention cohorts Reforge
  9. This blueprint walks through analyzing your existing customer base with a structured framework to find the patterns that signal... Winning by Design Template How to Uncover Your ICP Winning by Design
  10. Supan's High Expectation Customer concept adds a layer your data sort alone won't catch: among your best fit customers, find... Julie Supan, First Round Review Article What I Learned From Developing Branding for Airbnb, Dropbox and Thumbtack Julie Supan, First Round Review
  11. This is a clean, practical writeup of the same 40% test methodology, with more detail on how to segment survey respondents... Reforge Article Measure and improve product/market fit with the 40% test Reforge
  12. This directly names the trap in your situation: free users are not your ICP, and your real conversion math (about 1 percent)... A Smart Bear (Jason Cohen) Essay · 12 min read Reframing 'Freemium' by charging the marketing department Jason Cohen
  13. Dunford's own show applies her positioning framework to live founder situations, including cases where a product is priced or... positioning.show Podcast · ~30 min per episode Positioning with April Dunford April Dunford
  14. A practical, runnable four-question survey you can send your current audience this week to find out, empirically, whether they... SurveyMonkey Tool · 10 min read How To Use The Van Westendorp Price Sensitivity Meter SurveyMonkey
  15. If your honest read is that this audience will never pay directly, Anderson's book is the map of the models that work anyway:... Chris Anderson Book · ~300 pages Free: The Future of a Radical Price Chris Anderson
  16. A concrete, worked example of exactly the fix in your short answer: the person who feels the pain (student, teacher) is often... Medium Essay · 8 min read Selling to Schools Is B(to)S Earnest Sweat
  17. Rampell lays out how a company can sell into a business while quietly building direct loyalty with the end consumer inside it,... Andreessen Horowitz Essay · 10 min read On B2B2C Business Models Alex Rampell
  18. Dunford makes the case that positioning and ICP are the same decision seen from two angles: who you are for determines what you... aprildunford.com Essay An Introduction to Positioning April Dunford
  19. Poyar's framing that you need a rough early customer profile before you can earn a real ICP is a useful corrective for founders... Growth Unhinged Article How to build your GTM strategy from scratch Kyle Poyar
  20. A practical look at how Intercom itself built customer segments across a growing team, useful because it shows the operational... Intercom Article Who's who: Understanding your business with customer segmentation Intercom
  21. Video Positioning in Crowded Markets: How to Make Any Offering Obviously Awesome April Dunford
  22. A shorter, text companion to the podcast above, useful if you want to skim the key lessons on customer focus and enterprise GTM... YourStory Article Whatfix CEO Khadim Batti shares lessons on building a global enterprise SaaS business YourStory
  23. The news report of the Union Cabinet approving the second ₹10,000 crore Fund of Funds for Startups on 14 February 2026, with... Entrepreneur India Article · 4 min read Startup India Fund of Funds 2.0 Receives Cabinet Approval, ₹10,000Cr Corpus to Aid Startups Entrepreneur Staff
  24. A legal analysis of the 2024 rule changes that let a foreign holding company merge into its Indian subsidiary, the companies... IndiaCorpLaw Article · 12 min read India's Reverse-Flip Wave: Regulatory Breakthroughs and Enabling Frameworks Dev Goyal and Manas Divetia

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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