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 concrete, honest breakdown of how founders actually pay their own bills while building, savings, a working partner,... FutureSight Ventures Article · ~1,800 words 7 Ways Founders Fund Their Personal Runway John Carbrey In 3 answers
  2. Most mentorship advice is vibes; this is evidence, First Round analyzed 100 real matches and distilled what separated the... First Round Review Article · long We Studied 100 Mentor-Mentee Matches, Here's What Makes Mentorship Work First Round Review In 3 answers
  3. The definitive essay on why place shapes ambition and what a startup hub actually gives you, 'an audience, and a funnel for... paulgraham.com Essay · medium Cities and Ambition Paul Graham In 3 answers
  4. A16z's framing of how modern enterprise software is sold: bottom-up product adoption layered with top-down sales, using... Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) Essay · ~15 min read Growth+Sales: The New Era of Enterprise Go-to-Market Peter Lauten & Martin Casado In 3 answers
  5. Freshworks sold its first customer (a school in Australia) four days after launch and grew to a NASDAQ IPO without a US sales... Freshworks, The Works Article · ~12 min read 7 Lessons from Building an India-Based Global SaaS Business Girish Mathrubootham (Freshworks) via The Works In 3 answers
  6. Sometimes the two ideas are a proxy for a deeper problem: you have no agreed way to make a call when you disagree. This HBR... Harvard Business Review Article · ~8 min read Cofounders Need to Learn How to (Productively) Disagree Evelyn Nam In 3 answers
  7. Andrew Chen ran rider growth at Uber and now invests at a16z, so this is the canonical breakdown of how marketplaces get off... andrewchen.com Essay · ~20 min read Required reading for marketplace startups: The 20 best essays Andrew Chen In 3 answers
  8. This is the cleanest short explanation of the two manual-first MVPs and, more importantly, how they differ, which is where most... Mind the Product Article · ~8 min read Wizard of Oz vs Concierge Testing: Behind the Curtain or Behind the Desk? Amanda White In 3 answers
  9. When you are building outside the big startup hubs, the honest question is not "what is the theory" but "what actually worked... Indie Hackers Article · ~15 min read Indie hackers share how they got their first 10, 100, and 1,000 customers James Fleischmann In 3 answers
  10. Video · ~30 min Fall in Love with the Problem, Not the Solution Uri Levine In 3 answers
  11. This is written by Visible, a platform that sits on the investor side of the table, so it explains bottom-up sizing the way a... Visible.vc Article · ~10 min read Bottom-Up Market Sizing: What It Is and How to Do It Angelina Graumann In 3 answers
  12. Gross ranked hundreds of startups (his own and others') across five factors, and timing came out on top, ahead of team, idea,... TED Video · ~7 min The single biggest reason why start-ups succeed Bill Gross In 3 answers
  13. This lays out both the top-down (start from a big industry number) and bottom-up (build up from your own price times likely... HubSpot Blog Article · ~12 min read TAM, SAM & SOM: What Do They Mean & How Do You Calculate Them? Clifford Chi In 3 answers
  14. When two cofounders disagree on how big the market is, the fastest way out is to stop arguing opinions and turn the... First Round Review Article · ~12 min read The 6 Decision-Making Frameworks That Help Startup Leaders Tackle Tough Calls First Round Review (featuring Elliot Shmukler) In 3 answers
  15. The Test Card is a one-page worksheet that forces a vague market-size belief into four fields: what we believe, how we will... Strategyzer Template · one-page worksheet Test Card Strategyzer (Alexander Osterwalder) In 3 answers
  16. This is written by an early-stage Indian investor (founder of Gemba Capital), so you get the assessment from the exact side of... Adith Podhar (Gemba Capital) Essay · ~12 min read How to Assess Founder Market Fit: A Framework Adith Podhar In 3 answers
  17. Reading 20 transcripts in your head is where patterns get lost. Dovetail lets you import interview transcripts, tag the moments... Dovetail Tool · Ongoing tool, free tier available Dovetail Dovetail In 3 answers
  18. Reading about the switch interview is one thing, watching one run live is another. Bob Moesta and Chris Spiek interview an... Business of Software Video Uncovering the Jobs to Be Done (with a live switch interview) Bob Moesta and Chris Spiek In 3 answers
  19. If live calls drain you, Clarity lets you watch how real people actually use your product without ever getting on a call. You... Microsoft Tool Microsoft Clarity Microsoft In 3 answers
  20. Once you launch, feedback arrives scattered across email, calls, Slack, and support tickets, and it quietly disappears. Canny... Canny Tool · Free plan, paid tiers from $19/mo Canny: Customer Feedback Management Canny In 3 answers
  21. Video · Talk, roughly 30 minutes David Rusenko: How To Find Product Market Fit David Rusenko (Weebly co-founder) In 3 answers
  22. This is a ready-to-run interview script written for the exact moment you have an idea but nothing to show, so a non-technical... Deploy Empathy Template · One page, full script Customer Interview Script: Discovery Phase (before you've built anything) Michele Hansen (Deploy Empathy) In 3 answers
  23. A dominant player with 80 percent share is almost always over-serving its most profitable customers and quietly ignoring the... Harvard Business Review Essay · About 20 minute read What Is Disruptive Innovation? Clayton M. Christensen, Michael E. Raynor, and Rory McDonald In 3 answers
  24. Sajith Pai is an India VC, and he tells on himself here: he passed on WhiteHat Jr. by trusting a headline India TAM number,... sajithpai.com Essay TAM: Notes & Thoughts Sajith Pai In 3 answers

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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