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 short, free primer straight from the person who coined the term, useful when someone on your team thinks an MVP just means a... Lean Startup Co. Article · ~8 min read What Is an MVP? Eric Ries Explains Eric Ries In 3 answers
  2. Video · ~4 min The Original Dropbox Demo Video (MVP) Drew Houston In 3 answers
  3. A builder to builder account from someone who ran the test on their own idea, with the honest distinction that a landing page... Indie Hackers Article · ~8 min read Validate your idea with a landing page before you validate your product James Fleischmann In 3 answers
  4. GV's method for building a realistic facade and testing it with five target customers in a single week, which is the interview... GV (Google Ventures) Article · ~15 min read plus resources The Design Sprint Jake Knapp In 3 answers
  5. Video · ~10 min Product-market fit with Michael Seibel Michael Seibel In 3 answers
  6. This piece makes a sharp point, if traction is weak you are probably not a ten percent tweak away but a two hundred percent... First Round Review Article · ~15 min read The Pivot to Product-Market Fit First Round Review In 3 answers
  7. Validation in B2B bleeds straight into early sales, and this answers the real questions founders hit when they start selling to... First Round Review Article · 18 min read The Most Common Go-to-Market Questions This Expert Gets from Early Founders Emery Rosansky (First Round Review) In 3 answers
  8. Once you decide supply is the harder side to get, this piece is the tactical playbook for signing up those first suppliers by... Lenny's Newsletter Article · ~25 min read How to Kickstart and Scale a Marketplace Business (Part 3): Growing Initial Supply Lenny Rachitsky In 3 answers
  9. This lays out a cheap, staged way to test whether an idea has real pull before you build anything, which maps directly onto... First Round Review Article · ~20 min read The Minimum Viable Testing Process for Evaluating Startup Ideas Gagan Biyani In 3 answers
  10. If you do not want to read the whole book, this is Ries in his own words defining the MVP in a few pages. His guiding rule is... Eric Ries (Medium) Article The Minimum Viable Product: A Primer Eric Ries In 3 answers
  11. When you cannot easily reach users, cheap tests can substitute for some of the hard questions, and pretotyping gives you the... Pretotyping.org Tool Pretotype It: Make Sure You Are Building the Right It Alberto Savoia In 3 answers
  12. Torres makes the single most important move concrete: instead of asking what people generally do, ask them to tell you about a... Product Talk Article · 15 min read Story-Based Customer Interviews Uncover Much-Needed Context Teresa Torres In 3 answers
  13. A short, clear framing of the difference between a nice to have and a must have. It helps you honestly ask whether people would... Forbes Article · ~7 min read Is Your Startup Building a Vitamin or a Painkiller? George Deeb In 3 answers
  14. A short research backed breakdown of how three marketplace giants solved the cold start problem by hand. You will see that all... Harvard Business School Working Knowledge Article · 8 min read How Uber, Airbnb, and Etsy Attracted Their First 1,000 Customers Michael Blanding In 3 answers
  15. Real benchmark data from founders on what a waitlist actually converts to paid, so you can calibrate expectations against your... Lenny's Newsletter Article · 10 min read What is good waitlist conversion? Lenny Rachitsky In 3 answers
  16. A short, honest essay arguing that cold outbound is both a strong demand signal and a skill you will need anyway. It counters... Pascal Unger (pascalsnotes.substack.com) Essay · ~10 min read Cold Outbound is Under-Appreciated Pascal Unger In 3 answers
  17. Written specifically for engineers who would rather ship code than sell. McKenzie, a developer who bootstrapped his own... Kalzumeus Essay · approx 20 min read Marketing Software, For People Who Would Rather Be Building It Patrick McKenzie In 3 answers
  18. The one thing you cannot outsource is staying on top of your first conversations, and this is a free CRM that lives inside... streak.com Tool Streak CRM for Gmail Streak In 3 answers
  19. If your customers run their business on WhatsApp, being reachable there yourself is the point. The free Business app gives you... Meta / WhatsApp (Google Play) Tool · Free app WhatsApp Business app WhatsApp In 3 answers
  20. A short, direct conversation between two founders on when cold email works, who to send to, and how to write the subject line... The Startup Chat with Steli and Hiten Podcast · 18 min The Startup Chat, Episode 014: Cold Email Steli Efti and Hiten Shah In 3 answers
  21. Video · 48 min How to Build Products Users Love Kevin Hale In 3 answers
  22. Cagan draws a sharp line that saves founders real pain: the thing you use to test a hypothesis is an experiment, not a product... Silicon Valley Product Group Essay · 6 min read Minimum Viable Product Marty Cagan In 3 answers
  23. This is the practical, step-by-step manual for the Lean Startup ideas, built around the one-page Lean Canvas and a system for... LeanFoundry Book · 240 pages Running Lean: Iterate from Plan A to a Plan That Works Ash Maurya In 3 answers
  24. A clear, jargon-free explainer that corrects the most common misuse of the term, where teams ship a broken product and call it... Nielsen Norman Group Article · 8 min read Minimum Viable Product (MVP): Definition Sara Paul In 3 answers

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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

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