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. Once you are convinced you want an owned list, you need somewhere to actually put it, and Beehiiv is a straightforward place to... beehiiv.com Tool Beehiiv Beehiiv In 2 answers
  2. The essay tells you why to own your audience and the tool gives you somewhere to put it, but this is the piece that covers the... Newsletter Operator Article The MAGIC formula that converts social followers into email subscribers J. Matthew McGarry In 2 answers
  3. This is the platform a founder graduates to once a free WhatsApp or Discord group starts breaking down and they need courses,... circle.so Tool · Pricing page, quick scan Circle Pricing Circle In 2 answers
  4. Richard Millington has spent years advising organizations on community strategy, and his core argument here is the exact... FeverBee Essay · About an 8 minute read The 'Community Everywhere' Era Has Arrived: Don't Waste This Opportunity Richard Millington In 2 answers
  5. The three People and Company founders built communities for Nike, Substack, and others, and they organize the whole book around... Stripe Press Book · ~180 pages Get Together: How to Build a Community With Your People Bailey Richardson, Kevin Huynh, Kai Elmer Sotto In 2 answers
  6. This is the practical counterpart to the big-picture book: concrete, tested tactics for closing the gap between people clicking... Meetup Blog (Organizer Guide) Article · ~10 min read How To Get People to Show Up to Your Events Meetup Team In 2 answers
  7. When you are planning your first few meetups, a blank page is the enemy: this gives you a ready run of show so you can slot in... Eventbrite Blog Template · Downloadable Google Doc template + guide Free Run of Show Template Eventbrite In 2 answers
  8. Video · about 1 hour Mastering onboarding | Lauryn Isford (Head of Growth at Airtable) Lenny Rachitsky and Lauryn Isford In 2 answers
  9. YC's David Lieb walks through cohort retention: watching each week's new users and asking how many actually come back. For a... Y Combinator Startup School Video · ~20 min How To Improve Cohort Retention David Lieb In 2 answers
  10. Reading about CAC and LTV only gets you so far, at some point you have to put your own guesses in a cell and watch what breaks.... The Startup Project Template · Excel and Google Sheets, multi tab Startup Financial Model (SaaS) Excel Template The Startup Project In 2 answers
  11. A16z boils the whole decision down to one honest rule of thumb: usage-based pricing tends to fit products whose main user is... Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) Essay · About 8 minute read Usage-Based Pricing Is Popular, But Is It Right For You? Our Rule of Thumb Tugce Erten and Mark Regan In 2 answers
  12. Madhavan Ramanujam has helped architect pricing for dozens of well-known companies, and here he walks through how real teams... Lenny's Podcast Podcast · About 1 hour 20 minutes The art and science of pricing (Madhavan Ramanujam) Lenny Rachitsky with Madhavan Ramanujam In 2 answers
  13. A business built on a few big enterprise deals quietly builds a trap: if one account walks, your revenue caves. This piece... Lighter Capital Essay How SaaS Startups Can Minimize Customer Concentration Risk Lighter Capital In 2 answers
  14. When you bolt a services layer onto a product business, the number investors actually stare at is your blended gross margin,... Bottom Up by David Sacks (Substack) Essay · about 12 min read The Gross Margin Problem: Lessons for Tech-Enabled Startups David Sacks In 2 answers
  15. This is the rare piece that answers the currency question the way an Indian founder actually hits it: the GST angle (invoicing... Skydo Article Should I Invoice in INR or Foreign Currency? Sukanya (reviewed by CA Akshay Kumar), Skydo In 2 answers
  16. SaaSBoomi is the community of Indian SaaS founders, so when its hosts work through pricing plans (product, perceived value,... SaaSBoomi Podcast Getting SaaS Pricing Right (SaaSBoomi Podcast) SaaSBoomi (hosts Arvind Parthiban and Varun Shoor) In 2 answers
  17. This is the vendor-neutral walkthrough of how to actually structure a pricing test so you can trust the result. It starts with... Stripe Article Pricing experiments: A guide for businesses Stripe In 2 answers
  18. Before you touch live traffic, the cheapest way to read price sensitivity is to just ask people, and the Van Westendorp method... OpinionX Tool Van Westendorp for Pricing Research: A Survey Guide Daniel Kyne In 2 answers
  19. Video · About 5 minutes Contribution Margin explained Philip de Vroe (The Finance Storyteller) In 2 answers
  20. Video · About 6 minutes How to calculate burn rate, runway, and growth rate Tim Brady In 2 answers
  21. Video · Short explainer video, a few minutes Cash Flow vs. Profit: What's the Difference? HBS Online In 2 answers
  22. This is a founder writing honestly after quitting too early, burning 18 months and his savings, then going back to a job and... Indie Hackers Essay · ~10 min read Startup lesson learned: Don't quit your job before there is interest in your product Eddie Forson In 2 answers
  23. Griffith bootstrapped ClickMinded to over 40,000 dollars a month while making the slow move from side project to full time, and... Indie Hackers Podcast Podcast · ~60 min Indie Hackers #112: From Side Project to Full-Time Founder with Tommy Griffith of ClickMinded Courtland Allen (Indie Hackers) In 2 answers
  24. This lays out the real downstream cost of mixing personal and business money in plain terms: messy books, harder taxes, missed... Mercury Article Why you need a separate bank account for your business Mercury In 2 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

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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