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. The Indian reality is that the strongest peer groups live on WhatsApp, not on Slack or a paid platform, and they form around a... TICE News Article · 6 min read How WhatsApp Groups Are Powering India's Next-Gen Founders TICE Editorial In 2 answers
  2. Written by a VC firm for founders, this is the method for the 15-minute coffee the answer tells you to book. Keep it to 30... Hustle Fund (Hustle Commons) Article · 8 min read How to Run a Great Coffee Meeting Hustle Fund In 2 answers
  3. This is the mechanics behind our answer: a global investor cannot warm-intro someone they have never heard of, so you make... Failory Article · 18 min read How to Build in Public as a Founder (+20 Examples) Failory In 2 answers
  4. This is the Indian founder's version of the same warning, with names attached. It states plainly that chasing celebrity mentors... Inc42 Article · 10 min read How The Right Mentoring Can Boost Startup Success Inc42 Staff In 2 answers
  5. A UX research leader's playbook for validating an idea with high-quality interviews instead of leading ones. She covers... First Round Review Podcast · ~45 min The early user research playbook for founders Jeanette Mellinger In 2 answers
  6. This is the most direct answer to the second half of your question: where do you actually find these people. The piece walks... Product Talk Article · 15 min read Tools of the Trade: Finding People to Interview Before You Have Customers Melissa Suzuno In 2 answers
  7. This is founders trading real tactics on the exact wall you will hit: getting strangers to say yes to a call. You get honest,... Indie Hackers Thread · 10 min read How do you actually get people to do customer discovery interviews? Indie Hackers In 2 answers
  8. A focused guide on the recruiting outreach itself, with a message template you can adapt. It covers who to ask, how to word the... Wynter Article · 12 min read Customer interviews: How to always get a yes Hannah Shamji In 2 answers
  9. Concrete stories of Indian founders who went to where their customers were before building, like Shiprocket's founder... Penguin Random House India Article · 10 min read How India's Top Startup Founders Validated Their Business Ideas Penguin Random House India In 2 answers
  10. A friendly form tool for running the interviews, waitlists, and fake door signups that power a no code MVP. You can gauge... typeform.com Tool Typeform typeform.com In 2 answers
  11. Winters, who led growth at Pinterest and Grubhub, reframes PMF as the point where users stop leaving, and shows how to read it... Casey Accidental (Casey Winters) Essay · ~3,500 words Casey's Guide to Finding Product/Market Fit Casey Winters In 2 answers
  12. Segment's founder walks through failures and near-misses so you can feel the contrast between not having fit and having it.... Y Combinator (Startup Library) Video · ~45 min How to Start a Startup: Finding Product-Market Fit Peter Reinhardt (Segment) In 2 answers
  13. Blank widens pivot beyond product to any of the nine parts of your business model, which helps you find the one big thing to... steveblank.com (Steve Blank) Essay · ~8 min read Do Pivots Matter? (What's a Pivot?) Steve Blank In 2 answers
  14. Caldwell has watched thousands of YC companies pivot, and he lays out what a good pivot looks like versus flailing. His key... Y Combinator Startup Library (Dalton Caldwell) Video · ~15 min All about pivoting Dalton Caldwell In 2 answers
  15. A practical roundup of demand-testing models, including the 'dry wallet' or pre-sales test where you ask for payment before the... RevenueCat Blog Article · ~15 min read 5 Proven Models for Testing Customer Demand RevenueCat In 2 answers
  16. Design partners are how B2B founders validate with depth, and this gives you a practical way to pick the right ones. The... Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) Article · 12 min read A Framework for Finding a Design Partner Seema Amble and Jennifer Li (a16z) In 2 answers
  17. This is the operational how-to for the depth path: how to structure a design partnership so it produces real validation, not... Common Paper Article · 10 min read How To Work With Design Partners Jake Stein (Common Paper) In 2 answers
  18. Your short answer names the LOI as a real B2B validation signal, and this is a clean, lawyer-built template made for exactly... Common Paper Template · 1 to 2 page template Free Letter of Intent Template Common Paper In 2 answers
  19. When your manual matching works and you finally do need software, this guide plus its no code builder lets you stand up a real... Sharetribe Academy Tool · ~40 min read Create a Marketplace: Build Your Platform in 10 Steps Sharetribe In 2 answers
  20. Meesho literally started as sellers running WhatsApp boutiques, which is the spreadsheet and WhatsApp validation path playing... Prime Venture Partners Podcast Podcast · ~45 min listen Vidit Aatrey (Meesho) on Building a Category-Defining Startup Vidit Aatrey and Amit Somani In 2 answers
  21. A tight, practical breakdown of what a concierge MVP is actually testing, using the Food on the Table example step by step. It... Res Extensa (Coleman McCormick) Article Learning from the Concierge MVP Coleman McCormick In 2 answers
  22. The free course from the person who coined get out of the building, the core idea that no facts about your idea live inside... Udacity Course · Self-paced, ~8 lessons How to Build a Startup: The Lean LaunchPad Steve Blank In 2 answers
  23. Concrete evidence that building outside Bengaluru, Mumbai, and Delhi is not a handicap but increasingly an advantage, from... YourStory Article How Tier 2 Cities Are Powering India's Next Startups YourStory In 2 answers
  24. Written by the person who grew Superhuman's waitlist past half a million, so it is candid about what a big number does and does... Growth by Gaurav (Substack) Essay The Waitlist Delusion Gaurav Vohra In 2 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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