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 clear, jargon free explainer of the problem plus practical seeding strategies (single side focus, faking supply,... Sharetribe Marketplace Glossary Tool · 10 min read What Is the Chicken and Egg Problem in Marketplaces? Sharetribe In 2 answers
  2. Hosted by a founder who has built and sold companies in India, this show digs into how Indian founders actually got from zero... YouTube Podcast · 45 to 90 min episodes The Neon Show Siddhartha Ahluwalia In 2 answers
  3. Lenny addresses prioritization specifically for early startups, where the usual scoring frameworks break down and speed matters... Lenny's Newsletter Article · ~15 min read Prioritizing at startups Lenny Rachitsky In 2 answers
  4. Cohen argues the MVP framing pushes founders to ship something too broken to love, and offers an alternative: make it Simple,... A Smart Bear (Jason Cohen) Essay · ~12 min read Your customers hate MVPs. Make a SLC instead. Jason Cohen In 2 answers
  5. The father of customer development argues that your plan survives contact with reality only after you leave your desk and test... steveblank.com Article · 10 min read Teaching Entrepreneurship by Getting Out of the Building Steve Blank In 2 answers
  6. The creator of Shape Up talks through fixing the time and cutting the scope, which is exactly the discipline that keeps an MVP... Lenny's Podcast Podcast · 90 min A Better Way to Plan, Build, and Ship Products (Shape Up) Ryan Singer In 2 answers
  7. A compact YC piece that reframes the MVP as a minimum evolvable product, something you keep changing in response to your... Y Combinator Startup Library Article · 12 min read How to Get Your First Users Y Combinator In 2 answers
  8. It is worth reading an honest account of the limits, and this one is notable for coming from a no-code platform itself. It... Bubble Blog Article The Real Drawbacks of No-Code Software Bubble In 2 answers
  9. A tactical, budget-specific walkthrough of running a real landing-page test with a small paid-traffic spend so your numbers are... GrowthMentor Article · 15 min read How to Validate Your Startup Idea Using a Pre-Launch Landing Page and Under $500 in Ads Foti Panagiotakopoulos In 2 answers
  10. For the refactoring half of your question, Fowler explains why building for imagined future needs usually costs more than it... martinfowler.com Article · 10 min read Yagni (You Aren't Gonna Need It) Martin Fowler In 2 answers
  11. Doshi names the IKEA effect, how you overvalue what you built simply because you built it, which is the quiet engine behind... Shreyas Doshi (Substack) Essay · 12 min read The Product Builder's True Journey Shreyas Doshi In 2 answers
  12. Flipkart serves exactly your users, many on 2G in smaller Indian cities, and this case study shows a fast mobile web app... web.dev (Google) Article Flipkart triples time-on-site with a Progressive Web App web.dev (Google) In 2 answers
  13. A first hand engineering account of why Flipkart, an app first Indian company, rebuilt the mobile web to reach users on weak... Medium (Progressive Web Apps) Article Building Flipkart Lite: A Progressive Web App Aditya Punjani In 2 answers
  14. Chen lays out the clearest early signal that people actually value your product: do cohorts keep coming back over time. He... andrewchen.com Essay · Medium read How to measure if users love your product using cohorts and revisit rates Andrew Chen In 2 answers
  15. A short, opinionated guide to tracking the events that actually matter, your growth events like signup, activation, and... PostHog Docs Article · Short read Product analytics best practices PostHog Docs In 2 answers
  16. A tracking plan is the single document that keeps your analytics from rotting into noise. This guide shows how to define events... Amplitude Blog Article · Long read How to create a tracking plan Amplitude Blog In 2 answers
  17. An all in one, generously free product analytics tool that early teams can set up in minutes, with events, funnels, session... PostHog Tool PostHog Product Analytics PostHog In 2 answers
  18. Chen names the hard side of the network, the users who create most of the value and are hardest to win, and shows how to reach... Andrew Chen Book · ~368 pages The Cold Start Problem Andrew Chen In 2 answers
  19. Video · 5 min Debt Metaphor Ward Cunningham In 2 answers
  20. Often the urge to rebuild comes from one abstraction that no longer fits, not from the whole codebase. Metz explains why a... sandimetz.com Essay · 8 min read The Wrong Abstraction Sandi Metz In 2 answers
  21. This is the practical manual for improving code you are afraid to touch, without a rewrite. Feathers gives you techniques to... Prentice Hall (Robert C. Martin Series) Book · 456 pages Working Effectively with Legacy Code Michael C. Feathers In 2 answers
  22. Beck argues for small, cheap tidyings over grand restructurings, and gives you a way to reason about when cleanup is worth it.... O'Reilly Media (Kent Beck) Book · 120 pages Tidy First? A Personal Exercise in Empirical Software Design Kent Beck In 2 answers
  23. The canonical case that you can reshape a system in safe, small steps rather than one dramatic rewrite. Fowler shows how to... martinfowler.com Book · 448 pages Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code (2nd Edition) Martin Fowler In 2 answers
  24. A two minute read that reframes the whole copying question. Sivers puts numbers on it: a brilliant idea with no execution is... Derek Sivers (sive.rs) Essay · ~3 min read Ideas are just a multiplier of execution Derek Sivers 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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