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 bootstrapped founder's step by step account of building a short list of exactly-fit prospects and personally emailing each... Indie Hackers Thread · 10 min read How to get your first 10 customers with cold email William Paul In 2 answers
  2. Josh Braun walks through building one specific cold email for one specific, well-chosen prospect, showing exactly why a message... Josh Braun Article · 8 min read Let's Write a Good Cold Email Josh Braun In 2 answers
  3. This is a practical, step by step walkthrough with real before and after examples of cold emails, useful when you want a... Woodpecker Article · 12 min read How to Write a Cold Email: 6 Steps + Templates Woodpecker In 2 answers
  4. A short, free checklist you can hold next to your draft while writing your first cold email, not just the subject line but the... Josh Braun Template 15 Cold Email Copywriting Principles Josh Braun In 2 answers
  5. Jason Lemkin is the investor on the other end of the email, walking through two real cold emails he actually funded and... SaaStr (Jason Lemkin) Article 2 Cold Emails I Funded For Millions SaaStr (Jason Lemkin) In 2 answers
  6. Read the actual law once, at least the consent and notice sections, so you are not relying on someone else's paraphrase.... Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), Government of India Article · ~30 pages The Digital Personal Data Protection Act, 2023 (Official Text) Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY), Government of India In 2 answers
  7. Josh Braun makes a living teaching sales teams to write first lines that could not be pasted into anyone else's inbox, which is... Josh Braun Essay · 5 min read Killer Cold Email Opening Lines Josh Braun In 2 answers
  8. Gong analyzed tens of millions of real sales emails, so instead of taking someone's word for what good personalization looks... Gong Article · 9 min read Does Cold Email Even Work Any More? Here's What the Data Says Gong In 2 answers
  9. Instantly is built specifically for cold outreach, so this guide is framed around your exact problem rather than transactional... Instantly Article How to Master SPF, DKIM, and DMARC for Cold Email Deliverability Instantly In 2 answers
  10. Before you send a single cold email to a real prospect, send one to this tool. It gives you a spam score out of 10, checks your... mail-tester.com Tool Mail Tester mail-tester.com In 2 answers
  11. Directly useful if part of your targeting question is whether you should even be emailing the CEO. It looks at how seniority... Gong Article Do execs really reply to cold email? Here's what the data says Gong In 2 answers
  12. A current, segment-by-segment benchmark report broken out by industry, list size, and company size, so you can compare your... Instantly.ai Article Cold Email Benchmark Report 2026 Instantly.ai In 2 answers
  13. McKenzie went from zero consulting clients to a full pipeline using direct, honest outreach with no case studies to point to,... Kalzumeus Software Podcast · 50 min audio Ramit Sethi and Patrick McKenzie on Getting Your First Consulting Client Patrick McKenzie, Ramit Sethi In 2 answers
  14. Carlos Espinal is a seed investor who reads cold pitches for a living, and this essay lays out exactly what he needs in the... Medium Essay · ~8 min read The Art of the Cold Outreach for Founders Carlos E. Espinal In 2 answers
  15. A ready made list of open, past behavior questions you can literally bring into your next call, grouped so you're not... Indie Hackers Template 24 User Interview Questions you can use (free template too!) Joshua Tabansi In 2 answers
  16. Video How to Validate an App Idea in 2026 (Customer Interviews, Landing Pages & Reddit) Varun Mayya In 2 answers
  17. A comprehensive, practical walkthrough of the whole interview process, recruiting, scripting, running, and synthesizing, from a... User Interviews Article The Ultimate Guide to Doing Kickass Customer Interviews User Interviews In 2 answers
  18. The actual one-page canvas, free to print or copy into a doc, so you can fill it in within the hour instead of reading a whole... LEANSTACK Template Lean Canvas template Ash Maurya In 2 answers
  19. This is a catalogue of the specific ways founders sabotage their own sessions, including talking too much, asking hypothetical... Nielsen Norman Group Article Why User Interviews Fail Nielsen Norman Group In 2 answers
  20. This explains why people behave differently the instant they know you're watching, which is the deeper reason your own presence... Nielsen Norman Group Article The Hawthorne Effect or Observer Bias in User Research Nielsen Norman Group In 2 answers
  21. Wilcox gives you a literal five question script built entirely around a recent problem, not your product, which is exactly the... Justin Wilcox, Customer Development Labs Essay How I Interview Customers Justin Wilcox In 2 answers
  22. This is the practical way to act on the route around your inner circle entirely part of your short answer: it is a marketplace... Respondent.io Tool Respondent Respondent.io In 2 answers
  23. Before writing a single line of code for his fourth startup, Shreesha Ramdas hired a salesperson and ran over 200 interviews to... The Neon Show Podcast · ~50 min 4x Founder Shreesha Ramdas on What to Do Before You Build Your Startup Siddhartha Ahluwalia In 2 answers
  24. A two minute companion to the longer HBR piece above, this is the one line version of our short answer you can forward to... Harvard Business Review Article Instead of Surveying Your Customers, Interview Them Harvard Business Review 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
eChai Partner Brands The partnership →