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. This is the sharpest answer to the actual worry: Cohen names the sample-of-one problem directly and unpacks the seven hidden... A Smart Bear (Jason Cohen, founder of WP Engine) Article · ~2,500 words, 12 minute read "I scratched my own itch" isn't good enough Jason Cohen
  2. Once you have a hunch about who your best customers are, you need to check it against behaviour, and Mixpanel is a real... Mixpanel Tool Cohort analysis: how to read the chart, choose a platform, and turn retention into growth Mixpanel
  3. This is the most durable, genuinely free one-page ICP format your whole team can adopt without setting up a spreadsheet or... HubSpot Template · One-page fillable template plus short guide HubSpot's Free Ideal Customer Profile Template (Make My Persona) HubSpot
  4. Most teams drift not because they disagree on who the customer is, but because nobody wrote down who the customer is NOT. This... M1-Project Article · Roughly a 10 minute read Negative Buyer Persona: What It Is and How to Create One Anton Mart
  5. This gives you a concrete, bottom-up way to check whether your niche can actually fund the next stage, instead of guessing.... ktulrich.com Article · Article, approx. 10 minute read TAM, SAM, SOM, and the Beachhead Market: Estimating Market Size Karl T. Ulrich
  6. This lays the two axes side by side: narrowing by industry (vertical) versus spreading across markets and geographies... Aexus Article · ~8 min read What is the difference between horizontal and vertical GTM strategies? Aexus
  7. This is a long-running India-first founder show where operators walk through how they actually won ground here, including going... Indian Silicon Valley Podcast Podcast · Episodes ~60 to 90 min Indian Silicon Valley with Jivraj Singh Sachar Jivraj Singh Sachar
  8. Skok names the multi-niche trap head on and backs it with a real portfolio-company story: a startup that chased a 2,500-branch... forEntrepreneurs Essay Focus and Market Segmentation David Skok
  9. Courtland Allen founded Indie Hackers, so he has watched hundreds of small, bootstrapped founders pick niches and live with the... Software Engineering Unlocked Podcast · Approx. 45 min listen Start a Profitable Business in Six Weeks with Courtland Allen Michaela Greiler (host), Courtland Allen (guest)
  10. Once you have decided it is time to move, this essay is the clearest short read on which direction to move in. Coelen lays out... Doctor Market Fit (Jeroen Coelen) Essay Five expansion strategies from your beachhead market Jeroen Coelen
  11. This is an operator being honest about the exact trap in your question: you win your first segment, then find the second one is... The SaaS Podcast (SaaS Club) Podcast Vertical SaaS: 80 Doctors to 1,000 Customers (Zak Holdsworth, Hint Health) Omer Khan (host), with Zak Holdsworth
  12. This is the clearest short case that how you reach customers is a real edge, not an afterthought behind the code. Horowitz... Andreessen Horowitz (a16z) Essay · About a 10 minute read Distribution Ben Horowitz
  13. Stark spends his career arguing that specializing is what lets you raise rates, which is the direct counter to the fear that a... jonathanstark.com Essay · ~5 min read Skill vs Market Specialization Jonathan Stark
  14. Written by a VC, this makes the case that a small starting market is a strength, not a red flag, which is exactly the reframe... Equal Ventures Essay · Long read (approx. 15 min) Niche is the Next Big Thing Rick Zullo (Equal Ventures)
  15. This is a free, copyable worksheet built on Dunford's method, with a dedicated target market characteristics box so you write... Miroverse Template · Fill-in worksheet April Dunford's Positioning Template (Miroverse) Erwan Derlyn (based on April Dunford's framework)
  16. This is the most direct answer to your question we could find: a step by step method for someone with a job and a few spare... The Bootstrapped Founder Essay · about a 20 minute read Finding an Audience for Your Side Business Arvid Kahl
  17. The faster horse line gets quoted to justify ignoring customers entirely, and that reading is wrong. Vlaskovits, a customer... Harvard Business Review Essay · Short read, about 800 words Henry Ford, Innovation, and That Faster Horse Quote Patrick Vlaskovits
  18. When a customer hands you feature X, the Five Whys is the simplest technique for drilling from that request down to the real... Productboard Article · Short read, about 5 minutes What Are the Five Whys (5 Whys) Productboard
  19. This piece names the exact bias behind the question: once you know a field cold, your brain literally cannot simulate not... SUE Behavioural Design Essay · ~15 min read The Curse of Knowledge at Work: Why Experts Can No Longer Explain Things Simply Astrid Groenewegen
  20. When customers cannot articulate the job, the forces diagram gives you a structure for interpreting their behavior instead.... jobstobedone.org Article · About a 10 minute read The Four Forces of Progress: Push, Pull, Anxiety and Habit Bob Moesta and Chris Spiek
  21. This piece takes on your exact tension: many valid use cases, and the fear that choosing one throws away the rest. It argues... OpinionX Essay · ~15 min read Why Every Startup Needs A Killer Product Use Case Daniel Kyne
  22. Video · ~45 min Obviously Awesome: April Dunford's Positioning Do-Over April Dunford
  23. Before you frame your job against WhatsApp, you have to see how deep the habit really runs, and this piece shows it concretely:... The India Notes Article · ~15 min read WhatsApp Owns India: A Primer on India's Invisible Business Operating System Dharmesh Ba
  24. This is the deepest library of Indian SaaS founder conversations, and founders here talk openly about the messy realities of... SaaSBoomi Podcast · Episodes ~30 to 60 min SaaSBoomi Podcast Suresh Sambandam, Arvind Parthiban, Varun Shoor

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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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