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.

Most enterprise sales advice assumes you already have a brand and a sales team, and this guide is written for the opposite... WorkOS Blog Article A Guide to Enterprise Sales for Early-stage Founders WorkOS
Ash Rust invests at pre-seed and has watched dozens of founders let a friendly pilot drift into a free forever engagement. His... Medium (Sterling Road) Essay · 8 min read Startup Sales: How to Get Pilot Customers to Pay Ash Rust
The YC essay tells you the rules; this shows you real founders following (and bending) them. These are 13 actual cold emails... OpenVC Blog Article · 12 min read 13 Cold Email Examples Sent to VC Investors OpenVC
Clay is the tool most outbound teams reach for when they want research-driven personalization instead of name placeholders. It... Clay Tool Clay Clay Labs, Inc.
This is the one guide that walks the full technical stack in plain language: SPF, DKIM, DMARC, domain warmup timelines, and the... Smartlead Article Email Deliverability Guide: SPF, DKIM, Warmup and Everything That Gets You to the Inbox Satwick Ghosh (Smartlead)
When you have a name and a company but no address, Hunter is the default first stop: type the person and the domain, and it... hunter.io Tool Hunter Email Finder Hunter
Video Y Combinator's Brutally Simple Playbook to Get Your First 100 Customers Y Combinator
Batko is a two-time founder and former Startmate CEO who has received thousands of cold emails, so he writes from the receiving... batko.ai Article · 15 min read Cold Email Templates for Founders: 5 Templates That Get Replies Michael Batko
Sometimes your emails are not ignored, they never reach the inbox, and no amount of copy editing fixes a deliverability... instantly.ai Tool · Web app Instantly Cold Email Outreach and Deliverability Instantly
This is the piece that separates organic word of mouth from an engineered viral loop, and shows you how to actually design one.... andrewchen.com Essay · Long essay, about 15 minute read What's Your Viral Loop? Understanding the Engine of Adoption Andrew Chen
If you decide to run WhatsApp at any real scale, you cannot do it from the plain WhatsApp Business app: you need a... AiSensy Tool · Free plan, paid tiers from about 1,395 rupees per month AiSensy: WhatsApp Business API Platform AiSensy Communications Private Limited
This is the cleanest side-by-side we found on what you actually trade away going indirect: margin, customer contact, and... GTM Playbook Article · Long-form article, about a 12 minute read Direct Sales vs. Channel Sales: Choosing Your Route to Market in B2B SaaS James Doman-Pipe
Video · Talk, roughly 30 to 45 minutes Partner Ecosystems: Trends, Predictions and Forecast, with Jay McBain Jay McBain
If you are asking whether SEO is still worth it, start by learning what good SEO in 2026 actually looks like, and this free... Ahrefs (YouTube) Course · ~2 hours across a short video series SEO Course for Beginners (by Ahrefs) Sam Oh (Ahrefs)
SEO feeling slow usually means you are doing it one blog post at a time, and this essay covers the scalable side: generating... Knownful Essay · ~15 minute read What is Programmatic SEO and should your startup use it? Matthis Duarte
Video How to Test Facebook Ads Creatives at Every Budget Dara Denney
This lays out the case that your product can be its own distribution, so you sell less by design. It is aimed at exactly the... Bessemer Venture Partners Essay · About a 20 minute read 10 Product-Led Growth Principles Janelle Teng and Ethan Kurzweil (Bessemer Venture Partners)
Before you sink 50 to 120 hours into a launch, read this honest first-person account of what a launch actually returned across... Plain Sight Ventures Essay · Short essay, roughly a 6 minute read Is Product Hunt Worth It? Jason Walkow
Video · About 95 minutes (North Star segment near 1:19:21) The original growth hacker reveals his secrets | Sean Ellis (author of "Hacking Growth") Sean Ellis, interviewed by Lenny Rachitsky
This is the clearest essay on why a flattening cohort retention curve is the thing that actually matters, and it lives on... andrewchen.com Essay · ~12 min read Retention is King Jamie Quint
Benchmarks are useless until you can actually plot your own cohort curve, and Mixpanel's free tier lets you build a real... Mixpanel Docs Tool · Docs guide, ~15 min to set up Track user retention with Mixpanel Mixpanel
PostHog is one all-in-one product analytics platform (events, funnels, session replay, feature flags) instead of a pile of... PostHog Docs Tool Self-host PostHog PostHog
Most first-time founders either track nothing or drown themselves by logging every click, and this piece makes the case for the... Mean CEO Essay Event Tracking Strategy: What to Measure and Why Violetta Bonenkamp
This is the piece that answers the second half of your question head on: when is it too early to even care. Skok's site is the... For Entrepreneurs (David Skok) Essay Why Early-Stage Startups Should Wait to Calculate LTV:CAC, and How They Should Use It When They Do Jared Sleeper and David Skok

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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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