There's no shortage of startup advice. Most of it is recycled, vague, or only applicable once you're already successful. This is the short list — things that actually helped.
Books
The Mom Test — Rob Fitzpatrick How to talk to customers and learn whether your business idea is good. Required reading before building anything.
Zero to One — Peter Thiel Contrarian thinking about what makes a startup valuable. Don't agree with everything, but it sharpens your reasoning.
The Hard Thing About Hard Things — Ben Horowitz No fluff. What it actually feels like to run a company when things go wrong.
Essays
Do Things That Don't Scale — Paul Graham Your early strategy should not resemble your later strategy. Start with things that are manually intensive and unscalable.
Default Alive or Default Dead — Paul Graham A simple framework for thinking about whether your startup can survive without more funding.
Tools
- Linear — Issue tracking that doesn't get in your way
- Notion — Flexible enough for any early-stage doc system
- Loom — Async communication with investors, customers, co-founders
- Stripe — Take money fast. Don't overbuild payment systems.
The Rule
Use tools that let you move. The moment a tool is slowing you down, replace it.