All of our Starting Up articles
A UX Research Crash Course for Founders — Customer Discovery Tips from Zoom, Zapier & Dropbox
Zoom’s Jane Davis answers all of your tricky customer development questions, creating a highly tactical guide for founders flying solo on UX research as they explore startup ideas, validate concepts, iterate on prototypes, and troubleshoot common product problems.
8 Product Hurdles Every Founder Must Clear — This PM-Turned-Founder Shares His Playbooks
Repeat PM turned first-time founder Ryan Glasgow addresses the tough product questions every founder faces, from segmenting the market and iterating on early MVPs, to finding product/market fit and spinning up a second product.
The Startup Happiness Formula — This 3X Founder Shares His Approach to Figuring Out What to Build Next
Repeat founder Waseem Daher, co-founder and CEO of Pilot, has founded three startups with the same group of co-founders. He pays particular attention to Pilot’s first year — including validating the idea, choosing an ICP, and outlining the product roadmap for a company that can go the distance.
Starting a Company in a Space You’re Not an Expert in — This Founder Shares 6 Lessons
From the importance of founder naivety, to seeking out the doubters, to rigorously assessing founder/market fit, Irving Fain shares his lessons from building a company in a space he wasn't an expert in, as well as other takeaways from the earliest days at his startup, Bowery Farming.
Ask Why It Won’t Work, And Other Lessons This Founder Relies on While Building From 0 to 1
From all the ways a candidate might fail, to how a commonly-used framework might not be a good fit, to where a go-to-market strategy might fall apart, Rick Song shares the pre-mortem technique he relies on, as well as other company building lessons from Square and his startup, Persona.
Counterintuitive Lessons on How to Get Better as You Scale, From Twilio’s Jeff Lawson
13 years after Twilio first launched, CEO and co-founder Jeff Lawson opens up about the peaks and valleys to share a set of unconventional company building lessons on how to get better as you scale — from introducing new products and refining go-to-market strategies to focusing annual planning.
How to Build an Invention Machine — 6 Lessons That Powered Amazon’s Success
Former Amazon execs Colin Bryar and Bill Carr helped build the "invention machine" that enabled the company to successfully launch everything from AWS to the Kindle. Here, they share granular advice and concrete takeaways for startups looking to alter their own trajectories.
Fresh Off IPO, Upstart’s CEO Shares Why the Startup Isn’t a Typical Success Story
Upstart was founded by three individuals who barely knew each other, was forced to make a company-saving pivot, and flew under the radar in Silicon Valley for the past 8 years — but this once-scrappy startup just went public.