Entrepreneurship Toolbox
Resources for early-stage founders
A curated collection of practical resources for entrepreneurs building, financing and scaling early-stage companies. The list combines established startup references, useful templates, current benchmarks and data on entrepreneurship. Some resources are several years old but remain among the clearest and most useful references available.
Starting a Company
Finding a co-founder
A tool from Y Combinator to find co-founders
YC Startup School — free online resources and courses for startup founders
The Founder Dating Playbook by First Round Review
Choosing and evaluating an idea
The Idea Maze by Balaji Srinivasan
How to Get Startup Ideas by Paul Graham
Before the Startup by Paul Graham
The Four Fits of $100M+ Companies by Brian Balfour
Why Now? A Framework for Evaluating Startup Timing by NFX
Incorporation and startup fundamentals
Startup Legal Mechanics by Y Combinator
Cooley GO — legal and operational resources for startups
Clerky — incorporation, fundraising and company-maintenance tools for US startups
Stripe Atlas Guides — guides on incorporation, banking, equity and startup operations
Startup SG — Singapore’s startup ecosystem and government-support portal
Founder Research and Entrepreneurship Statistics
Global Entrepreneurship Monitor — research on entrepreneurial activity and ecosystem conditions
GEM Global Reports — annual global entrepreneurship reports
OECD Entrepreneurship at a Glance — entrepreneurship indicators and policy analysis
OECD Data Lake on SMEs and Entrepreneurship — international data on SMEs and business conditions
Global Startup Ecosystem Report by Startup Genome
Startup Genome Insights — research on startup ecosystems and innovation clusters
Startup Struggle Survey by Slush
Carta Data — data on fundraising, founder ownership, dilution, compensation and startup teams
Carta Founder Ownership Report — founder ownership and dilution by financing stage
Carta Solo Founders Report — data on solo-founder formation and fundraising
Customer Discovery and Product-Market Fit
How Superhuman Built an Engine to Find Product-Market Fit by First Round Review
The Mom Test by Rob Fitzpatrick
Deploy Empathy by Michele Hansen
How to Talk to Users by Y Combinator
Do Things That Don’t Scale by Paul Graham
The Only Thing That Matters by Marc Andreessen
Product-Market Fit Collection by Lenny Rachitsky
The Product-Market Fit Method by First Round Review
Obviously Awesome by April Dunford
Product Development and Product Management
How to Plan an MVP by Y Combinator
The Minimum Viable Product Process by Henrik Kniberg
Inspired by Marty Cagan
Shape Up by Basecamp
The Product Strategy Stack by Reforge
Ready-to-use templates from professionals by Reforge
Product Management Resources by Silicon Valley Product Group
Launching and Finding Your First Users
Product Hunt
Hacker News — Show HN
BetaList
Indie Hackers
How to Launch Again and Again by Y Combinator
How to Get Your First Ten Customers by First Round Review
The Bullseye Framework for Getting Traction by NFX
Sales and Go-to-Market
Enterprise Sales for Founders by Y Combinator
The Sales Playbook for Founders by Y Combinator
How to Sell by Y Combinator
Founder-Led Sales by Pete Kazanjy
The SaaS Sales Method by SaaStr
From Founder-Led Sales to a Repeatable Sales Process by First Round Review
Pricing Your SaaS Product by Price Intelligently
Obviously Awesome by April Dunford
Story Branding by Donald Miller
Startup Templates and Operating Resources
Top document templates every startup needs by Pillar VC
Ready-to-use templates from professionals by Reforge
Startup School Library by Y Combinator
First Round Review — operating advice from founders and startup executives
Notion Startup Templates
HubSpot Startup Resources
Discounts and credits for startups from F6S
Microsoft for Startups
Google for Startups
AWS Activate
Fundraising
Understanding the fundraising process
A guide to seed fundraising by Y Combinator
How to raise your first round of funding by the Founder Institute
Fundraising wisdom by First Round Review
How to Raise Money by Paul Graham
Fundraising in the Y Combinator Startup Library
Venture Deals by Brad Feld and Jason Mendelson
Secrets of Sand Hill Road by Scott Kupor
SaaS Fundraising Playbook by IVP
The 30-Day Fundraising Process by NFX
The Fundraising Process by OpenVC
Pitch decks
How to build your seed-round pitch deck by Y Combinator
44 slides on how to raise money in the Pre-Seed and Seed stages
Deck Template by Creandum
Front Series A Deck by Mathilde Collin
Business Plan by Sequoia Capital
Sequoia’s Guide to Pitching by Sequoia Capital
Pitch Deck Examples by OpenVC
Data rooms and due diligence
Data Room Template by Creandum
Startup Due Diligence Checklist by Cooley GO
What Investors Expect in a Data Room by DocSend
Series A Due Diligence Checklist — see the collection in the YC Startup Library
Fundraising benchmarks and dilution
State of Pre-Seed by Carta
Founder Ownership Report by Carta
State of Private Markets by Carta
US Venture Monitor by NVCA and PitchBook
State of Venture by CB Insights
Metrics, Finance and Performance
Core startup metrics
Startup Metrics for Pirates: AARRR by Dave McClure
B2B benchmark metrics by Andreessen Horowitz
What is good retention? by Lenny Rachitsky
Top five SaaS metrics VCs look at by Jon Ma
Cohort analysis template for SaaS by Christoph Janz and Point Nine
The SaaS Metrics Blueprint by Bessemer Venture Partners
The Burn Multiple by David Sacks and Craft Ventures
The Rule of 40 by Bessemer Venture Partners
SaaS benchmarks
Operational efficiency metrics by ICONIQ Growth
SaaS Capital Research — private SaaS growth, retention, spending and valuation benchmarks
Bessemer Cloud Index
Clouded Judgement by Jamin Ball
Meritech SaaS Benchmarks
KeyBanc Capital Markets SaaS Survey
OpenView SaaS Benchmarks
Financial planning
Startup Financial Model — financial-planning resources in the YC Startup Library
SaaS Income Statement Template by SaaS Capital
Cash-Flow Forecasting by Stripe
Understanding Runway and Burn Rate by Y Combinator
Startup Accounting Resources by Kruze Consulting
Legal and Corporate Documents
The resources below are useful starting points, but templates should be adapted to the company, jurisdiction and transaction with qualified legal counsel.
SAFE Financing Documents by Y Combinator
Series Seed Financing Documents
NVCA Model Legal Documents by the National Venture Capital Association
Cooley GO Documents
Orrick Startup Forms
Wilson Sonsini Term Sheet Generator
Founder Institute FAST Agreement for advisor relationships
Startup Legal Mechanics by Y Combinator
Clerky for US startup legal administration
Singapore ACRA for Singapore company registration and filings
Founder Equity and Employee Compensation
Founder ownership and equity splits
Founder Ownership Report by Carta
Equity Splits Between Co-Founders by Y Combinator
The Co-Founder Equity Calculator by Foundrs
Slicing Pie by Mike Moyer
Employee equity
Equity grants per round by Balderton Capital
Option Plan Tool by Index Ventures
Employee Equity by Holloway
Equity for Early Employees by Carta
State of Startup Compensation by Carta
Founder compensation
Founder Compensation by Creandum
Founder Salary Benchmarks by Kruze Consulting
Hiring, Teams and Culture
How to Hire by Y Combinator
How to Hire Your First Engineer by First Round Review
Who: The A Method for Hiring by Geoff Smart and Randy Street
The Hiring Process by First Round Review
How to Build Your Team in the YC Startup Library
Culture Deck by Netflix
The Great CEO Within by Matt Mochary
High Growth Handbook by Elad Gil
Leadership and Startup Operations
The Second Job of a Startup CEO by Y Combinator
The Great CEO Within by Matt Mochary
High Growth Handbook by Elad Gil
The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz
How to Operate by First Round Review
Startup CEO by Matt Blumberg
Working Backwards by Colin Bryar and Bill Carr
Good Strategy/Bad Strategy by Richard Rumelt
Board Management and Governance
Running a board
Lessons from Keith Rabois
The Art of Board Membership by Mike Volpi
How to Run a Board by Samuel Gil
How to Run an Effective Board Meeting by First Round Review
Startup Boards by Brad Feld, Mahendra Ramsinghani and Matt Blumberg
Board Meeting Templates by Sequoia Capital
Early-stage governance
Early-stage governance guide by CSBA
Governance Resources by B Lab
Corporate Governance Guidelines by the OECD
Investor communication
How to Write Investor Updates by Y Combinator
The Investor Update Template
How to Communicate with Investors by First Round Review
AI Tools and Resources for Founders
General AI assistants
ChatGPT
Claude
Gemini
Perplexity
NotebookLM
Product development and coding
Cursor
GitHub Copilot
Replit
v0 by Vercel
Lovable
Bolt
AI documentation and learning
OpenAI Documentation
Anthropic Documentation
Google AI for Developers
Hugging Face
DeepLearning.AI
Full Stack Deep Learning
AI market and adoption research
State of AI Report
Stanford AI Index
State of AI by McKinsey
AI Research and Market Maps by Sequoia Capital
International Expansion
Stripe Atlas Guides
Doing Business Internationally by the US International Trade Administration
Enterprise Singapore
Startup SG
European Startup Nations Alliance
Choose Europe — European investment and business information
UK Government: Set Up a Business
Delaware Division of Corporations
Singapore ACRA
Deep Tech and Science-Based Startups
The Deep Tech Investment Paradox by BCG
Hello Tomorrow — deep-tech ecosystem, challenges and investor network
Activate — support for science-based founders
Creative Destruction Lab — program for science- and technology-based companies
Deep Science Ventures
The Engine — resources and investment for tough-tech companies
IndieBio — biotech accelerator and founder resources
Biotech Resources from Nature Biotechnology
Recommended Books
Starting and validating
The Mom Test by Rob Fitzpatrick
The Lean Startup by Eric Ries
Zero to One by Peter Thiel and Blake Masters
Obviously Awesome by April Dunford
Product and growth
Inspired by Marty Cagan
The Cold Start Problem by Andrew Chen
Crossing the Chasm by Geoffrey Moore
Traction by Gabriel Weinberg and Justin Mares
Leadership and operations
The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz
High Growth Handbook by Elad Gil
The Great CEO Within by Matt Mochary
Working Backwards by Colin Bryar and Bill Carr
Good Strategy/Bad Strategy by Richard Rumelt
Venture capital and fundraising
Venture Deals by Brad Feld and Jason Mendelson
Secrets of Sand Hill Road by Scott Kupor
The Power Law by Sebastian Mallaby
The Business of Venture Capital by Mahendra Ramsinghani
Podcasts and Long-Form Content
Acquired
Lenny’s Podcast
Invest Like the Best
20VC
a16z Podcast
This Week in Startups
BG2Pod
Founders
Masters of Scale
How I Built This
Further Reading
Paul Graham’s Essays
First Round Review
Y Combinator Startup Library
Sequoia Articles
NFX Essays
a16z Articles
Bessemer Atlas
Elad Gil’s Blog
Andrew Chen’s Essays
Lenny’s Newsletter
About this toolbox
This is a selective rather than definitive collection. Inclusion does not mean that every framework, template or recommendation will be appropriate for every company, sector or jurisdiction. Legal, tax, financing and corporate-governance documents should always be reviewed for the company’s particular circumstances. The toolbox is updated periodically. Suggestions for exceptional resources, practical templates and high-quality research are always welcome.