Founder guides — written by people who've done it
Fundraising
Raising every round, from pre-seed to Series B.
How to Raise a Pre-seed Round
What to build before you raise, who to target, what to put in the deck, and how to negotiate the terms.
How to Raise a Seed Round
The metrics seed investors expect, how to run a structured process, and how priced rounds vs SAFEs work.
How to Raise a Series A
From pre-A traction targets to running a structured process and choosing your lead investor.
How to Raise a Series B
What changes between A and B, the metrics that matter, and how to run a process when you've done it once before.
How to Write a Fundable Pitch Deck
Slide-by-slide, with examples — what investors actually look for and the patterns that close rounds.
How to Find and Reach the Right Investors
Building a target list, getting warm intros, and writing cold emails that don't get ignored.
What to Do When Investors Say No
Reading the real reason behind the pass, turning it into intros, and not letting rejections rattle the rest of your process.
How to Negotiate a Term Sheet
What's standard vs aggressive on every line, when to push back, and what's negotiable that founders never realize.
How to Handle Investor Diligence
What investors ask for, how to prep a data room, reference calls, and the diligence questions you need answers to before they're asked.
How to Raise a Bridge Round
The awkward in-between rounds — when they make sense, what terms to expect, and how to message them to existing investors.
Team & Hiring
Building, hiring, firing, and equity.
How to Hire Your First 10 Employees
Sourcing, interviewing, comp, and equity bands for the most important hires of your company's life.
How to Find a Technical Co-founder
Where to look, what to offer, and how to test fit before splitting equity 50/50.
How to Write Founding-Team Offer Letters
Equity ranges by role and stage, vesting, cliff, exercise windows, and the negotiation lines candidates push on.
How to Fire Someone Without Breaking Your Team
The hardest founder skill: doing it humanely, legally, and quickly so the rest of your team gets stronger, not weaker.
How to Set Up Your Startup's ESOP
Pool size, vesting schedule, FMV / 409A basics, and the operational machinery to grant options without painful surprises.
How to Navigate Co-founder Conflict
The unspoken risk to most startups — patterns that fail teams, structural fixes, and when to bring in outside help.
Product
Finding PMF and shipping like a startup.
How to Find Product-Market Fit
Leading indicators, common false positives, and the operating cadence to find PMF instead of guessing at it.
How to Build an MVP Without Engineering
The 2026 no-code stack, what it can and can't do, and the exact point at which to graduate to real engineering.
How to Run Customer Interviews That Actually Work
The Mom Test boiled down to a playbook — what to ask, what to ignore, and how to extract signal from polite enthusiasm.
Sales & GTM
Founder-led selling, pricing, and outbound.
How to Make Your First 10 Sales as a Founder
The founder-led sales playbook: prospecting, qualification, demos, closing, and pricing without a sales team.
How to Price a SaaS Product
Frameworks for setting your initial price, the review cadence, and the pricing changes that actually move revenue.
How to Write Outbound Emails That Convert
The structure, the subject lines, and the follow-up cadence that gets cold emails answered — for sales and for fundraising.
Finance & Ops
Books, runway, and reporting.
How to Set Up Your Startup's Books
Accounting tools, the chart of accounts, monthly close, and what investors expect to see by the time you raise.
How to Manage Runway in a Downturn
When to cut, what to cut, and in what order — the operating playbook for extending runway without breaking the company.
How to Write Your First Investor Update
The structure, the cadence, and the asks that turn investors into recruiters, intros, and your loudest cheerleaders.
How to Read a SaaS Financial Model
For non-finance founders: the tabs that matter, the numbers investors will probe, and where assumptions hide.
Legal & Corporate
Incorporation, agreements, M&A.
How to Incorporate a Delaware C-Corp
When and why, what it costs, the steps that take days vs weeks, and the common mistakes that haunt cap tables for years.
How to Set Up a Founders' Agreement
Equity split, vesting, IP assignment, decision rights, and what to do before any of it gets contentious.
How to Handle Your First M&A Inquiry
Even when you don't want to sell — the playbook for response, signal, and protecting optionality.
Founder Operating
How the job evolves, and how to run it.
What Founders Actually Do All Day, by Stage
Pre-seed vs seed vs Series A vs Series B — how the founder job changes round by round, and the tells that you're stuck in the wrong one.
How to Set Up Your Startup's Board
Composition, cadence, materials, and the operating habits that turn a board from compliance into leverage.