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free · no fluff · actually useful

The reading
list.

Everything here is free. None of it is motivational garbage. These are the actual things worth reading before you build — and while you build.

how to prove your 5 users
You need two things
A public analytics dashboard showing 5+ unique visitors, and one screenshot of real engagement.
plausible.io
Plausible
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Lightweight, privacy-friendly, free trial. Add one script tag and you're done.
umami.is
Umami
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Free, open source, self-hostable. Great for Railway deployments.
analytics.google.com
Google Analytics
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Free, works everywhere, takes 5 minutes to set up.
vercel.com/analytics
Vercel Analytics
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Built in if you're already on Vercel. One click to enable.
posthog.com
PostHog
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Free, open source, gives you analytics plus session recordings so you can actually see how people use your product. One script tag.
Screenshot of real engagement means a DM, email, sign-up notification, App Store review, or any message from a real person who used your product. One is enough.
pitching & pitch decks
Y Combinator
How to Pitch Your Startup
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The actual YC advice. Short, direct, no padding. If you can't explain your startup in two sentences after reading this, read it again.
essential
Slidebean
Real Pitch Decks — Airbnb, Uber, and more
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Actual decks from companies that raised. Broken down slide by slide. Worth seeing what a real early deck looks like vs. what people imagine it should look like.
Y Combinator
The YC Application
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Just reading the questions teaches you how to think about your product. What does it do? Who is it for? What's the market? Why are you the one to build it?
revenue models & pricing
Lenny's Newsletter
SaaS Pricing Strategy
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How SaaS pricing actually works — not theory, actual breakdowns of what works and why. Useful if you're building anything with a subscription or credits model.
Patrick McKenzie
Selling to Businesses
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Dense but legendary. Teaches you how money actually flows in software businesses. How businesses buy, what they value, and why charging more is often easier than charging less.
classic
building & shipping
Paul Graham
Do Things That Don't Scale
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The most important essay for early stage. Do the manual, unscalable thing first. Get your first users yourself. Bootstrap is literally built around this idea.
essential
Indie Hackers
Real Founders, Real Revenue Numbers
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Interviews with founders who built real products, often solo, often with no funding. Revenue numbers are public. Read the interviews — the patterns repeat.
finding users
Y Combinator
How to Get Your First Customers
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Exactly what Bootstrap requires — 5 real users. This is how you actually get them. Not ads, not SEO, not waiting. Read this before you submit.
read before submitting
tools we recommend
Hack Club
Hackatime
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Automatic coding time tracking. Required for Bootstrap scoring. Install it, forget about it, let it run in the background while you build.
Porkbun
Porkbun — Cheap Domains
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Cheapest registrar around. .com domains for ~$10. Your project needs a live URL — get a real domain, not a subdomain of someone else's thing.
Railway
Railway — Deploy Anything
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Easiest way to deploy a backend. Push to GitHub, it deploys. No config, no YAML hell. Bootstrap itself runs on Railway.