Module I References
Read any of these if you want to go deeper. All optional.
Essays (free, online, short to medium length)
Paul Graham — "How to Get Startup Ideas" paulgraham.com/startupideas.html 25 minutes. The single most-read essay on this topic. Sections to focus on: "Live in the future" and "Schlep blindness." It's written for adult founders, but everything in it applies the moment you replace "startup" with "thing you ship."
Paul Graham — "Do Things That Don't Scale" paulgraham.com/ds.html 15 minutes. Specifically the section on "Recruit." For Module 6 (first paying customer) it becomes the most useful 5 paragraphs you've ever read.
Patrick Collison — "Advice" patrickcollison.com/advice 10 minutes. A list. One of the founders of Stripe. Most useful for the bias toward concrete examples.
Naval Ravikant — "How to Get Rich (Without Getting Lucky)" twitter.com/naval/status/1002103360646823936 30 minutes if you read the entire thread, 5 minutes for the key tweets. Not strictly about idea-finding. Useful for the mindset shift on what "valuable work" looks like.
Stories of young builders who shipped real things
The Stripe Atlas blog has a tag for young founders. stripe.com/atlas/guides Read 2 or 3 stories. Look for the specifics: how did they find their customer, what was the bad workaround the customer was using before.
The Indie Hackers podcast and forum. indiehackers.com Search for "teen founder" or "first product." Read 3 to 5 stories. Notice that every successful first product has a specific customer the founder could name.
TikTok creators who built tools for niche communities. Search TikTok for #buildinpublic and filter to creators under 20. The good ones name the specific community they built for and the specific complaint they're solving.
Books (slower, denser, optional for Module 1, useful by Module 6)
"The Lean Startup" — Eric Ries. The MVP-first mindset comes from this book. You don't need to read all of it. Chapter 4 (Experiment) and Chapter 5 (Leap) are the relevant ones for Module 1. About 1 hour total.
"Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products" — Nir Eyal. Not for Module 1 specifically, but useful in Module 11 when you're building v2 based on customer feedback. Pick it up later.
"The Mom Test" — Rob Fitzpatrick. This is THE book on talking to customers without lying to yourself. Short (~150 pages, half a Saturday read). Most useful between Module 1 and Module 6, when you're going to actually talk to your candidate customer and find out what they really think.
If you read only one book on this list, read The Mom Test.
Tools mentioned in the lessons (free, online)
Claude at claude.ai — the Coach prompts work best here. Free tier supports Module 1. ChatGPT at chat.openai.com — Coach prompts work here too. Free tier supports Module 1. Notion at notion.so — you'll use Notion in Module 2 if you want a clean place to write your offer card. Google Docs — fine for the idea brief.
You do NOT need any paid tools for Module 1. Resist the urge to optimize your tooling. The work matters; the writing app does not.
What NOT to read in Module 1
This is uncommon advice, so listen:
Don't read general startup advice. Most of it is written by VCs for adult founders running $5M+ companies. It will distract you. The exception is the essays above, which are short enough that they don't dominate your headspace.
Don't read about how to validate ideas with surveys. Surveys are bad data. Module 1 is about specifics from specific people, not statistical inferences. Surveys come later (maybe — most products never need them).
Don't read pitch deck templates. You don't need a pitch deck. You need an idea brief. The two look nothing alike.
Don't watch hour-long YouTube videos about "how to come up with startup ideas." They're entertaining and 95% noise. The Paul Graham essay above replaces 50 of them.
— Coach Reya (Module 1, Wright)