Here's a list of resources shared by Josip Volarević that every founder should know.
Josip has spent a lot of time around early-stage founders, and he sent this over to me with a simple note: you might find this useful, for yourself and for the founders you're helping. I did. So I'm sharing it here for all early-stage founders.
I've kept his grouping, with a line on why each one earns its place. Bookmark this page and work through it slowly — one link per coffee is the right pace.
Pitching, applications, and getting noticed
The through-line in this section: attention is earned in the first sixty seconds — of a DM, a deck, or a demo video.
How to DM people — Josip's own playbook for cold outreach. Most DMs die because they ask too much, too early, of someone who has no reason to care yet.
How to win Colosseum — Josip's breakdown of what separates winning Colosseum hackathon submissions from the other few thousand.
DoorDash's application video for YC S13 — One minute, four founders, zero production value — and it got them into Y Combinator's Summer 2013 batch. The bar is clarity, not polish.
Nail your pitch with Pixar's storytelling formula — The “once upon a time… until one day…” structure, applied to startup pitches. A narrative arc beats a stack of bullet points.
Examples of exceptional ability — Concrete examples of what evidence of exceptional ability actually looks like — plus an addendum with more. Useful for calibrating your own bar.
How to think about traction — A sharp reframe on what investors actually read as traction at the earliest stages — it's a slope, not a number.
YC: How to design a better pitch deck — YC's classic on deck legibility: big fonts, one idea per slide, decks that still work when skimmed in eight seconds.
YC: How to build your seed round pitch deck — The companion piece: the exact slides a seed deck needs, and what each one has to prove.
Design a deck like a children's book — If a slide needs to be studied, it has failed. One picture, one sentence, next page.
The greatest pitch ever — Proof that a pitch is a performance, not a document.
Earn a Solana retweet — What it takes to get the ecosystem to amplify your launch — mostly, building something worth retweeting and showing it specifically.
Don't run out of money — Solana's co-founder on the one unforgivable startup mistake. Default alive is a strategy.
When you need fuel
Tactics are cheap when morale is gone. This section is for the weeks when nothing works.
Wish you suffering — The uncomfortable case for wanting the hard road — the parts you'd skip are the parts that build you.
Relentlessly resourceful — Paul Graham's two-word definition of a good founder. If the phrase doesn't describe you yet, this essay explains what to aim for.
The right kind of stubborn — Persistent founders listen and adapt; obstinate ones just don't listen. Knowing which one you're being is half the battle.
Charisma as a force multiplier — Charisma isn't a gift — it's attention, energy, and conviction, and it compounds everything else you do.
How to do public speaking — A practical thread on speaking well in public — a founder skill that pays off in pitches, panels, and all-hands alike.
Optimize for signal — On spending your time where it generates real signal instead of comfortable noise.
Lock in — Sometimes the strategy is simply: fewer inputs, more output. Close the tabs.
For the long game
Josip filed these under “less important.” Read them anyway — just later.
How to do great work — The broadest essay Paul Graham has written on doing work that matters. Not startup-specific, which is exactly why it holds up.
A word to the resourceful — Why some founders are easy to help and others are impossible — and why investors can tell within minutes.
Contrarian take on building in public — The counterargument to the build-in-public orthodoxy. Worth reading precisely because everyone else in your feed is telling you the opposite.
None of these will build the company for you. But a founder who has internalized this list DMs better, pitches better, and lasts longer — and lasting is most of the game. Thanks, Josip.
This is a living list — Josip and I will keep updating it as we find more resources worth adding.