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The founder toolkit
After years of founder interviews, patterns emerge. These are the tools, books, and frameworks that keep coming up — the ones working founders actually swear by.
📚 Books
Distilled from hundreds of founder interviews. Read the top one in each category, then work down.
Mindset
- Think and Grow Rich — Napoleon Hill
- The 4-Hour Workweek — Tim Ferriss
- Atomic Habits — James Clear
Startup mechanics
- The Lean Startup — Eric Ries
- Zero to One — Peter Thiel
- The E-Myth Revisited — Michael Gerber
- Good to Great — Jim Collins
Personal growth
- How to Win Friends and Influence People — Dale Carnegie
- The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People — Stephen Covey
- Outliers — Malcolm Gladwell
Sales
- The Greatest Salesman in the World — Og Mandino
- The Psychology of Selling — Brian Tracy
Marketing
- This Is Marketing — Seth Godin
- Building a StoryBrand — Donald Miller
- The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing — Al Ries & Jack Trout
Investing & finance
- The Intelligent Investor — Benjamin Graham
- The Millionaire Next Door — Thomas Stanley
- Common Stocks and Uncommon Profits — Philip Fisher
By founders, for founders
🛠 Tools
Founder calculators
Our own free calculators and templates, each calculator with its formula shown — see all of them on the founder tools page.
- SAFE calculator — what a post-money SAFE owns at its cap and after the priced round
- Convertible note calculator — interest, cap vs. discount, and the noteholder’s stake
- Post-money valuation calculator — including what a Shark Tank ask implies
- Startup dilution calculator — founder ownership round by round
- Liquidation preference calculator — the exit waterfall
- Burn rate & runway calculator — months of runway and the zero-cash date
- Self-employment tax calculator — 2026 SE and income tax on 1099 profit, and your quarterly payment
- LLC vs. S corp tax calculator — what the election saves after payroll tax and running costs
- Solo 401(k) & SEP IRA calculator — your 2026 contribution maximum in each
- Marketing: ROAS, CPM, NPS, engagement rate and LTV & CAC calculators
- Pricing: markup, profit margin and break-even calculators
- Templates: free quote, estimate and purchase order templates — fill in online or download for Word and Excel
Build your site
- Namecheap — affordable domain registration
- Cloudflare Pages — fast, free hosting
- Webflow — no-code site builder
SEO & analytics
- Ahrefs — keyword research and backlink tracking
- SEMRush — full-stack SEO suite
- Google Search Console — free, essential baseline
Email marketing
- Beehiiv — newsletter platform built for growth
- ConvertKit — creator-focused email automation
- Mailchimp — beginner-friendly
Social & content
- Buffer — schedule posts across all platforms
- Canva — fast visual content creation
- Descript — video and podcast editing
CRM & sales
Finance & payments
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