211 Startup Tools, Posts & Resources for B2B Entrepreneurs in 2024

There are thousands of startup tools and resources out there, with more coming online every week. As a B2B founder trying to save startup runway and minimize time to product-market fit, it’s sometimes difficult to differentiate what will help from the things that will distract you from your goals.

To help founders get set up with the best startup tools and resources, I put together a list of tried and tested tools, resources, and key posts, categorized by focus areas. You can refer back to this list as your business challenges change and evolve over time. Here it is:

Startup Tools, Posts & Resources for B2B Entrepreneurs

Essentials

  1. 57 things I’ve learned founding three companies by Jason Goldberg
  2. All the Startup Advice You Read is Wrong by Evan Williams
  3. Camels and Rubber Duckies by Joel Spolsky
  4. Creating Startup Success 101 by Steve Blank
  5. Don’t Build a Sexy Startup by Jordan Skole
  6. First, ten by Seth Godin
  7. How New Ideas Almost Killed Our Startup by Vinicius Vacanti
  8. How to break the rules by Dan North
  9. How to Start a Startup by Sam Altman
  10. Pivot, don’t jump to a new vision by Eric Ries
  11. The 15 Best Entrepreneur Books Founders Should Read in 2024
  12. The Long, Slow SaaS Ramp of Death by Gail Goodman
  13. The unprofitable SaaS business model trap by Jason Cohen
  14. Three SaaS Sales Models by Joel York
  15. Why We’re Only Just at the Beginning of SaaS by Tom Tunguz
  16. Steve Blank’s Startup Tools for more startup tools 🙂Resource

B2B / Enterprise

  1. It’s damn hard to build an enterprise company by Ben Sesser
  2. Sean Murphy on the first dozen enterprise customers by Gabriel Weinberg
  3. The Main Differences Between B2C and B2B Startups
  4. The Zero Overhead Principle by DJ Patil
  5. Why David beats Goliath by Scott Barrington
  6. 🔒 B2B Value Proposition Exploration Worksheet to evaluate various value propositions Resource
  7. 🔒 Buying Influencer Map to track an organization’s buying influencesResource
  8. 🔒 Early Adopter Evaluation Grid to assess early adopters and find advocatesResource
  9. 🔒 Hypothesis Test Plan Template to track hypotheses and assumptionsResource
  10. 🔒 Money Map Template to evaluate business spendResource
  11. 🔒 Problem Evaluation Grid to score business problemsResource

B2B Startup Ideas

  1. B2B Hacks – Getting from Consulting to Scalable Products by Alex Cowan
  2. Domain Experience Gives Entrepreneurs an Unfair Advantage by Mark Suster
  3. Don’t Follow Your Passion: A Smarter Way to Find a Product to Sell by Andrew Youderian
  4. How to Find B2B Business Ideas in Your Workplace
  5. How to Find Good Business Ideas in B2B and in the Enterprise
  6. Startup Advice: Build for Your Unfair Advantage by Fast Company
  7. Slack App Ideaboard for Slack app ideasResource
  8. Y Combinator’s Requests for Startups for fundable business ideasResource

Business Partners

  1. 5 tips for choosing a co-founder by Michael McDerment
  2. An alternative to employee options/equity grants by Jason Fried
  3. Beginner’s Guide to Finding the Right Business Partner by Neil Patel
  4. Slicing Pie for equity splits and partnership agreementsTool

Name & Branding

  1. How to Choose a Startup Name that Reduces Marketing Friction by Rand Fishkin
  2. How to Name Your Company by Julien Smith
  3. Coolors to explore color palettesTool
  4. Logojoy to create basic logos for startup toolsTool
  5. Namechk for domain name researchTool

Business Incorporation

  1. Startup Cheat-Sheet: How to Incorporate Your Company by Tyler Tate
  2. CooleyGo’s Incorporation Package for templates from DelawareResource
  3. e-Residency Visas for Estonian/EU incorporationResource
  4. Stripe Atlas for US incorporationResource
  5. US Patent and Trademark Search to validate the availability of a business nameResource
  6. Clerky for legal paperworkTool
  7. Gust Launch for incorporation packagesTool

Recruiting

  1. How to Hire a Product Manager by Ken Norton
  2. The Key to Hiring for Startups is to Build Buzz and Attract Talent To You by Ben Yoskovitz
  3. What to look for in a UI designer by Ryan Singer

People

  1. 10,000 Hours with Reid Hoffman: What I Learned by Ben Casnocha
  2. Indecision Kills Startups by Ben Yoskovitz
  3. Maker’s Schedule, Manager’s Schedule by Paul Graham
  4. Why I Run a Flat Company by Jason Fried
  5. Fancy Hands for US-based virtual assistantsResource
  6. Fiverr to hire freelance helpResource
  7. Upwork to hire freelance helpResource

Productivity

  1. 26 Time Management Hacks I Wish I’d Known at 20
  2. Do Things that Don’t Scale by Paul Graham
  3. How to Hire and Why Transparency Matters by Keith Rabois
  4. Sorry. My heart says yes, but my schedule says no by Dharmesh Shah
  5. Sanebox for busy email and inbox managementTool
  6. TextExpander for quick text inputTool

Startup Tools, Posts & Resources for Customer Development

  1. 🔒 B2B Customer Discovery Interview Script for an early customer discovery interview scriptResource
  2. Customer Development Toolkit for Cindy Alvarez’s customer development templatesResource
  3. Go-to-Market / Product-Market-Fit Checklist for quick market sizingResource
  4. The Business Model Canvas for the classic business model canvasResource
  5. The buyer persona canvas for a buyer persona templateResource
  6. The Lean Canvas for the Lean CanvasResource
  7. LeanStack to track business learningTool

Market Research

  1. 4 techniques and 6 tools to find your total addressable market by Elie Casa
  2. Customer Development Hacks for SaaS Startups by Lincoln Murphy
  3. How to Calculate Your B2B Startup’s Total Addressable Market
  4. Sales Safari by Amy Hoy
  5. Three more ways to build a $100 million business by Christoph Janz
  6. Follow.net for competitive insightsTool
  7. Google Trends for trending topics and competitive researchTool

Metrics

  1. Activate Tech and Media Outlook 2016 by Activate
  2. How to Choose the Right Analytics Platform for Your Business
  3. Excel template for cohort analyses in SaaS for cohort analysesResource
  4. Startup Metrics for Pirates (A.A.R.R.R. framework) for startup metrics trackingResource
  5. Amplitude for product analytics and retention analysesTool
  6. Hotjar for landing page heatmaps and feedbackTool

Customer Research

  1. How To Write Great Surveys with Actionable Data Results by Ben Yoskovitz
  2. Kano Model – How to delight your customers by Lawrence Phillips
  3. Ask Your Target Market for online market researchResource
  4. MerchantWords for Amazon keyword researchResource
  5. Product Habits SaaS Early Access for an example of an early surveyResource
  6. Zintro to connect with expertsResource
  7. Delighted for quick net promoter score surveysTool
  8. Five Second Test to understand first impressions of a landing pageTool
  9. Google Alerts to monitor keywords and competitorsTool
  10. Promoter.io for quick net promoter score surveysTool
  11. PMF Survey for Sean Ellis’s Product-Market fit surveysTool
  12. UserTesting.com for quick remote user testing of startup toolsTool
  13. Parlor.io for customer feedback managementTool

Product-Market Fit

  1. 5 Ways to Identify Product / Market Fit by David Cummings
  2. Building the lean startup startupifier by Fred Lalonde
  3. Minimize your Time to Product/Market Fit by Andrew Chen
  4. The only thing that matters by Marc Andreessen
  5. The Lean B2B course to build products businesses buyResource

Minimum Viable Products

  1. The Dos and Don’ts of Minimum Viable Products for B2B Startups
  2. The Next Feature Fallacy by Andrew Chen
  3. Noun Project for icon research and inspirationResource
  4. Pexels for free stock photosResource
  5. Stock photos that don’t suck by Dustin SenosResource
  6. Unsplash for free high-res stock imagesResource
  7. Carrd to build quick landing pagesTool
  8. Placeit to create quick product mockupsTool
  9. Ship by Product Hunt to build quick landing pagesTool
  10. Unbounce to build quick landing pagesTool

Posts & Startup Tools for Investment

  1. 8 Questions on How to Prepare for VC Meetings by Ben Yoskovitz
  2. How investors use metrics to evaluate, pick, and reject startups by Andrew Chen
  3. It’s ‘Shocking’ That Startups Are Ignoring A $500 Billion Market by Julie Bort
  4. The Anatomy of a Fundable Startup by Naval Ravikant
  5. The Most Important Startup Question by David Skok
  6. VC Math by Homan Yuen
  7. We’re Raising $3.5m in Funding: Here is the Valuation, Term Sheet and Why We’re Doing It by Joel Gascoigne
  8. What should I send investors? Part 1: Elevator Pitch by Babak Nivi

Pitch

  1. The 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoint by Guy Kawasaki
  2. The Greatest Sales Pitch I’ve Seen All Year by Andy Raskin
  3. Deckset to create quick decksTool

Investors & Accelerators

  1. B2B Angel Investors to find angel investors in B2BResource
  2. Designer Fund to raise funding as a designerResource
  3. Innovation Nest to raise capitalResource
  4. 🔒 List of 100+ B2B VC Funds & Accelerators to find B2B-focused investors and acceleratorsResource
  5. Slack Fund to raise funding for startup tools from SlackResource

Benchmarks

  1. 2017 Private SaaS Company Survey – Part 1 to benchmark sales and go-to-market strategiesResource
  2. 2017 Private SaaS Company Survey – Part 2 to benchmark sales and go-to-market strategiesResource
  3. State of Startups 2017 for overall startup benchmarksResource
  1. Business-in-a-Box for more specific legal documentsResource
  2. Docracy for open legal documentsResource
  3. Startup Documents for free legal documents by Y CombinatorResource
  4. Earth Class Mail for postal mail managementTool
  5. Peter for a cool AI-based lawyerTool

Startup Tools, Posts & Resources for Finances

  1. Financial planning for SaaS startups
  2. SaaS Financial Plan 2.0 for basic SaaS financesResource
  3. Runway to monitor cashflowTool

Payment

  1. Gumroad to sell digital productsTool
  2. MoonClerk as a quick UI for StripeTool
  3. Podia to sell digital products and training materialTool
  4. Stripe to accept credit card paymentsTool

Startup Tools, Posts & Resources for Sales

  1. How to Persuade People to Accept an “Unfair” Offer by Dean Rieck
  2. How to use the 5 WHY approach
  3. Scaling outbound sales to 1M run rate by Greg Pietruszyński
  4. Use This 4 Part Framework To Write Cold Emails That Actually Get a Response by Dan Martell
  5. 101 Sales Email Templates You Can Use to Close More Deals for inspiration when doing cold reachoutsResource
  6. Stackshare to find the technology stack of businessesResource
  7. BuiltWith to find the technology stack of businessesTool
  8. Calendly to schedule appointmentsTool
  9. Clearbit Connect to find email addressesTool
  10. Datanyze to find the technology stack of businessesTool
  11. DiscoverOrg to find hidden people in organizationsTool
  12. Drift for live chat and automationsTool
  13. Email Hunter to find email addressesTool
  14. Gong.io for sales training and pitch monitoringTool
  15. Reply for sales trackingTool
  16. Siftery to find the technology stack of businessesTool
  17. Streak to send cold emails and as CRM in GmailTool
  18. Zoom Info to find email addressesTool

Customer Success

  1. Customer Success: The Definitive Guide by Lincoln Murphy
  2. Managing Customer Success to Reduce Churn by David Skok
  3. User Onboard for product onboarding inspirationResource
  4. Totango for customer scoring and customer successTool

Startup Tools, Posts & Resources for Marketing

  1. 100+ Effective Tactics to Promote Your Blog Content
  2. Startup Marketing: How to Find Your Customer Acquisition Channels by Ryan Farley
  3. Growth Is Good, But Retention Is 4+Ever by Brian Balfour
  4. Our Customers Love Us. Why Aren’t They Doing More For Us? by Brian Gladstein
  5. Niche to Win, Baby by Dave McClure
  6. Real Unfair Advantages by Jason Cohen
  7. Is It Worth the Time? to evaluate ROIResource
  8. Highlights | Content & Email Marketing Analytics for Marketers and Bloggers
    for traffic and email marketing monitoringTool
  9. Startup Growth Calculator to evaluate growth trajectoriesTool
  10. Startuplister to quickly promote a startupTool

Pricing

  1. 4 pricing principles to never forget by Des Traynor
  2. B2B Pricing: Emotional & Economic Value | OpenView Labs by Steven Forth
  3. Data shows SaaS discounting lowers SaaS LTV by over 30% by Patrick Campbell
  4. Don’t Just Roll the Dice – A usefully short guide to software pricing by Neil Davidson
  5. How do I raise prices? by Jason Cohen
  6. How-To Price Your Software Product by Ben Yoskovitz
  7. Scalable Pricing: A Key Tool For SaaS Success by David Skok
  8. The Three SaaS Levers that Drive Growth and Keep You From Plateauing by Lars Lofgren
  9. Transaction Price to Transaction Quantity to evaluate business modelsResource

Email Marketing

  1. 19 Email Testing Tools to Make Your Campaigns Successful Before They Start
  2. Goodbits for email copy and design inspirationResource
  3. Lead Magnet Bible: 29 Killer Bribes To Grow Your Email List for content upgrade ideasResource
  4. Lifecycle Marketing: 135 Email Examples, Inspiration and Best Practices for email marketing inspirationResource
  5. The messaging starter kit for customer engagement to create quick product onboarding sequences for startup toolsResource
  6. Intercom for live chat and email automation. One of my favorite startup toolsTool
  7. MailChimp for newsletters and email marketingTool
  8. MailMunch for email signup forms and lead captureTool
  9. Really Good Emails for email copy and design inspirationResource

Customer Acquisition

  1. 30-day trial? 14-day? Freemium? Here’s why it probably doesn’t matter by Madkudu
  2. 99% Of Our Users Are Not Paying – And It’s Perfectly Fine by François Grante
  3. Freemium Summit Recap by Mark MacLeod
  4. The Importance of Product-Channel Fit in Freemium by Kieran Flanagan
  5. The state of freemium in SaaS by Patrick Campbell

Social Media

  1. Buffer for social media managementTool
  2. BuzzSumo for content and influencer researchTool
  3. Followerwonk for social media researchTool
  4. Meet Edgar for back catalogue content sharingTool

Business Exits

  1. When Should You Sell Your Startup? by Jason Lemkin
  2. FE International to purchase/sell a SaaS businessResource
  3. Flippa to purchase/sell a websiteResource
  4. Lever Technology to sell a working productResource
  5. Quietlight Brokerage to sell a working productResource
  6. Think3 to sell a working productResource

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This list of startup tools, posts, and resources will grow and evolve over time. If you see any mistakes or have suggestions to make, just tweet at @leanb2b.

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