The Founder Field Guide
A living document covering the operational realities of going from idea to pre-seed company. Not theory. Concrete steps, hard-learned lessons, and AI prompts you can use right now.
Why I wrote this
Most founder guides are written by people who have never founded anything. This one is different. It is built from the operational reality of going from zero to pre-seed — the hard-learned lessons around entity structure, banking limitations, family dynamics, and the security threats that hit before you even have revenue.
This guide covers what I know through the pre-seed stage. I will add chapters as I go further. Use it as a reference, not a checklist. These are principles from lived experience, not a syllabus.
Who this is really for
The first few chapters cover what someone needs before they start. The later chapters — channel strategy, content-led growth, co-founder dynamics, AI as operational infrastructure, the first 90 days — are for the founder who is already in motion. Doing everything simultaneously. Pre-revenue, post-conviction.
The path is not linear. You are forming your entity, pitching investors, building the product, and generating content in the same week. This guide tries to reflect that reality.
Each chapter ends with prompts you can paste directly into your AI tool of choice. Modify the variables in brackets. The goal is to compress operational tasks that eat founder time — not to replace judgment, but to accelerate execution.
You will see referral and affiliate links throughout this guide for tools we actually use. This guide stays free. If something here is useful and you decide to sign up for one of those tools, using our link costs you nothing extra and helps keep this resource open and updated. No tool is recommended for the referral — only because we use it ourselves.
The short version of what a year of building has taught me: the hardest part is not building, it is choosing what not to build. Distribution beats product. Your first paying customer changes everything. Investors are not customers. You will be wrong about your ICP, repeatedly. Cash discipline is identity discipline. Most days are not heroic — and the actual work happens there.
Treat year one as a research project. Optimize for learning rate. Default to writing. Keep your circle small and direct. Hold the long arc, plan the short arc. You are the bottleneck, until you are not. Read the full notes from 0 to 1 →