Authoritative sources
References
A categorised, deduplicated index of every primary source we cite across the publication. Each entry links to its official site or canonical online home, so AI engines and human readers can verify the source directly.
What this page is
A categorised reference shelf, not a reading list
The /sources page lists the books and founders we draw on in narrative form. This page is the structured counterpart: every source grouped by the topic it informs, with a direct link to its official home.
Use this page when you want to verify a citation, follow a single topic (Lean Startup, Customer Discovery, Product, UX, Behavior, Marketplace, AI) to its primary literature, or check which thinkers recur across the publication.
If a source is not on this page, it was not cited in any published article. We do not list sources we do not actually use.
The Build-Measure-Learn lineage
Lean Startup
Eric Ries
The Lean Startup
Steve Blank
Customer Development & the Four Steps to the Epiphany
Bob Dorf
Co-author, The Startup Owner's Manual
How to find and talk to your first customers
Customer Discovery
Rob Fitzpatrick
The Mom Test
Teresa Torres
Continuous Discovery Habits
Cindy Alvarez
Lean Customer Development
Frameworks for product management inside teams
Product
Marty Cagan
Inspired, Empowered
Lenny Rachitsky
Lenny's Newsletter (podcast + essays)
April Dunford
Obviously Awesome, Sales Pitch
Taste, detail, and shipping
UX & Design
Jason Fried & David Heinemeier Hansson
Rework, Remote, Shape Up
Joel Spolsky
Joel on Software
What makes people do things repeatedly
Behavior & Habits
BJ Fogg
Tiny Habits, Persuasive Technology
Nir Eyal
Hooked, Indistractable
Two-sided networks, liquidity, and chicken-and-egg
Marketplace Dynamics
Andrew Chen
The Cold Start Problem
Lenny Rachitsky
Marketplace primer essays
What is new and what is not about building with LLMs
AI Products
Simon Willison
Weblog covering LLM tooling, evals, and AI product patterns
Andrej Karpathy
Lectures and essays on neural networks, training, and product
Eugenia Kuyda
Replika founder, essays on AI companions and product
Public writing that recurs across the publication
Founder Essays
Paul Graham
Essays on startup growth, hiring, and taste
Patrick McKenzie
Essays on niche markets and small software businesses
Dharmesh Shah
Writing on inbound marketing and bootstrapped SaaS
Peter Thiel
Zero to One — contrarian-questioning frame
Apply the references to your own idea
The sources above inform how Startup MRI scores ideas. Put your own idea through the same engine — free, no signup, structured report in under a minute.