Tech Startup Resources List
A grand list of resources and tools related to web/app development, business and startups.
Business
Business related resource for building your next startup or improving your current one.
SaaS Financial Plan - A financial plan template for SaaS.
Founder / Advisor Standard Template - Contract template for startup advisors.
Equity Compensation Guide - Stock options, RSUs, job offers, and taxes — a detailed reference
Startup Tools - Free contract templates for startups in the nordics.
Producthunt Founder Club - Lots of benefits for startup founders.
Gitlab Handbook - GitLab team handbook is a great resource on how to run a remote company.
MVP Success Guide - A great guide on running building a minimum viable product for your startup.
EnterpriseReady - SaaS feature guides created for people who build SaaS products for enterprise customers.
Startupstash - A curated directory of tools and resources to build your startup.
Resources for Freelancers - All the free resources and templates you need to get work done as a freelancer.
1 on 1 Meeting Questions - Mega list of 1 on 1 meeting questions compiled from a variety to sources
StartHouse - A big collection of startup pitch decks.
How to do B2B Sales - A great article on doing B2B sales right.
Managers Playbook - Heuristics for effective (tech) management: coaching, hiring, one-on-ones etc.
YC Startup Library - Videos, podcasts and essays as resources for startup founders.
Founder library - Curated list of articles and resources for founders
Awesome CTO - Curated list of articles for CTOs, with the emphasis on startups and hyper-growth companies.
Falsisign - There comes a time when someone wants you to go through printing and signing and scanning a paper. Use this instead. :)
AI / Machine Learning
Every business can take advantage of the great progress made in the AI/ML field recently. The uses span from generating images for your blog posts to using ChatGPT as a pair programming partner.
ChatGPT - Use ChatGPT as your personal knowledge base, assistant, programming helper and what not.
ChatGPT Prompts - A repo that includes ChatGPT promt examples to use ChatGPT better.
Dall-e 2 - Dall-e 2 is an image generation model useful for generating images for blog posts etc.
OpenAI Cookbook - Examples and guides for using the OpenAI API.
Terms and Conditions
If you're building a legit business sooner than later you will need to introduce some terms and conditions. Check these links for inspiration and advice.
Basecamp Customer Bill of Rights - The gold standard in ToS clarity and user friendliness.
Hiring
Hiring the best engineers is crucial for a tech startup because they are the ones who will build the product that will make the company successful. Without them, your startup's rocket is going to be a dud and end up in the junkyard.
Dropbox career framework - How Dropbox organizes their technical roles.
Hiring Senior Engineers - Tips to write better engineering job descriptions.
Tech Interview Handbook - Curated coding interview preparation materials for busy software engineers.
Culture
A handbook is not a culture. But these handbooks can be a great inspiration on how to set up yours.
Atlassian Team Playbook
Basecamp Handbook
Gitlab Handbook
Hashicorp Works
Valve Handbook
Zapier Remote Guide
Workspace
Workfrom - Find coffee spots to work from in any city verified by other remote workers.
Design & development
Design and development related resources.
App builders
Too lazy to learn how to code or too cheap to pay for someone to do it for you? Here are some options to try.
APIs and documentation
Great APIs and documentation are a key to successful tech startup. It can be a good idea not to roll your own API standard and follow an existing standard and use the provided tools.
JSONAPI - A specification for building APIs in JSON.
OpenApi - The OpenAPI Specification (OAS) defines a standard, programming language-agnostic interface description for HTTP APIs.
Colors & patterns
Tools and resources on figuring out color palettes and finding patterns.
Colourlovers - A creative community where people from around the world create and share colors, palettes and patterns.
Coolors - Easy and fast color schemes generator.
Dracula Theme - Popular theme for editors/apps etc
Gradient Animator - Create CSS gradients easily.
Gradient Generator - A gradient generator that generates lush gradients avoiding the gray dead zone.
Nord Theme - Theme for editors/apps etc
Subtle Patterns - Yet another pattern library for your projects.
The Pattern Library - This project compiles patterns created by designers for use in your projects.
Data
Often you need some data to achieve your goals.
GeoLite2 Free Geolocation Data - A free IP geolocation database.
Domain / namecheck tools
These tools make it easy to check if the genious app name idea you came up with is available for general use in the internets.
Wordsafety - Check a name for unwanted meanings in foreign languages
Domainr - Instantly check if a domain is available.
Namechk - Quickly check a name across multiple services.
Entri - Service & api to manage custom domains.
Ember plugins / resources
A bunch of the best resources and plugins we are using for Emberjs.
Ember Observer - Ember addons listing
Ember Power Calendar - Powerful and customizable calendar component for Ember.
Ember Flatpickr - Implements the Flatpickr calendar for Ember.
Ember Testing Tips - A good article on how to do testing in Ember.
Ember Cli Notifications - A notifications system for Ember.
Ember Gestures - Handle gestures in Ember apps nicely.
Vertical Collection - Infinite Scroll and Occlusion at > 60FPS for Ember.
Ember In Viewport - Detect if an Ember View or Component is in the viewport @ 60FPS.
Ember Cli Clipboard - Copy text to clipboard.
Ember Cli Geo - Integrating HTML5 Geolocation API into your Ember.js web app.
Ember Cli Swiper - A nice swiper component for your apps.
Ember Concurrency - Ember Addon that makes it easy to write concise, robust, and beautiful asynchronous code.
Ember Animated - Core animation primitives for Ember
Ember CP Validations - Ember computed property based validations
Ember Cli Bundle Analyzer - Analyze and visually show the size and contents of your Ember app's bundles.
Design, UX, fonts, typography, sounds
Resources related to design, ux, fonts typography, and sounds.
Closest font - Find closest font
CSS Font Stack - A collection of web safe CSS font stacks.
Design Principles - An open source collection of Design Principles and methods.
Devfonts - Fonts for code editors.
Inspirational Typohraphy Guide - A Five-Minute Guide to Better Typography
Laws of UX - Laws of UX is a collection of the maxims and principles that designers can consider when building user interfaces.
Practicaltypography - Typography in ten minutes
Sketch App Resources - Lots of free resources for Sketch App.
Typ - Find fonts that go together
Freesound - Freesound is a collaborative database of Creative Commons Licensed sounds.
Inspiration sources
Resources for UI/design inspiration.
Dribbble - The place to find & showcase creative work.
Goodweb - The best landing pages, organized by section.
Mobilemozaic - MobileMozaic is a gallery of the very best designed iphone applications.
Pttrns - Examples of common design patterns in apps.
Littlebigdetails - Little Big Details is a curated collection of the finer details of design.
JavaScript guides
Guides for writing better JavaScript code.
AirBnb JavaScript Style Guide - AirBnbs famous JavaScript style guide.
Modern JS Cheatsheet - Cheatsheet for the JavaScript knowledge you will frequently encounter in modern projects.
Clean Code JavaScript - Software engineering principles, from Robert C. Martin's book Clean Code, adapted for JavaScript.
33 JavaScript Concepts - Repository of updated links to help developers master their concepts in JavaScript.
JavaScript libs / resources
A bunch of JavaScript libraries and resources that seem to come handy time after time.
GarlicJS - Persist form state in localStorage to prevent those oopsie moments where user loses text.
Faker.js - Generate massive amounts of realistic fake data in Node.js and the browser.
Awesome Node.js - A huge list of delightful Node.js packages and resources.
Sifter - A library for textually searching arrays and hashes of objects by property (or multiple properties). Designed specifically for autocomplete.
Svelte Community - Resources for Svelte framework.
Bottleneck - A library to throttle things.
UI components
Chardin.js - Simple overlay instructions / guide for your apps.
GridStack - Build interactive dashboards in minutes. Requires jQuery.
Leaflet - JavaScript library for mobile-friendly interactive maps.
noUiSlider - noUiSlider is a lightweight JavaScript range slider library with full multi-touch support. It fits wonderfully in responsive designs and has no dependencies.
nProgress - Slim progress bars for Ajax'y applications. Inspired by Google, YouTube, and Medium.
Timesheet.js - JavaScript library for HTML5 & CSS3 time sheets.
Slate - A completely customizable framework for building rich text editors.
Shepherd.js - Create product guides/tours of your app easily.
Date/time
Moment - Parse, validate, manipulate, and display dates in javascript.
CLNDR - a jQuery calendar plugin that uses HTML templates.
Pickadate - The mobile-friendly, responsive, and lightweight jQuery date & time input picker.
Kalendae - A javascript date picker that just works.
File
Filesize.js - JavaScript library to generate a human readable String describing the file size.
jQuery File Upload - File Upload widget with multiple file selection, drag&drop support, progress bar, validation and preview images, audio and video for jQuery.
Dropzone - Dropzone is an easy to use drag'n'drop library. It supports image previews and shows nice progress bars.
Images
lazysizes - High performance and SEO friendly lazy loader for images (responsive and normal), iframes and more, that detects any visibility changes triggered through user interaction, CSS or JavaScript without configuration.
Intense Images - A simple library to view large images up close using simple mouse interaction, and the full screen.
Photoswipe - JavaScript image gallery for mobile and desktop, modular, framework independent.
Galleria - Another JavaScript Image Gallery.
Mouse/touch/keyboard
Dragula - Drag and drop so simple it hurts.
Hammer.js - A javascript library for multi-touch gestures.
Mousetrap - Simple library for handling keyboard shortcuts in Javascript.
Cleave.js - Format input text content when you are typing.
Draggable - The JavaScript Drag & Drop library your grandparents warned you about.
ScrollMagic - A popular javascript library for magical scroll interactions.
Visualisation
D3 - Bring data to life with SVG, Canvas and HTML.
C3 - A D3-based reusable chart library.
Raphaël - Raphaël is a small JavaScript library that should simplify your work with vector graphics on the web.
SVG.js - The lightweight library for manipulating and animating SVG.
Kubernetes / Docker
Running your own cluster is the bomb these days.
Gravity - Opinionated image-based Kubernetes packaging and management tools.
Helm - The package manager for Kubernetes
Kops - Kubernetes Operations to handle production grade K8s installation, upgrades, and management
Seldon Core - Handy tool to run your ML models on K8s.
Dive - A tool for exploring a docker image, layer contents, and discovering ways to shrink the size of your Docker/OCI image.
Dokku - Docker powered mini-Heroku. The smallest PaaS implementation you've ever seen.
Gotenberg - A Docker-powered stateless API
for PDF files.
Launch check lists
Getting ready to launch a web application or site? Go through these check lists to make sure you got your bases covered.
Box UK Checklist - Extensive website launch checklist.
Smashing Mag Checklist - Smashing magazines take on website launch checklist.
Webdesignerdepot Checklist - Webdesignerdepots take on website launch checklist.
1stwebdesigner Checklist - 1stwebdesigners take on website launch checklist.
Open source example web/mobile apps
It can be valuable to take a peek at other apps how they've done things.
Bigcapital - Bigcapital is intelligent cloud and open-source accounting software for small and medium businesses.
Bullet Train - Bullet Train is an MIT-licensed Rails-based framework that saves you months of development by starting you off with all the features that are the same in every product, so you can focus on what makes your app unique.
Calendso - The open-source Calendly alternative built using Next.js.
Capstone - An experimental, tablet-based tool for developing your ideas.
Clone Wars - Browse open-source clones or alternatives of popular sites like Airbnb, Amazon, Instagram, Netflix, Tiktok, Spotify, Trello, Whatsapp, Youtube, etc.
Dashy - A self-hostable personal dashboard built for you. Includes status-checking, widgets, themes, icon packs, and a UI editor.
Docuseal - Open source DocuSign alternative. Create, fill, and sign digital documents.
FullStack - Full-stack boilerplate for you to learn some cool things or build your next app off of.
Hasura example app - React admin with firebase auth and hasura graphql backend.
Hospitalrun - Comprehensive OS app for hospitals.
Invoice Dragon - An application that simplifies the process of generating professional Invoices and Receipts for your business needs.
Navi - Navi is a production quality analytics reporting UI
Pushpin - A collaborative corkboard app.
Pixelpusher - Real-time peer-to-peer collaboration with React.
Realworld - The mother of all demo apps" — Exemplary fullstack Medium.com clone powered by React, Angular, Node, Django, Ember etc.
Sharedrop - Easy P2P file transfer powered by WebRTC - inspired by Apple AirDrop.
Super Productivity - Super Productivity is a ToDo List / Time Tracker / Personal Jira Task Manager for Linux, MacOS and Windows.
Talkyard - A combination of stackoverflow, wiki and slack.
Maps.me - MAPS.ME is an open source cross-platform offline maps application, built on top of crowd-sourced OpenStreetMap data.
Papercups - Papercups is an open source live customer chat web app written in Elixir.
Penbot - Penpot is the a design and prototyping platform meant for cross-domain teams.
Plane - Open Source JIRA, Linear and Height Alternative. Plane helps you track your issues, epics, and product roadmaps in the simplest way possible.
Tablane - Tablane is a workspace that adapts to your needs. It's as minimal or as powerful as you need it to be. Built in React + Tailwind.
Upptime - A open-source uptime monitor and status page, powered entirely by GitHub Actions, Issues, and Pages.
QR-Designer - QR designer web app with a novel method of designing qr codes that does not take advantage of error correction.
LangUI - LangUI is an Open Source Tailwind library with free to use components tailored for your AI and GPT projects. Focus on building the next best project and let it handle the UI.
React libs / resources
react-map-gl - React friendly API wrapper around MapboxGL JS.
react-vis - Data Visualization Components
reakit - Toolkit for building accessible rich web apps with React.
Nivo - A set of dataviz components, built on top of d3 and Reactjs libraries.
Templates / boilerplates
Here is a bunch of templates and boiler plates for hitting the ground running in your next endeavour.
Boostrapsious - Free (and non-free) Bootstrap themes.
Bootswatch - Free themes for Bootstrap.
Extensionizr - Start a chrome extension in 15 seconds.
Fastshell - Simple, quick front-end boilerplate and workflows.
Html5up - Free HTML5 site templates.
Initializr - HTML5 template generator to help you getting started with a new project fast
MVP CSS - A minimalist stylesheet for HTML elements.
Start Boostrap - More free (and non-free) Bootstrap themes.
Underscores - Wordpress theme starter kit.
30 Seconds Of Code - Short code snippets for your development needs.
Testing and user experience
Tools for testing and improving your web applications.
Browserstack - Test your projects on 2000+ real devices and browsers.
Fullstory - See how your users actually use your web application.
Fake name generator - Generate random realistic identities for testing.
Gremlins.js - Unleash the gremlins on your application or site to test it's robustness. :)
Gtmetrix - See how your site performs, reveal why it's slow and discover optimization opportunities.
Pagespeed - Googles pagespeed test can help you make your web pages fast on all devices.
Tota11y - Tota11y helps visualize how your site performs with assistive technologies.
Usetrace - Mostly codeless UI test automation in the cloud.
Taiko - A node.js library for testing modern web applications.
Testproject - TestProject is an end-to-end test automation platform for web, mobile, and API.
Escape Google / Privacy
Google removed "Don't be evil" clause from their code of conduct and got 200% more evil. Here are some alternatives to Google stuff and generally avoid tracking. Because privacy matters.
Sovereign - Run your own infrastructure for email, file sharing and what not.
Fastmail - Alternative email provider for Gmail.
PrivacyTools - PrivacyTools provides services, tools and knowledge to protect your privacy against global mass surveillance.
Prismbreak - Opt out of global data surveillance programs like PRISM, XKeyscore and Tempora.
Syncthing - Syncthing is a continuous file synchronization program aka. open source dropbox.
DeGoogle - A huge list of alternatives to Google products. Privacy tips, tricks, and links.
Ethical Ads - Ads for developers in an ethical way.
Marketing
I know we tech wizards love getting lost in code and building the next big thing, but without marketing, all that hard work will be for nothing. It's like building a castle in the middle of the desert, sure it's impressive, but if no one knows it's there, what's the point?
Email marketing
Email List Incentives - A comprehensive article on using lead magnets to get subscribers for your blog.
Gmass Inbox - Test if Gmail considers your emails as spam or do they land in the inbox.
Mail Tester - Check your email messages before sending them out to ensure they are not considered spam.
Really Good Emails - A huge collection of high quality emails for transactional/marketing email inspiration.
Guides & inspiration
Marketing Examples - Long list of the finest real world marketing examples.
Marketing For Engineers - A curated collection of marketing articles & tools to grow your product.
SaaS Website Best Practices - Understand how to build a great SaaS Website.
Sizle directories list - Mega list of submission directories to get exposure for your new project.
Social media automation
Tools to help automate social media and make the bots take over the world.
Insomniac - Instagram bot written in python that runs it's automation on a virtual device or on a real Android device.
Tinder Client - NodeJS based Tinder client.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Tools and articles on handling of search engine optimization.
Ahrefs - Excellent tools for monitoring and optimizing your site for SEO.
SaaS website best practices - Actionable advice on how to have a great web presence as a SaaS startup.
Photos/mockups/illustrations/videos
Resources for finding those juicy free photos, videos or icons for boostrapping your startup idea.
Visualhunt - Creative commons photo search engine.
The Stocks - Yet another stock search engine.
Mockupworld - Find free Mockups from the Web
Unsplash - The place to find free, high quality photos
Compfight - Locate visual inspiration
you need.
Littlevisuals - Free, high resolution images
Picjumbo - Free high-resolution images for personal and commercial use
Gratisography - Quirky, creative and free photos
Morguefile - Free images for creatives, by creatives
Freepik - Graphic resources for everyone
Pixabay - Stunning free images & royalty free stock
Jeshoots - Free to use photography by Jan Vašek, who wants to help to all of the artists.
New Old Stock - Vintage photos from the public archives. Free of known copyright restrictions.
Moveast - This is a journey of a Portuguese guy moving to the east decided that every photo should be used for free.
Life of Pix - Another site with free high resolution photography.
Kaboompics - Free stock photography and color palettes.
Designerspics - Free Hi-Res photos for your personal & commercial use. Attribution not required!
Startup Stock Photos - Startup themed free to use stock photos
Jaymantri - CC0 photos by Ajay Mantri
Stock Up - Free stock photo aggregator
Isorepublic - Free high-resolution CC0 photos and videos
Pexels - Free stock photos & videos shared by talented creators.
Coverr - Beautiful free stock video footage
Iconduck - Free icons, no email/signup required.
Iradesign - Build your own illustrations.
Offline goodies & swag
We do not yet live in a fully digital world and it can be cool to get some swag for your company.
Calepino - Calepino offers great quality brandable office goodies
Colorplan Paper - Paper of epic quality from England for those extraordinary business cards
Gooten - Build an online store and let Gooten produce the goodies and fulfill orders.
Fatcloth - The most epic pocket squares that double as screen or eyewear cleaning cloth. Also brandable to your own companys needs.
Realthread - Makes it easy to order super soft, stylish custom printed t-shirts
Stickermule - Stickers and other swag with minimal hassle
Security
We can not forget security even in a busy startup.
AWS Security tools - List of open source tools for AWS security: defensive, offensive, auditing, DFIR, etc.
Honest Security - A guide to endpoint security and device management that doesn't erode your values.
Studying / reference / tools
Site / applications / references to help you study stuff to keep your mind sharp and fingers fast.
0 Data App - A specification for apps where users own their data.
Anki - Powerful, intelligent flash cards.
Crontab Guru - The quick and simple editor for cron schedule expressions.
Ihateregex - The Regex Cheat Sheet
Keybr - Take typing speed test, practice your touch typing skills, learn to type faster and with fewer errors with this free online typing tutor.
Shortcutfoo - Practice shorcuts and become a ninja through interactive learning and repetition.
The Art of Commandline - Master the command line, in one page.
Typelit - Improve your typing for free online by practicing on classic literature.
FTP - The Ultimate Guide to First-Principles Thinking
Open Source Computer Science - Path to a free self-taught education in Computer Science!
CyberChef - A simple, intuitive web app for analysing and decoding data without having to deal with complex tools or programming languages.
Devdocs - DevDocs combines multiple API documentations in a fast, organized, and searchable interface.
Devhints - Rico's collection of cheatsheets for all things programming.
Load Balancing - Understand load balancing.