For Early-Stage Founders

Founder Playbooks

Most fundraising and marketing advice for founders comes in one of two forms: a 300-page book, or a Twitter thread with no follow-through. Neither one is built for the actual moment you're in, staring at one specific decision, needing to make it this week.

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Founder Playbooks by Tom Berger — eight short, practical playbooks for early-stage founders

Founder Playbooks is eight short, practical guides for the decisions that hit hardest for early-stage founders: whether to raise at all, what to put in front of investors, why your positioning keeps confusing people, who to hire first, why a hire that looks good isn't working, why your free tier stalled, why your pipeline is full of leads that go nowhere, and why more budget won't fix a channel that was never proven.

Each playbook is a five-minute read built around one real framework, not a list of tips. Each one comes with a worksheet that walks you through applying it to your own numbers, your own team, your own situation, so you finish with an actual answer, not just an idea of what to do.

Written for founders running B2B SaaS companies who need a real decision made now, not a semester of reading.

What's included

  • 8 playbooks, each a focused 5-minute read
  • 8 companion worksheets linked from the playbook to work through your own answer
  • Chapter summary
    • Seed or No Seed: A three-part test for deciding whether to raise money at all, not just how much or when.
    • Working with VCs: The one GTM slide investors actually check, and the ask that has to match it.
    • Positioning Isn't Copywriting: The five decisions behind a positioning statement that survives a real conversation, not just a slide.
    • Zero to First Hire: What job actually needs doing before you hire anyone, and who should do it first.
    • The Untethered Hire: Why a genuinely good marketing hire can still produce nothing, and the oversight question that fixes it.
    • The PLG Plateau: A three-input test for whether your free tier was ever going to convert, or needed a different motion entirely.
    • Past MQLs: Why chasing every lead down makes your pipeline worse, and the filter that replaces it.
    • The Premature Scaler: A reverse budget method for knowing exactly what new spending should buy before you commit it.
  • Written by Tom Berger, Portfolio CMO and author of Seed to Series B

Every chapter has a worksheet so you can actually walk away with something tangible to use. Download or copy everything from Google Drive.

Buy the one that matches your problem right now, or get all eight.

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