Founder playbooks, a cheat code for building.
The questions founders actually ask — answered short first, deep underneath. Kept current on a review cycle so nothing goes stale.
- 30
- Playbooks, complete
- 5
- Guided paths
- 7
- Press volumes
- 16
- Working workbooks
The questions founders actually ask, answered.
Short answer first, then the depth. Pick a path by where you are — idea, non-technical, solo, running, thinking — and every playbook ends with what to do next.
The Real First Steps of Starting a Business
Write your idea as one sentence naming a specific person and a specific painful moment. Then have ten conversations with that person about the last time it happened. Then ask one of them for money — a deposit, a pilot fee, a pre-order. Everything else (name, logo, entity, website, product) comes after somebody has tried to pay you.
Read 02What Founders Get Wrong at the Beginning
Five failures cause most early deaths: building before talking, choosing a market too broad to describe, mistaking encouragement for demand, spending money to feel legitimate, and hiding behind work that cannot fail. All five are avoidance dressed as productivity.
Read 03Should You Build a Website or a Product First?
Build a website first if you sell something a human delivers — services, consulting, physical goods, local businesses. Build a product first if the product itself is the only way anyone can experience the value. When genuinely unsure: a one-page site plus a manual, human-delivered version of the service beats a half-built product every time.
ReadA new playbook every Sunday.
Every Sunday, 09:00 UTC. Written ahead, dated, released on its own. The Library is never finished.
- Building a business in 1990 vs 2026Is it genuinely easier to start a company now, or does it just feel that way?Sunday 2 August · released
- AI business vs traditional businessShould I build an AI company, or a normal company that uses AI?Sunday 9 August · released
- What still wins when the tools changeEvery year there's a new stack. What's actually worth learning deeply?Sunday 16 August · released
- Why some founders break and others endureWhat actually separates the people who last from the people who quit?Sunday 23 August · released
Distribution Is a Company Capability
Build a distribution edge, own the customer relationship, design a first value moment, and measure acquisition honestly — with a calculator and a saveable founder worksheet.
Learn to read your own numbers
Four working modules that teach you to read your own business — revenue, profit, payback, acquisition and trends — using numbers you already have.
- 16 minReading Your Business: Revenue, Profit, and EBITDAThe hierarchy of business numbers, from money invoiced to money kept — and why good revenue can still be a bad business.
- 12 minROI and Payback: Is This Worth It?Two calculations that decide whether a spend was an investment or a donation — and why payback matters more when nobody is funding you.
- 14 minCustomer Acquisition Is Not Just AdsFive kinds of acquisition, only one of which has a billing account — and how to measure any of them the same way.
- 13 minHow to Read Your Own NumbersTrends, concentration, quality versus quantity, and the habit of looking early enough to still have options.
The long-form shelf, published chapter by chapter.
Deeper than a playbook and slower to write. New chapters land every week — the Playbooks above are complete and ready to use today.
The craft of building things people actually want to keep using.
Nothing scheduled in the next seven days. Follow a volume above to get notified.
Start · Validate · Position · Build · Launch · Sell · Operate · Grow · Ownership. Written, framed, and ready to hand to Aury.
Founder Mind
The internal operating system every founder needs before the external one.
Companies are built by people, and people are built by the way they think. This volume is about the shape of the founder's mind — the small habits, the frames, the questions that make good decisions inevitable and bad ones rare.
The volumes every founder returns to.
If you read six volumes, read these first.
The volumes the editors keep returning to.
What founders are reading right now.
The editorial calendar.
Every volume Aurygine Press has committed to publishing. Follow any of them to be notified the day the first chapter goes live.
Freshly edited this month.
Filter by topic, stage or company type.
Volumes founders keep returning to.
Interactive workbooks
for the work itself.
Editable fields, ready-to-use prompts, autosave, exports. Open one when you have a real decision to make.
Prove people want it — before you build.
- Kit3–4 hours to prep · 2 weeks to runCustomer Interview Kit
Twenty conversations that tell you whether to build.
Open workbook AI-ready - Workbook60–90 minutesValidation Workbook
Decide — with evidence — whether to keep going.
Open workbook AI-ready - Workbook45 minutesICP Builder
One customer, named specifically, buys first.
Open workbook AI-ready
Sound like a real company from day one.
- Workbook90 minutesPositioning Workbook
One sentence a stranger understands in five seconds.
Open workbook AI-ready - Brief45 minutesBrand Brief
One page a designer can build a brand from.
Open workbook AI-ready - Workbook60 minutesCompetitor Analysis
A one-page map of who else serves your customer.
Open workbook AI-ready
Ship the smallest useful version.
- Planner2 hoursMVP Planner
The smallest thing that proves the promise.
Open workbook AI-ready - Planner60 minutesLanding Page Planner
One page that converts without shouting.
Open workbook AI-ready - Workbook60 minutesPricing Workbook
Pick a price you can defend on a call.
Open workbook AI-ready - Checklist30 minutes to runLaunch Checklist
Everything that must be true before you tell the world.
Open workbook AI-ready
Get real customers, without shouting.
Run the company without keeping it in your head.
Own it. Grow it. Or raise on your terms.
A library you can trust
to be written slowly.
Aurygine writes the Library the way great books get written — one chapter at a time, in the founder's own voice, with no filler and no AI-generated prose.