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By Anna Lazitskaya, CEO and cofounder of Embraceme. Supporting those in need like herself.
April 9, 2025
The Founder Friend is a community for entrepreneurs support by Embraceme
join by dropping me a line at
anna @ embraceme . app
Hey there! I’m Anna👋
Will be happy to connect Anna Lazitskaya – Embraceme AI | LinkedIn
I’m building Embraceme, a grief tech app where people can truly connect and learn to build their own tribe IRL.

Went from making mobile apps and SaaSes successful to now focusing on making people feel less alone as they grieve and go through losses.
Therapy nerd, AI educator at times and podcaster (Embraceme pod in the making).
Love sunsets, authentic difficult conversations and road trips.


Recommendations

People

Dan Shipper writes about AI (all AI releases day 0), building a media company and product studio around it, and hosts a YouTube channel about how top minds are using AI. He is an early investor in Arc, and more ventures.
https://every.to/@danshipper

Nicholas Thompson, CEO of Anthropic. Profitable media, which is rare. His The Most Interesting Thing in Tech on LinkedIn and his rare link collections there are a real gem.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/some-interesting-things-read-third-weekend-october-nicholas-thompson-ahabe

Alexis Ohanian on LinkedIn. His interview with Simon Sinek was golden for me. It’s about values and strategy, about what’s important.
https://simonsinek.com/podcast/episodes/alexis-ohanian-why-i-left-reddit-and-why-greed-can-inspire-good/

Startups 101 book recommendation

Radical Candor https://www.amazon.pl/Radical-Candor-What-Want-Saying/dp/1529038340  
Blog https://www.radicalcandor.com/

Resources

Part 1. Basics
  1. Lean Customer Development The complete guide to customer development
  2. UX for Lean Startup Design Qualitative Validation
Part 2. Validation
  1. Running Lean Building a sustainable business model - core interview types
  2. Design Sprint — book and resources (love the interview scripts they offer)
Part 3. How-to cust dev
  1. 26 Resources to Help You Master Customer Development Interviews Hacks and tricks
  2. Top tips to get started with user research List of must-reads
  3. Rocket Surgery Made Easy: The Do-It-Yourself Guide to Finding and Fixing Usability Problems: Krug, Steve User Interviews/UX interviews for product people and everyone else
Part 4. The bible
  1. Customer Development Theory The whole “Get out of the building” theory by Steve Blank
Part 5. Other resources
  1. Startup School by Y Combinator (best/first accelerator) https://www.startupschool.org/
  2. The Top 100 Gen AI Consumer Apps - 4th Edition | Andreessen Horowitz

The Founder Friend is community for entrepreneurs support by Embraceme
join by dropping me a line at
anna @ embraceme . app