The Essential Guide To Documentation For Startups

It's 3 PM on a Thursday when your star operations person gives two weeks' notice. In that moment, you realize with growing dread that your entire customer onboarding process, the one that touches every single new customer, lives exclusively in her head. Sure, there are some scattered notes in Slack and maybe an old draft in Google Docs, but nothing comprehensive. Nothing that would let someone else pick up where she left off.

This scenario plays out at startups every day. And it's completely preventable.

Internal documentation isn't just about preparing for someone's departure, though that alone makes it worth the effort. It's about building a company that can scale without constant bottlenecks, where new hires become productive in days instead of months, and where your team stops wasting time answering the same questions over and over.

In this article, I'll cover what documentation is, why it's crucial for startups, how to build a culture of documentation even when you're short on time, and most importantly, how to actually get started today, not "when things calm down."

Why is documentation important?

Here's what happens without documentation:

You waste time explaining the same things over and over. If you onboard 2-3 people per quarter and spend 2 hours each walking them through your project management system, file locations, and expense submissions, that's 24 hours per year—three full workdays—explaining the same information. A comprehensive onboarding document reduces that to 30 minutes of review time per person.

Critical knowledge walks out the door with employees. Your ops person knows the entire customer onboarding flow. Your lead engineer knows how to debug your payment system. Your first sales hire knows which objections actually matter. When they leave, that knowledge disappears unless you've documented it. This isn't just about turnover, it's about vacation days, sick leave, or anyone being able to step in when needed.

Mistakes multiply without a single source of truth. When your sales team promises one refund policy and your support team follows another because they learned it differently, you create customer confusion and internal conflict. When three different people deploy code three different ways, eventually something breaks. Documentation ensures everyone does critical processes the same way.

Who should create documentation in a startup?

Everyone, but not in the way you think.

Here's what doesn't work: declaring "documentation is everyone's responsibility" and hoping people do it. They won't. They're too busy, and documentation always feels like something you can do later.

Here's what does work: the person who owns a process owns its documentation.

Your sales lead documents the sales process. Your ops person documents customer onboarding. Your engineering lead documents deployment. This makes sense because they're the expert, they know what trips people up, and they have the most to gain from not being interrupted with questions.

But you do need one person (probably you, initially) to:

• Set up the system and templates
• Establish basic standards so docs aren't wildly inconsistent
• Remind people to update docs when processes change
• Periodically audit what's missing or outdated

The key is making documentation part of the process itself, not extra work. When your ops person changes how you onboard customers, updating the doc is part of making that change. When your engineer creates a new deployment script, documenting it is part of shipping it.

Creating a documentation process

The difference between startups with good documentation and startups with documentation graveyards is simple: process.

1. Decide what should be documented

Not everything needs documentation. Focus on high-impact areas first. Start by documenting:

• Critical workflows that would cause major problems if done incorrectly
• Processes that cause confusion or require multiple people to explain
• Anything that currently lives in only one person's head

A simple way to identify what to document: ask your team "What questions do you get asked most often?" Those answers should be documented.

2. Choose a central repository for documents

Pick ONE place where all documentation lives. Nothing kills documentation culture faster than having some docs in Google Drive, some in Slack, some in Notion, and some in people's inboxes. When people can't find documentation, they stop looking for it (and stop creating it!)

3. Create a few templates that team members can use as a starting point

Templates lower the barrier to creating documentation. Instead of staring at a blank page wondering how to structure a doc, team members can fill in sections. The easier you make it to create documentation, the more likely people are to actually do it.

You don't need fancy templates. Start with one simple structure that works for most processes. Here's a free Notion template that I created that you can duplicate and use: Link

As you grow, you might add specialized templates for things like onboarding guides, troubleshooting docs, or technical specifications. But start simple. The goal is to remove the "how should I structure this?" question so people can focus on actually writing down what they know.

4. Schedule time to keep documents updated

Documentation becomes useless if it's outdated. Build in regular reviews:

• Assign an owner to each critical document
• Set quarterly reminders to review and update key processes
• When you change a process, update the documentation at the same time, not later
• Add "last updated" dates so people know if information is current

Choosing a tool for internal documentation

When you're looking for a tool, make sure it's easy to collaborate. Look for features like:

• A built-in way to comment on each page
• A centralized place where everyone can see all changes made by others at once
• The ability to create new pages quickly and easily
• A comprehensive search function
• Integrations with other tools that you use for a smooth workflow (e.g. Slack, Teams, Figma)
• A way to add attachments, like images or PDFs

Use a tool like Notion, which has useful collaboration features, allowing users to comment on specific parts of the content so that everyone can see what other people think about it and contribute their own thoughts as well. They make it easy for teams to work together on documents by allowing multiple authors within one document at once in real time. For small teams (<5 people), you could get by with Google Docs, with the caveat that you have to be very meticulous in the organization of the documents.

What are some tips for documentation?

Keep it simple. Here are some handy tips:

• Write for someone who knows nothing. This is the curse of knowledge problem. You know your process so well you forget what's confusing about it. When you write documentation, assume the reader has never done this before. If you're explaining "how to deploy," don't skip the step where you SSH into the server because it seems obvious. Nothing is obvious.
• Skip the jargon. Don't say "OKR" or "sprint planning" without explaining what it means. Your future hires won't know your acronyms. Write like you're explaining it to a smart friend who doesn't work at your company.
• Use screenshots and videos, not walls of text. A 2-minute Loom video showing someone how to process a refund is better than three paragraphs of instructions. Screenshots with arrows pointing to the right buttons beat written descriptions every time.
• Use bullet points instead of paragraphs whenever possible. This helps keep things clear by separating each step into its own section--thereby making it much easier on both the writer and reader when trying to navigate through long documents filled with dense blocks of text or paragraphs that run on forever.
• Use colors. Many people are visual learners and using colors can make otherwise dull and boring documentation come to life!
• Keep it updated or delete it. Outdated documentation is worse than no documentation because people follow it and break things. When you change a process, update the doc the same day. Add a "last updated" date at the top. If a doc hasn't been touched in a year, archive it.

Getting Started

If you're staring at this article thinking "this all sounds great but I'm drowning and don't know where to start," here's your answer. Document these three things this week:

1. Critical access information

Create one document that lists:

• How to access every tool your team uses (and who to ask if someone gets locked out)
• Where important files and folders live
• Who owns what (billing, domains, social accounts, etc.)
• Emergency contacts and escalation paths

Why this first? Because when someone needs access to something right now, fumbling through Slack trying to figure out who has the password costs everyone time and creates unnecessary stress.

Important note: Do not list passwords in the documentation though, use a password manager to keep things safe.

2. Your biggest bottleneck process

Think about what slows your team down. Not what happens most often, but what creates friction when it does happen.

Good candidates:

• Processes that only 1-2 people know how to do (creates bottlenecks)
• Things that work differently depending on who does them (creates inconsistency)
• Tasks where people constantly ask "how do I do X again?"

3. Your highest-stakes process

What process, if done wrong, would cause the most damage? Maybe it's handling customer data, processing refunds, or managing your production database. Document this because the cost of mistakes here is too high not to have a clear procedure.

That's it. Three documents. Start here, and you've already solved 80% of the documentation chaos at most early-stage startups. Everything else can come later.

Conclusion

The startups that nail documentation early get to spend their time building and growing instead of constantly firefighting and re-explaining things. They onboard faster, scale smoother, and actually get to take vacation without everything falling apart.

You've got this. Pick the easiest document from the list and knock it out today. Future you (and your entire team) will thank you.