Fintech Funding Rises While Deal Count Plummets
Venture funding to fintech companies is up year over year so far, but concentrated into significantly fewer companies, Crunchbase data shows. Global venture funding to financial technology startups totaled $12B across 751 deals in 2026 as of April 6, per @Crunchbase data. That’s a 5% increase in dollars raised compared to the $11.4B raised across 1,097 — or 31.5% fewer — deals during the same time period in 2025. Read more in the @crunchbasenews article in the comments
AI Agents Become Local Co‑workers, Reshaping Software Development
Claude Cowork, Mythos, and the Future of Software: my conversation with @felixrieseberg, who leads Cowork at @AnthropicAI 00:00 Intro 01:53 Claude Mythos Preview and the “step-function change” 06:16 Why Anthropic is treating Mythos differently 11:19 The real story behind Claude Cowork’s “10-day” build 12:42...
Nvidia's RISC Push Signals Real Momentum for SiFive
$NVDA leaning further into RISC is what I would call real signal. Also, @GavinSBaker leading the round reflects well. SiFive is cooking. Definitely one to keep an eye on. 🚀
Nine Rejections, One Tool That Powered the Pandemic
He applied for a U.S visa and got rejected 8 times. Finally, getting approved on the 9th try. Years later, during a global pandemic. The ENTIRE world would run on the tool he built:
Founders Misjudge Their First Marketing Hire, Learn Why
Why Most Founders Get Their First Marketing Hire Wrong - https://t.co/Mv3vU7q6Xf - https://t.co/VUA6vOtz0B by Marti Willett
How Bad Naming Made My SaaS Unsearchable
I might have accidentally made my SaaS… unsearchable. I broke down all my naming mistakes (and lessons learned) in my newsletter, released tomorrow: → https://paulinecx.beehiiv.com/
Four Traits That Separate $100M Founders From Others
I asked an employee at Hampton who has interviewed over 500 Hampton applicants to tell me if she noticed any differences between the super successful founders (+$100m) and the mildly successful founders who applied. She had 4 distinct points. Here...
Leadership, Not Hands‑on Work, Defines Founders and Engineers
Of course you’re a founder if your product is assembled by other people and agentic tools. You can even call yourself an engineer if you held the reins.
Offer Beats Product: Irresistible Deals Drive Scale
Hard truth: Your product doesn't matter as much as your offer. A good product with a bad offer will fail. A decent product with an irresistible offer will scale.
Weekly Constraint Audit: Remove One Bottleneck, Unlock Growth
Every entrepreneur should do one weekly thing most never do: a constraint audit. There's always one bottleneck limiting your growth more than anything else. Improving anything else produces no meaningful result. 15 minutes. One question: "What single thing, if removed, would unlock...
Tiny Team Builds Rocket Engine in 18 Months
Many in Silicon Valley say you can't make a baby come faster with more people involved. The founder of @stoke_space handed me a piece of rocket fuel at an investor lunch in Dallas three years ago when he was pitching...
Essential Angel Investing Manual for Building Startups
I got to go through an early copy of this book and it is a solid resource. @somani_utsav has taken patterns he has seen from angel investing and working closely with India's top founders and made a detailed manual out...
Cheaper Code Shifts Business Leverage to Packaging and Trust
If code keeps getting cheaper, then being able to build won’t disappear as an advantage. But it will become less rare. That means other layers matter more: packaging, attention, distribution, clarity, trust. That’s where I think a lot of business leverage is moving.
Griffin 2.0 Becomes India’s Sun Valley, $20B+ Revenue
Griffin 2.0 (my 2nd!): The Sun Valley of India/Asia. $20B+ in rev across 50+ unicorn/soonicorn founders w/ @therealkapildev,@luckyali & @amitabhk87. Venting in the Rage Room near Bull/Bear/Griffin statues was 10/10. 12 yrs in, Vaibhav, Pooja & Utkarsh still have 'Day...
Boom Shifts to Video Investor Updates During Engine Build
As we enter the build phase for our first engine, Boom is moving to video updates for our investors. Here is our most recent investor update (financial info redacted). Hint: there is an Easter egg 🥚 https://t.co/RyE1syw6Pn
Founders Need Player‑coach Partners Who Build Alongside Them
How can you empathize with founders if you don't build stuff yourself? This was one advantage of running HN while I was running YC. It was an enormous schlep, but it meant I was dealing daily with the same problems as...
Booming PT Clinic Launches App to Ease Waitlist
I’m a physical therapist and have my own clinic working with runners, cyclists, and triathletes in Colorado. My business has been booming, which has been really positive, but my waitlist keeps growing. I work hard to try to get everyone...
Combine Engineering and Marketing, or Partner for Balance
Is it better to be an engineer and learn marketing, or be a marketer and learn to code? Is it better to be either and find a co-founder who is the other? Or is the grass always greener, so any path to...
Claude Code's 2‑hour Promise Yields Barely a Prototype
People assume they can build any MVP with Claude Code in 2h. But what they build is a MP at best. Maybe even just an M.
Caribbean Startups Can Lead Globally with Island Roots
There’s no shortage of opinions about our Caribbean tech ecosystem. But I am tired of reading the outsider “expert” takes on our startups, our trajectory, our supposed limitations. So I flipped the script to offer up a different narrative. https://www.siliconcaribe.com/2026/04/09/caribbean-founded-how-the-next-wave-of-global-startups-can-have-island-roots/
Camp Hustle Turns Travel Into Lasting Business Connections
You know that feeling when you leave a conference and think "...why did I fly across the country for that?" Well, you won't be thinking that at Camp Hustle. Campers leave with deal leads, co-investors, and friends they're texting a week later....
Avoid Safe Deals: Risk Rejection to Find Real Opportunities
Founders: The most dangerous deals in your pipeline are the ones where you never risked rejection. Without that moment of truth, you have hope, not opportunity.
Thai Randolph Launches NILE & Co., Acquires BuzzFeed
Thai Randolph Launches NILE & Co., Creator-Driven Media Company That Has Acquired BuzzFeed’s As/Is and Goodful Brands https://t.co/XyY5sffSyU via @variety
ChatGPT Pro Launches at $100 After High Demand
It is very nice to see Codex getting so much love. We are launching a $100 ChatGPT Pro tier by very popular demand.
AI Handles X, I’ll Interview More Founders
Now that my AI is reading X for me I am going to pour a lot more effort into interviewing founders again who are starting companies. You one? Drop me a line.
Mexican Startups Overtake Brazil in Q1 VC Funding
Mexican startups outperformed their Brazilian counterparts in the first quarter, raising a total of $404M compared to Brazil’s $240M. Historically, Brazil has been the powerhouse in Latin America for venture capital funding. But it’s not the first time in recent quarters...
True Opportunity Measured by Post‑commitment
Founders: The strength of your opportunity isn't measured by how positive the conversation feels. It's measured by whether they stayed engaged after you asked for commitment.
Ignoring Your Gut Can Cost Six Figures
I Ignored My Gut. It Cost Me Six Figures... here's the story. https://t.co/KkHiTpcbmQ via @LinkedIn
Businesses Can Survive Their Found
Can a company outlive its founder? Microsoft at 51, Apple at 50 and The Auteur Theory of Business https://asymco.com/2026/04/06/can-a-company-outlive-its-founder-microsoft-at-51-apple-at-50-and-the-auteur-theory-of-business/
Growth Alone Won’t Free You Without Systems
A lot of clients come to me and say their business is growing but something still feels off. They still spend so much time in every aspect of their business and feel like they can never step away, which is...
Prioritize Profitable Bootstrapping over Chasing Hypergrowth
Don't chase hyper-scaler growth. Just ignore it all. Do something that's bootstrapped and profitable. Hypergrowth is likely to come 10 years down the road if you keep your head down and build a great biz. Look at Mailchimp. Look at...
Claude's AI Agent Automates Growth Experiments, Matching Junior PM
Claude is now automating it's own growth. Their team built an agent called CASH (Claude Accelerates Sustainable Hypergrowth), which works across the full lifecycle of growth experimentation: (1) identifying opportunities, (2) building the feature, (3) running the test, and (4) analyzing...
AI Digital Workers Transform Insurance Branding and Revenue
NEWSFLASH: @outrivalAI just launched our dedicated insurance vertical, led by @JohnHenryStyle We're already live with both publicly traded and private companies, doing 3M+ calls/month across education, insurance, and travel. What Silicon Valley calls AI agents, we call Digital Workers. They...
Scientists Should Build, Not Just Publish, Breakthroughs
Every scientist faces the same choice after a breakthrough: 1/ publish and move on 2/ build a startup to bring the breakthrough into the world David Kingham of @TokamakEnergy thinks the choice is clear: Build. https://t.co/7CDfmP90Yf
Accountant Launches AI Tax Startup, Secures $12M Seed
In 2023, Dave Haase was a CPA who had been running his own firm in the San Francisco Bay Area for several years when he saw a live demo of OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Upon seeing the AI agent successfully file a...
Earn $1M on YouTube with Just 1K Subscribers
How do you actually make significant money on YouTube? @TintinSmith is the ex-manager of Ali Abdaal. In this YouTube business masterclass we cover: - How you can hit $1M with just 1,000 subscribers - The exact system you should use - Who to hire and...
Customers Repeat Despite Friction: True Product-Market Fit
His customers had to click a PayPal link, swipe their card, wait for credits to run out, then do it all again. They kept coming back. That's product-market fit. https://t.co/j8KPFQI1gF
Simplify Potluck Planning with New Potluck Spaces App
True story. Our friends were getting ready for another potluck. The messages started flying. Who’s bringing drinks? Do we need ice? Did anyone claim dessert? Wait… how do we already have three salads? At some point, between laughing and scrolling, I realized this was ridiculous. We are experienced...
From Rubik’s Cubes to AI‑Powered Hospital Fax Automation
.@Luminai helps large health systems move operational workflows from people to computers, turning unstructured data like faxes into structured data and building AI agents to automate critical processes. The company recently raised a $38 million Series B. In this episode of...
Bridging India's MedTech Gap with Prototyping Labs
Announcing @BFI_Impact’s latest grant to mPragati. This is one of my most bullish bets on things I am trying to do on the philanthropy side to create an impact in healthcare in India. Here’s why: India has world class research and clinical expertise...
Thin Catalogues Need Browse, Not AI Search
I had a conversation recently that reminded me how badly empty search results can damage an early-stage ecommerce site. The team was excited about adding AI-powered search, and the logic was hard to argue with on the surface. Modern feature,...
Tap Into These 9 Immediate Grants Now
Stop saying there’s no money out here. Y’all just not tapped in. Here are 9 grants you can apply for RIGHT NOW 👇🏾 ⸻ 1. Building Her Community Grant $5,000 For women building communities, memberships, or courses Apply: freelancingfemales.com/heartbeat If you’re building a community based business… this is low...
Audit First, Build Later: Counterintuitive Path to 8‑Figure ARR
Would you pay auditors to audit you 10 times before building your product? This founder did. His startup hit 8-figure ARR. @grease_ is the co-founder of @sprintoHQ, a compliance automation platform that's now at 8-figure ARR with 3,000+ customers....
Build Systems, Hire Smarter, Let Empires Grow
Stop romanticizing the hustle. Build systems. Hire people smarter than you. Get out of the way. That's how small businesses become empires.
Deep‑tech Startups Raise Similar Capital, Graduate Faster, IPO More
Some eye-opening stats that undergird rising defense innovation enthusiasm from my new report on the subject (https://t.co/rRtYxEUlOB: "Deep tech startup investment was long held back by the misconception of far greater capital intensity relative to software startups. In reality, looking...
Conflict of Interest Inspires Independent, Tech‑Agnostic ERP Firm
A consultant felt conflicted, knowing their firm was incentivized to recommend SAP regardless of objective evaluation. This conflict sparked the idea for an independent, tech-agnostic ERP consulting firm. #Consulting #SAP #Ethics https://t.co/HJMmwy0znT
Turn One Idea Into Seven Daily Posts
In 2025, my little writing business generated $8,000,000. And this 1 strategy made it possible: Lean Writing. It's how I take 1 idea and turn it into 7 different posts — so I can publish every single day without running out of...
Let Your Top 10% Shape Your Growth Strategy
Stop studying your average customers. Obsess over your best ones. Your top 10% tell you what you're doing exceptionally — not just adequately. Where did they come from? What language do they use? Why did they choose you? That's your growth blueprint. Your...
Eight Products, Four Years: My Most Painful Lessons
I built 8 products in 4 years. Here's what each one taught me, ranked by how painful the lesson was.
Turn $50K Into 7‑Figure SaaS Exit in 6 Months
Want to grow your SaaS real fast? We took a SaaS from 120 visits/day to 120K/month in 6 months. This client invested $50K total and ended up exiting at 7-figures. Here's the exact playbook we used (no BS, just what actually worked): 🧵...