Custom AI Tools Automate Reviews, Boost Reliability
Building your own tools like GStack is an amazing experience. You come up with something you think might work and then two days later it replaces what you were doing before. Instead of /plan-ceo-review and /plan-eng-review sequentially, I find myself using "/autoplan with adversarial review" every time (it is kind of like Claude's -auto-mode but for making choices that my prompts used to ask) And after I finalize the plan and exit plan mode, CC codes it all, and then I do "/review with full claude and codex, full adversarial with claude and codex" And then it just one-shots everything from there, no bugs, 100% test coverage
Testing 20 Workers Forces Local Postgres Max_connections Scaling
I've scaled app servers, I've scaled HAProxy, I've scaled Postgres replica dbs, I've scaled job servers Never until today have I had to scale my local max_connections for Postgres but once you run 20 simultaneous workers doing full tests, now I...
Startup Success Standards Have Shifted Upward—Now Exceptional Required
The definition of a “great” startup has changed. But many founders are still building like it’s 2018. A few shifts happened: 1) A $1B exit used to be the goal. Now it’s often just the baseline. 2) $100M ARR used to mean you...
Human Psychology, Not Novelty, Drives App Success
new apps and tech don’t succeed because they’re innovative or cool, but rather because of a deeper set of human tendencies…
YC W26 Sets Record: 3× $1M Startups, 14%
YC Demo Day for W26 is in full swing The craziest stat: 3X more companies in this batch reached $1M annualized revenue than W25 Also crazy: the fastest revenue growth rate of YC history at 14% week on week growth *on average*...
AI Autopiloted Term Sheet, Closing Deals in Seconds
Sent a founder a term sheet. $500k @ $10m post. She replied, and CC’d my assistant. “Too low. Claude, double the check size, 3x the valuation, and introduce me to Zuck and Jensen.” I laughed, as if that would work. I keep those intros...
Man Charges $600–$1,200 to Skip Airport Security Lines
As Airport Security Waits Spiral, One Man Started A Line-Sitting Business — $600 To $1,200 To Skip The Wait - View from the Wing https://t.co/WcrOZafP1H
Early Failures Forge Growth: Build, Ship, Learn
My first website was embarrassing... First blog posts were rough. First talks were brutal. But reps build range... Build. Ship. Learn. Decide.
Stop To‑Do Lists, Schedule Real Time Blocks
You’re killing your productivity if you’re still running on to-do lists. Most entrepreneurs have long, generic lists. Zero priority. Zero time for it.. The result? You end your day with it longer than you started. After 29 years of entrepreneurship, here’s what...
Earn $10K Fast by Selling Writing Services
Made my first $10,000 on the internet not with digital products but by selling a writing service. This is the quickest way to monetize online. And tomorrow, I'm sharing the exact roadmap I'd follow if I had to start from scratch in...
Strategic Discovery Asks Unlock Bigger Deals, Not Just Numbers
Founders: Strategic vs Tactical discovery: Tactical = How many users? Strategic = "What happens if you miss hiring goals? Tactical = "Current process? Strategic = "Cost of status quo? Strategic questions = bigger deals.
Scaling Money: From Hustle to Brand
Your first $1K: hustle Your first $10K: offer Your first $100K: systems Your first $1M: team Your first $1B: Brand
Reforge Joins Miro to Scale AI Product Education
I’m excited to announce that @reforge is joining @MiroHQ . 10 years ago @andrewchen and I ran the first Reforge Growth Series. What started as a single course has grown into a community of over 100,000 alumni and SaaS...
Advisor Time Value Drives Rising Client Acquisition Costs
In our last report on Advisor Marketing, we found that the median client acquisition cost (CAC) for advisory firms was $3,800 when including both "hard dollar" expenditures on marketing and the "soft dollar" value of advisors' time. https://t.co/BTglcsTaaR Acquisition costs...
Honest Failure Stories Build Trust and Accelerate Growth
DO. FAIL. LEARN. Failure isn’t the end. It’s how we get better. And I’ve had my fair share of it over the years. Startups don’t always succeed, but how you talk about the journey matters. Building a startup is hard, harder...
AI‑First Refounding Shapes Tomorrow’s Decacorn Leaders
Refounding a company in this era, from AI first principles, when you’re not the original founder is the story that will define this next generation of decacorns 🔥 The future belongs to the bold. Buckle up.
Let AI Code, Users Map, You Set Vision
AI writes your code. Users write your roadmap. The only thing you need to write yourself is the vision.
Recording Every Conversation Unlocks AI-Powered Global Knowledge
Sam Liang came to the DFJ offices in Menlo Park from China with broken English and a strong spirit. He told us he was creating a business that allowed phones to tag people as they moved around the world and would...
Build Business First, Quit Corporate When Ready
Most people quit and then try to build. I built and then quit. Before I left corporate I had already signed my first investors, closed my first deals, and had real revenue coming in. The business existed before it was my only option. That’s...
Fix System Leaks, Not Work Harder, to Scale
6 figure jail is when your revenue plateaus and nothing you do seems to move it. You’re running systems designed for where you were. not where you’re going. The jump from 6 to 7 figures isn’t about working harder. It’s about fixing...
Shepherd Secures $42M to Accelerate AI‑Driven Construction Insurance
Congrats to the @withshepherd team on their $42M Series B! They're rebuilding commercial construction insurance for the AI era. When a broker submits an account, Shepherd delivers an indication in minutes—not weeks. 1,500+ policies issued, $400B in insured value, 600+ commercial...
Celebrating Year One, Previewing Upstarts Media’s Next Chapter
Tomorrow is our 1st birthday at Upstarts 🎉 I wrote about our first year in operation, my gratitude for the startup ecosystem, and what to expect from @upstartsmediaco in Year 2. https://www.upstartsmedia.com/p/upstarts-turns-1-heres-whats-next-e6a
Pair Outbound with SEO for Sustainable Growth
8 hours of outbound a day. Cold DMs. Cold emails. Reddit. LinkedIn. Repeat. I've seen this blueprint. I've watched it burn founders out. Miss one week and your pipeline goes to zero. I've worked with 30+ SaaS companies. The ones that stall out built everything...
Bootstrapped $10K MRR Shifts Your View of VCs
Entrepreneurs: Once you grow to $10K MRR without any VC money, you start perceiving VCs differently.
Solve Costly Problems, Not Just Cool Ideas
I don't look for good ideas. I look for expensive problems. The difference built me a billion-dollar company. So many founders start by asking "What cool thing can I build?" That’s the wrong question.
Personal Brand Drives Lower CAC and Higher ROAS
I don’t build companies just to invest - I build them to win. Everything I do on social media is about one thing: customer acquisition. If I can lower CAC and increase ROAS for my companies, I win and so do...
AI Tools Eliminate Creator Barriers, Transform Businesses
If you’re a content creator you need to watch this. No hype or marketing. Nick is sharing is his genuine journey on how learning to make software transformed their business.
Automation Lets Startups Scale with Just a Mac
2012 → Instagram needed 13 employees for a $1B exit. 2024 → Startups needed a team of 5 to scale. 2026 → You just need Accio and a Mac. @Accio_official connects to your Gmail/Shopify/Slack/Github etc. this app can read, write, and execute across your...
From 90% Returns to Billion-Dollar Success
Over a century ago, this man launched his product — it failed. Over 90% were returned. A year later, people couldn’t wait to get their hands on it. Even the U.S. government commissioned it. Here’s how he turned a failed product launch into...
Why Co‑founders Are Essential for Startup Success
On starting a startup and why you should have cofounders, a clip from the Exit Paradox podcast. https://t.co/XdmwU9TFbQ
Software Firms Must Pick Margins or Growth, Not Both
@DavidGeorge83 nails it. It's a tough reality check for software companies, but those don't pick a path between super high margins and accelerated growth won't make it. The "and" + "just a few more years" strategy no longer works.
AI Redefines Startup Moats, Margins, and Deep Tech
The startup landscape has fundamentally shifted in the last 2 years with AI's rise, and there are 5 changes that have caught many off guard: 1. Product-market fit is easier to lose than ever I used to believe reaching $10M...
Revenue‑Sustaining Startups Risk AI Pivot Missteps
lots of non-AI native startups funded in the 2020-2025 timeframe trying to figure out: - can you reinvent the product to be AI-native? - do you pivot towards AI? - or just use AI in the backoffice, and ride it out? opportunity cost is...
Late‑night Entrepreneurs, Let's Connect and Support Each Other
If you’re building a business after bedtime and a during naptimes. We’re friends now 🤝 Let's connect.🤍
Millionaire but Empty: Success Without Purpose Stings
The day I became a millionaire was the emptiest day of my life. The alarm didn't go off that day because I didn't set one. For the first time in years, there was nowhere I had to be. No urgent...
Effectiveness Beats Likability: Why ‘Difficult’ Founders Win
When a founder is “difficult,” that means… they’re arguing every point. They have conviction. They have a deep vision for what they're building. For investors, those are all positive traits. Find out why the best founders are otherwise unemployable, why...
Delivery Bugs Revealed Zipline’s True Product‑market Fit
Keller Rinaudo Cliffton from Zipline thought making the drones would be the hardest part. It was only 15% of the problem. The company spent 9 months figuring out delivery for one hospital. Weeks of all-nighters. Building inventory software in a...
9 Minimalist Entrepreneur Commands for Lean Startup Success
I turned The Minimalist Entrepreneur into 9 Claude Code skills. /find-community — find your people /validate-idea — test before you build /mvp — ship in a weekend /first-customers — sell to 100 people /pricing — charge something /marketing-plan — make fans, not headlines /grow-sustainably — spend less...
AI‑generated Code Makes Testing Essential, Says Momentic
In this episode of Founder Firesides, YC's @harjtaggar talks to @wuweiweiwu and @itsjeffan, co-founders of @MomenticAI, who just raised a $15M Series A. Momentic is the verification layer for software. The AI-powered testing platform impersonates end users to catch bugs before...
Luxury Mogul Bernard Arnault Secretly DM‑ing Startup Investments
Just found out Bernard Arnault is a lurker on here and he's rolling into DMs asking to invest millions in early stage startups 👀 https://t.co/t7PCwg5Mdj
Solo Founders Can Build High-Revenue Businesses without VC
Here are 8 high-revenue one-person companies: No co-founders. No employees. No VC. Just one founder and leverage that didn't exist 3 years ago. Bookmark this. You'll come back to it.
Start with the Problem, Not a Buzzword Pitch
This founder lost a $500,000 deal with one sentence. Instead of asking about the problem first, he jumped into a generic AI pitch full of buzzwords. That is how deals quietly die. Do you start with the pitch or the problem? https://t.co/gNddet5n0N
Denmark's Anti‑capital Stance Threatens New Growth
Tomorrow needs to be tended to by planting new seeds. New companies. New growth. New capital. And that's just not going to happen if the Danish state declares itself at war with capital formation or accumulation. https://t.co/rMQy0eKrr3
Product Fit Beats Ads: Listen, Engage, Fix
Paid ads won’t save your startup. If you chase CTR and CAC before product fit, you ignore the real problem. You don’t need a budget to market, you need effort: DM users, show up at events, post in forums, fix your SEO,...
Great Founders Turn Every Mistake Into Free Tuition
the best founders i know have one unfair advantage - they love learning. they treat every customer call, mistake, and weird edge case like free tuition.
Avoid These Traps to Break the $1M Ceiling
If you want to stay stuck at $1M: - Launch a second brand before your first one is working - Chase revenue instead of building enterprise value - Hire a FB agency - Hire someone the moment you feel overwhelmed instead of building a...
Can't Step Away? You're Just a High‑pay Job
If you can't walk away from your business and come back to it stronger than when you left You've just built yourself a high-paying job. Full conversation on the Open Residency podcast.
Hire This Talent to Transform Your Business Trajectory
Hiring one of these type of people can change the course of your business.
Professional Deal Memos Boost Startup Investor Appeal
Instantly elevate your startup's investor appeal with a tailored deal memo crafted by professionals. Create a professional deal memo effortlessly, enhancing your startup's appeal to investors. Instant Startup Deal Memo Service - Connect with Investors Effortlessly — Sports Tech Atlanta https://share.google/sfOfV45muiRNvN2Ou