TLDR FOUNDERS 2025-08-04

today.

_For information only. Not Investment/Tax advice. See __here_ [4]_ for important details._

WILL APPLE BUY MISTRAL?

Apple might acquire Mistral, a French AI company, to enhance its AI capabilities and counter Big Tech rivals. Speculation arises as Mistral faces challenges competing with US giants like OpenAI and Anthropic. However, possible regulatory hurdles and Mistral's desire for independence may complicate the acquisition.

WELCOME TO THE $4 TRILLION CLUB

Microsoft's valuation hit $4 trillion after reporting Q2 earnings with $76.4 billion in revenue and strong cloud growth, marking it as the second company to reach this milestone. Meta's stock surged nearly 12% pre-market following its Q2 report, highlighting substantial revenue growth driven by its AI investments and expansive capex plans for 2025. Ambiq and Figma's IPOs showed strong market demand, with Figma reaching a $33 per-share debut valuation near $20 billion.

ALL HAIL THE DEMISE OF ADOBE-FIGMA

Adobe tried to buy Figma for $20 billion in 2022, double its private valuation, in what looked like a classic incumbent squashing a competitor. The deal fell apart under regulatory scrutiny. Fast forward to this week - Figma went public at $55 billion, nearly triple what Adobe offered. The math on who won: Figma's backers went from almost selling at $20 billion to holding shares worth $55 billion, Figma got a $1 billion breakup fee from Adobe, and customers get actual competition instead of another Adobe monopoly.

WHERE TO FIND IDEAS

A Harvard Business School graduate became an EMT for $15 an hour just to understand how emergency services really worked - and that's exactly how he found his startup idea. Another founder wanted to build software for greenhouses, so instead of scheduling interviews with greenhouse owners, he just bought one and ran it himself. These founders understood something most people miss - you can't discover real startup ideas through discovery interviews and whiteboard sessions. You need to actually become your customer.

NEW MEDIA, LEGACY MEDIA & HOW TO DO FOUNDER PR

The founder of a PR agency that's worked with Perplexity and Ramp would turn down the Wall Street Journal for Lenny's Podcast - and she has a point. Emilie Gerber from Six Eastern explained that a one-sentence WSJ mention would do nothing while 60 minutes on a podcast actually drives customers. After working with over 100 tech companies, she's learned that most PR pitches fail because they make the company the center of the universe instead of a lens for understanding bigger trends.

WHY YOUR PITCH DOESN'T WORK

Pitch failures often stem from delivering what you want rather than what your audience needs. Emphasize unique differentiators instead of personal achievements, as audiences care about what sets you apart. Ensure memorability to influence decisions made after your pitch.

Snowflake gets the balance right. Read the blog

KEYSTONE

The first AI QA engineer to join your team.

TOLT

Tolt is an all-in-one affiliate marketing platform for SaaS startups with automated payouts, fraud protection, and performance tracking.

PLAKAR

Plakar is an open-source backup platform that secures local and cloud data with encrypted, lightweight, and easily restorable snapshots.

CAN ANALYSIS EVER BE AUTOMATED?

Four charts about internet usage sit in front of you - one made by a Nobel laureate, one by ChatGPT, one pulled from Reddit, and one cobbled together in ten minutes. There's no way to tell which is correct without checking every formula and data source yourself. That's the catch-22 of automated analysis - unlike vibe-coded apps, where bugs eventually surface, you can't test if a chart "works" just by looking at it. Shortcut claims its AI can solve Financial Modeling World Cup problems and build cap tables in minutes, but how do you trust it? There's no reality to compare it against because the spreadsheet IS reality.

ARE ADVISORS WORTH THE DILUTION?

A Figma advisor who joined after the seed round might have just made $65 million from their IPO for maybe a few hours of work per month. The math is brutal - advisors typically get 0.11% equity at seed stage, vesting over 2 years instead of the standard 4 for employees, plus single-trigger acceleration on exits. Most CEOs hire advisors then forget about them. 90% of advisors aren't worth it - they take similar dilution to a VP-level hire but only give you an hour per week.

WILL DATA CENTERS CRASH THE ECONOMY?

Big Tech is spending $102.5 billion per quarter on AI data centers - more than all consumer spending contributed to GDP growth last quarter - and the scary part is how they're financing it. This looks eerily similar to the telecom bubble of 2000, except with one crucial difference: this time, banks are involved. Private credit funds, which barely existed a decade ago, are borrowing from banks to lend to data center companies, creating the exact kind of opaque debt chain that triggered 2008. If AI revenue doesn't materialize fast enough to pay back these loans, the correlations are high - they'll all default at once.

NOT ALL GROWTH IS CREATED EQUAL

AI companies are hitting $100M ARR in under a year, but some of those stories unravel just as fast - growth spikes, customers churn, the business deflates.

THREE DEFINITIONS OF RISK (AND WHY IT MATTERS)

The classic definition of risk treats it as volatility, but imagine being offered a stock that either gains you $100 or $1,000,000 - technically high volatility, but zero actual risk since you win either way.

GOOD ABSTRACTIONS

We create abstractions that let us forget how certain complex systems are designed underneath.