TLDR FOUNDERS 2025-10-03

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THE AI APPLICATION SPENDING REPORT

a16z analyzed spending from 200,000 Mercury customers to see where startups put their AI dollars - horizontal apps beat vertical ones 60/40, with creative tools dominating as the largest category, proving AI turned design into something everyone does. Vibe coding hit enterprise hard with Replit generating 15x more revenue than Lovable because it builds full enterprise-grade apps beyond just UI. Nearly 70% of companies moved from consumer to business in under two years, getting pulled into enterprises faster than any previous software era.

ASSORT HEALTH SECURES $102M

Assort Health raised $76 million in a Series B funding led by Lightspeed Venture Partners to expand its agentic AI platform, Assort OS. The platform streamlines patient access by reducing call wait times and integrating with EHR and PM systems, addressing longstanding scheduling frustrations. Assort Health's AI has improved the patient experience, delivering 98% resolution rates and driving substantial operational efficiencies for healthcare providers.

MODAL LABS HITS UNICORN STATUS WITH $87M RAISE

Modal Labs secured $87 million from Lux Capital, reaching a $1.1 billion valuation. This marks a significant development in the competitive AI infrastructure market.

BALANCING MULTIPLE ICPS: STRATEGIES FOR SOLO FOUNDERS

Solo founders face challenges balancing multiple ideal customer profiles (ICPs). Strategies include time-boxing efforts, creating dedicated landing pages, and using smart classification during registration to target specific customer groups. Marketing and communication must be tailored for each ICP, ensuring relevant messaging and efficient resource allocation.

5 INTERESTING LEARNINGS FROM FIGMA AT $1 BILLION IN ARR

Figma reached $1 billion in ARR with 41% growth, $100M+ net income, and 24% free cash flow margins. The company maintains strong expansion with 1,119 customers paying over $100K ARR, driving a 129% NDR at scale. Mid-market customers at $10K-$100K ARR offer significant growth potential, while strategic investments in AI and new products support future growth.

A 4-STEP FRAMEWORK FOR BUILDING DELIGHTFUL PRODUCTS

Nesrine Changuel emphasizes delight as a key business strategy, advising tech leaders to integrate emotional connection into product design. Her 4-step Delight Model includes identifying user motivators, converting these into opportunities, using a delight grid for solutions, and validating ideas with a checklist. This approach has been successfully applied in projects like Google Chrome and Spotify's Discover Weekly, illustrating the importance of balancing functionality and delight.

RIVET

Lets product designers own any UI change to the software they work on.

OPENROLL

AI agents that reveal competitor pay and guide every salary decision.

OPENFUNNEL

Monitor your TAM and surface companies when custom triggers fire.

REVERSE IMPOSTOR SYNDROME

A coach noticed tech leaders who know they're excellent but work behind closed doors, so their job titles and external signals don't match their actual skill level. The solution isn't building confidence but external positioning - learning to speak about your strategies and present to leadership in ways that feel authentic. Focus on behaviors like framing work as strategic and building business cases rather than surface-level personal branding advice.

THE RAG OBITUARY: KILLED BY AGENTS, BURIED BY CONTEXT WINDOWS

A founder built a financial search engine using the standard playbook - break documents into chunks, turn them into vectors, search, rerank, feed results to an AI. It took three years and constant maintenance. Then he tried Claude Code and realized it just searched files directly with grep, a tool from 1973, and got better results. The entire retrieval infrastructure was solving a problem that no longer exists. Early AI could only read 12 pages at once, so you had to find the right fragments. Now it can read 6,000 pages, so it just reads everything and investigates like a human would.

A RESEARCH THINKING TOOLKIT TO SPEED UP THE DISCOVERY PHASE

Founders are shipping MVPs in minutes with AI. However, a UX researcher who led discovery at Uber Eats says they're confusing motion with progress. Most teams build before figuring out if they're solving a real problem or if they're the right team to solve it. The fix is finding problem-solution fit first - who you are as a founder, what problem you're positioned to tackle, and whether your solution fits into someone's life. She breaks this into three phases. Incubate means resisting the urge to build richer ideas. Immerse means spending a focused week with customers instead of hundreds of scattered conversations. Integrate means being realistic about behavior change - your product needs to be 9X better than what people already use to overcome inertia.

BETTER TOMORROW VENTURES CLOSES $140M

Better Tomorrow Ventures raised a $140 million fund to invest in fintech.

TIM CHEN HAS QUIETLY BECOME OF ONE THE MOST SOUGHT-AFTER SOLO INVESTORS

Tim Chen, the solo investor behind Essence VC, closed a $41 million fund quickly due to investor enthusiasm following Databricks' $2.2 billion acquisition of his portfolio company, Tabular.

THAT WILL NEVER WORK

Failure in a project doesn't mean the idea is impossible; it may require a different approach, timing, or strategy.