TLDR FOUNDERS 2025-11-26

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PRIVATE EQUITY: THE NEW DISTRIBUTION CHANNEL FOR AI STARTUPS

Private equity firms are rapidly becoming key distribution channels for AI startups, offering access to a mid-market profile that accelerates sales cycles. AI tools that cut costs and automate workflows fit well with PE's profit motives, creating efficient deployment across portfolios. This model transforms go-to-market strategies, allowing AI startups to reach over 14,000 PE-backed companies, bypassing traditional enterprise sales approaches.

MOATS BEFORE (GROSS) MARGINS

Investors obsess over gross margins, but Apple has a 38% margin - roughly half of most software companies - and it's one of the most valuable businesses on earth. Margins don't determine great companies, moats - like Network effects, economies of scale, brand power, and switching costs - do. In the AI era, the obsession with high margins is even more dangerous. It might just mean your product isn't using any AI at all.

PRODUCT EVALS IN THREE SIMPLE STEPS

Building evals can result in immediate payoffs. They allow you to run multiple experiments to iterate to a working product quickly. Having evals makes development much quicker than if it were bottlenecked on human annotations after each configuration change. This post details how to build product evals.

ESSENTIAL SAAS METRICS FOR A SERIES A FUNDRAISE

Key metrics for a SaaS Series A fundraise include Annual Recurring Revenue, Monthly Recurring Revenue, and Year-over-Year growth, which demonstrate traction and scalability. Investors also focus on metrics like Customer Acquisition Cost, Lifetime Value, Net Revenue Retention, Gross Revenue Retention, and Burn Multiple to assess efficiency and growth potential. Understanding and effectively presenting these metrics can enhance credibility with investors and improve valuation.

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KITE

Kite is an AI email assistant that declutters your Gmail, automates responses, and gives you back hours each week with smart, secure workflows

NEETOCAL

NeetoCal is an AI-powered scheduling tool that syncs calendars, handles payments, and simplifies booking for any kind of meeting.

MENTION.CLICK

mention is an AI-powered lead generation tool that surfaces relevant Reddit conversations for your product to enable organic outreach, validation, and customer discovery.

SOME NOTES FROM THE CEO OF SPOTIFY

This thread contains tips given by the CEO of Spotify during a two-hour-long presentation. Spotify made the legal option faster and easier than piracy, and it only widened its focus when its core was working. It built a reusable distribution engine and let teams own outcomes. The company invested early in experimentation infrastructure and was built for global from day one. It only bets on AI when it moves core metrics. The key to the company's success was focus, compounding iteration, and small autonomous teams with real accountability.

HOW TO GET ON A VC'S RADAR IN 30 DAYS (USING ONLY LINKEDIN + X)

You don't need followers, content, or a personal brand to get on a VC's radar - just strategic commenting. Pick 25 investors you want to meet, turn on their post notifications, and show up early with thoughtful takes.

SHOT CALLED A YEAR AGO

Taste and judgment, not execution, are the bottlenecks when Cursor can take you from idea to code in minutes.

INVERT, ALWAYS INVERT

Instead of asking how to succeed, ask how to fail, then systematically avoid those things.

STUMBLING

The smartest people in the room are often terrible communicators.