TLDR FOUNDERS 2026-05-22

POSITIONING IN THE AGE OF AI

Customers are wandering through B2B sales calls so confused right now that a clear point of view on the future of your category is no longer optional. They want answers on whether your SaaS product will be fronted by chat, by agents, by humans, or some mix, and they want them in the room. Position against the competitors on their short list today, not the AI-native ones you're afraid will exist next year, but build the roadmap to beat those future ones anyway. Hype the future where you have to, but tie every claim to a feature you can ship now, or you'll lose the deal to indecision or look like a legacy company without a path forward.

WHO'S ACTUALLY HIRING IN GTM RIGHT NOW

Cursor, Decagon, and OpenAI are aggressively hiring SDRs while the rest of the market cut SDR roles by 21% year over year. The companies whose entire pitch is "AI replaces sales" doubled their own SDR headcount this year. Customer support was the one role they actually automated away, down 37%, the biggest drop of any GTM function. GTM engineering doubled to 400+ across US digital natives, Claude mentions in GTM engineering job posts tripled in one quarter, and 3 in 5 open GTM roles are still AEs or solution engineers because buyers still want to talk to a human.

HOW ANTHROPIC REBUILT ITS SALES ORG FROM SCRATCH WHEN DEMAND WENT VERTICAL: 54% OF NEW ENTERPRISE LOGOS NOW COME SELF-SERVE

Anthropic's commercial team was not ready for the vertical growth the company was about to experience when Claude Opus 4.6 shipped in December. The company couldn't absorb the incoming flow of customers while still delivering a positive customer experience. It rebuilt its entire sales org from scratch in January, and now 54% of new enterprise logos come through the self-serve funnel. This article details how Anthropic pulled it off and provides tips that any B2B or AI sales leader can copy today.

FORWARD DEPLOYED ENGINEERING 101

Forward Deployed Engineer (FDE) is the hottest role in tech right now. The FDE is a highly skilled engineer who can understand customers' problems very deeply, write code, and communicate business impact to non-technical decision makers. It is a role that requires the engineer to be on-site with customers. This article explains why Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, and other AIs are looking for FDEs, and how workers can capitalize on this demand.

HOW TO WIN THE NEXT WAVE OF CONSUMER SOFTWARE

Facebook used to spend its first ten days with you trying to get you to add seven friends, because the friend graph was the product. TikTok overlaid an interest graph onto Musically's video player and suddenly the feed felt "For You." The next graph is the identity graph, the unstructured stuff that makes you who you are (job, worldview, family, and hobbies), that AI can finally piece together. Whoever connects those signals first wins the next decade of consumer.

STORECLAW

Optimize ecommerce growth with AI agents that analyze store performance and execute sales improvements automatically.

POLLYREACH

Give AI agents a real phone number to make calls, handle conversations, book reservations, and answer incoming calls.

THE FOUNDER MENTAL HEALTH SURVEY (RESOURCE)

A founder mental health survey, anonymous, built on validated clinical instrument. PHQ-9 for depression, GAD-7 for anxiety, ASRS for ADHD, MBI-GS for burnout, plus founder-specific sections on cofounder relationships, ambition, and identity-merge with the company.

ON BLUNT FEEDBACK

Blunt feedback can be life-changing if it comes from someone with the right intent and astute judgment in the specific subject matter. Some people use blunt feedback as a weapon for manipulation. Even if they have the right intent, they might not have the skill to give the correct feedback. In many cases, you have to have the confidence to ignore the feedback or significantly adapt it so it actually works.

ON GRINDSLOP

Will Manidis dissects the founder-suffering content genre as secular hagiography, where podcasters chronicle the seven-day workweeks, office sleeping arrangements, and 20 employees tattooing the company logo on their bodies without ever asking what the company does, because the suffering itself is the product rather than any output. Manidis distinguishes hard companies from "grindslop" companies, where performed labor exists to answer the question meritocratic culture cannot otherwise answer: why do you deserve so much.

YOUR APP THROWS BAD PARTIES

Pinterest's search data showed "analog aesthetic" up 260% and "dumb phone" up 150%, so they ran a phone-free activation at Coachella with Yondr pouches and keychain-embellishing tables. eBay just hosted Julia Fox's 450-piece stoop sale in Tribeca with proceeds going to a Rikers book club. That's what an IRL activation looks like when the consumer insight matches the brand, versus an influencer dinner that gets fifteen minutes of fame. The feed is infinite, the room is not, and the brands treating IRL as a growth function will outrun the ones still chasing CAC on the timeline.

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I'M PART OF THE YC P26 BATCH THAT GOT OFFERED $2M BY SAM ALTMAN IN FUNDING WITH OPENAI TOKENS

Thoughts from a member of the recent YC batch on how OpenAI's offer of $2 million in tokens will affect how the cohort builds its products.

WHY FOUNDER CONVICTION MATTERS MORE THAN EVER

Gamma co-founder Grant Lee challenges the market-validation gospel by citing a Crunchbase study where 34% of 205 failed startups reported "impressive traction" in fundraising materials months before dying, arguing downloads, sign-ups, and press are lagging indicators dressed up as proof.

THERE ARE MANY CONFIGURATIONS OF BUSINESS THAT WORK

There are numerous business configurations beyond high-growth startups that can align with personal life goals.

THE BEST PROTOTYPES GET THROWN AWAY

Somewhere in your company right now, a designer is agonizing over pixel spacing on a prototype that engineering is going to rebuild from scratch.