TLDR FOUNDERS 2026-09-18

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THE HARNESS MARGIN OPPORTUNITY

The right harness can cut the cost of the same result by 71% without a loss of accuracy. This presents an opportunity for the next generation of software applications. State-of-the-art models can be expensive to use, but a good harness can reduce costs enough for them to be a viable option. An effective harness requires deep customer understanding, a collection of relevant evals, and a factory for automating hill-climbing.

THE NEW KINGMAKERS

Revenue scale is no longer sufficient when raising a round. What actually matters is how many top AI-native companies use, love, and embrace your products and profess undying loyalty to you. AI-native companies are the hardest customers to win, so they are the leading indicator. Revenue can be bought, but loyalty from a kingmaker can't be manufactured.

PULLEY, A CARTA RIVAL, IS SHUTTING DOWN

Pulley raised more than $50M to compete with Carta. Now it's shutting down and directing customers to that same competitor. The cap-table startup closes December 8, giving customers about twelve weeks to move. A former employee speculated that spreadsheets, increasingly improved with AI, were a bigger competitive problem than Carta itself. If you use Pulley, start checking the migration details now, especially which records transfer automatically and what you'll need to export yourself.

INSIDE 12 MONTHS OF AI SEARCH EXPERIMENTS

HubSpot spent twelve months testing what gets a company found in AI search. Adding an llms.txt file did nothing, while 92% of its highly specific industry and use-case pages eventually earned citations. A page-speed overhaul increased AI crawler visits by 1,600%, and qualified leads from AI search rose 1,850% over the year. The experiments give teams somewhere concrete to start. Track whether the content brings qualified leads, though, because more crawler visits alone won't tell you whether it's working.

WHY WOULD SOMEONE PAY FOR YOUR APP WHEN AI DOES IT FOR FREE?

Your customer can ask ChatGPT for a lesson. Getting them to practice again tomorrow is a different problem. This article suggests comparing your app's main use case with what someone can do in a blank chat window, then looking at what's missing. Does your app remember their progress, organize what comes next, or give them someone to practice with? Those are reasons to keep using it even when the answers are available elsewhere. If you're struggling to explain why someone should pay, try the comparison yourself.

MERCURY BOOKS

Mercury Books brings AI-powered accounting to Mercury. It can generate P&L, cash flow, and balance sheet reports using Mercury data and data from external financial platforms. The product was co-designed alongside accountants from leading firms. Existing Mercury customers can get started with Books in minutes.

COLUMN IS RELEASING FOUR NEW PRODUCTS

USDC and USDT are now completely interoperable with the US dollar and every underlying US and international payment rail on Column. Column has built its own card issuer processor, allowing its customers to launch and run card programs with one integration. Column customers can now issue US dollar accounts and cards to verified customers globally. They can also receive, hold, and send foreign currencies in individually numbered accounts with connections to international instant payment systems like SEPA Instant.

REIMAGINING ADVERTISING WITH AI

A customer can now ask an ad questions before visiting your website. OpenAI is testing Sponsored Agents with select US advertisers, letting users talk with a business-sponsored agent before clicking through to buy. It's also adding ChatGPT Ads integrations to HubSpot and Shopify. That moves some of the selling into the ad itself. If you get access to the test, your product information and the agent's answers will need as much attention as the creative and landing page.

PULLEY IS “WINDING DOWN” | WHAT HAPPENED?

Many founders are getting tired right now. They raised and built in a pre-AI world. Many want to build something else for a post-AI world. This can be a big opportunity for many companies that are in a strong financial position.

WHY DOES YOUR TEAM THINK YOU'RE A WORSE MANAGER THAN YOU DO?

You suggest a new feature during a meeting. A week later, someone has built it, and the project you actually needed is behind. You thought you were sharing an idea, but they thought you were giving them a task. This is one reason founders and their teams can disagree about how well things are managed. Tell people whether you're asking for opinions or assigning work. When you do add a task, explain how it ranks against what they're already doing.

HOW TO RAISE VENTURE CAPITAL CHAPTER 1: THE SPEED RUN

One investor wants an answer by Friday. Another can't meet until next month. You can end up choosing before you know who else is interested. This fundraising guide explains how to avoid that by building relationships early, then scheduling your pitch meetings close together so investors can reach decisions around the same time. Aim to finish the raise before you're down to six months of cash. Even after you accept a term sheet, investors still need to complete their checks and finalize the paperwork before the money reaches your account.

THE MOST IMPORTANT PRODUCT DECISION IS WHAT YOU DON'T BUILD

Be extremely choosy about what you add to a system and be militant about taking things out.

THE CURATION PROBLEM

AI accelerates product development, but teams risk prioritizing speed over meaningful outcomes, leading to feature bloat.

MAXIMIZING RETURN-ON-FEEDBACK

When you let it be known that someone gave you feedback, and they see how you accepted and thanked the person who gave it, you normalize the behavior and make it safer for others to do the same.

NO CODE IS CODE: ZAPIER CEO WADE FOSTER ON HEADLESS TOOLS, ZAPIER MCP & AUTOMATION BENCH

Zapier CEO Wade Foster discusses the evolution of no-code automation into tools like Zapier MCP, focusing on integrating with users' daily AI drivers like Cursor.