TLDR FOUNDERS 2026-11-06

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GROWTH IS BECOMING AN ENGINEERING PROBLEM

The most AI-pilled teams are rebilling their entire GTM stacks. Small and medium businesses are actively trying to use agents to recreate software as some of their old tools aren't making the cut. Larger companies have contracts, integrations, and years of operational habits to work through. This post looks at the growth teams rebuilding their GTM stacks around agents to see what they're building, buying, or replacing.

THE END OF FEATURE DISCOVERY AS WE KNOW IT

Growth teams used to spend months getting customers to try a feature they'd just shipped. Lovable's growth lead now flags it in Slack when the agent itself doesn't know about a feature, because customers describe a job and leave it to the agent to pick the tools. The next sign of adoption is a customer handing the agent a whole workflow after trusting it with a small task. That customer might spend less time in the app, so the product has to show what the agent decided and give them a way to undo it.

STARTUP MARKETING ADVICE IN THE AGE OF AI

AI can turn out a finished launch video before anyone has checked whether it could pass for a competitor's. One startup marketer recommends covering your name and logo with a competitor's and watching or reading the whole thing through. Start with a rushed tagline or the stock footage between demos. Rewrite anything the competitor could still use as is, and keep the lines and shots that stop making sense under their logo.

FIND HIGH-VALUE MEMBERS WITH A CLAUDE AGENT

Selling to wealthy consumers can look a lot like selling enterprise software. Atlas' founder says the typical member spends about $1 million a year on cards, so he started treating members like key accounts. He used a Claude agent to find existing members the company could do more for and called them himself. A few of those conversations ended with six-figure trips booked through the company's concierge.

NOW AVAILABLE: RETENTION MESSAGES FOR SUBSCRIPTIONS

Apple's Retention Messaging API is a server-to-server service that enables developers to select messages to display to customers when they view a subscription details page and might cancel. Retention messages can include text, images, or a special offer. The API allows developers to choose which message to show subscribers based on their subscription details. API access is available by request.

AGENTIC BANKING IS HERE TO STAY. HERE'S HOW MERCURY KEEPS YOU IN CONTROL

Mercury lets AI agents prepare payments or transfers that a person still has to approve under the team's existing rules. The agent can only use permissions its owner already has, so an employee who can't see the payroll balance can't get it through an agent either. Admins can review each agent's activity and see who connected it. They can also revoke access from Mercury on the web.

INTRODUCING VERCEL SCHEDULES

Vercel Schedules allows agents and applications to create, change, or cancel one-time and recurring schedules through code without redeploying. They are designed to let users and agents decide when work should happen while applications are still running. A schedule tells Vercel when to trigger a task and where to send it. Applications provide the code that carries out the work. Schedules can be used for both static and dynamic jobs.

IS PRIVATE EQUITY COOKED?

Private equity firms could borrow to buy mature software companies because lenders could count on their customers renewing. AI is making those renewals harder to bank on, just as higher rates make the next buyout harder to finance. It is estimated that a typical buyout now needs 10% to 12% annual EBITDA growth to match what a 2015 deal could earn with about 5%. That's a higher bar for the next buyer at a time when revenue growth at Golub Capital's software borrowers has slowed from 9% to under 3% in two years.

AX IS NOT THE NEW DX, IT'S THE NEW UX

The Agent Experience has become one of the most talked-about shifts in infrastructure over the past year. The focus has been on rebuilding developer tools for coding agents, but that's just because coding agents got good first. Every product is becoming something agents use. As time goes on, more and more users will be agents.

WORKING AT MICROSOFT

8 lessons learned from working at Microsoft.

HOW TO BOOK B2B DEMOS FROM META ADS

Frontal sends CRM sales outcomes back to Meta to train its targeting and reports paying $600 per qualified demo.

GAIN CREDIBILITY AND MOMENTUM IN EXCHANGE

Chamelio trades discounts for logo rights, giving itself a reference for the next sale and buyers a way to show they're adopting AI.

THE VERY LONG ROAD TO $20K MRR

Existing users paid EmailEngine $2,000 in the first month it required a subscription to keep working, after optional licenses earned €750 over 18 months.