If you have applied @ycombinator you should also consider these equity-free grants too 1. @GoogleStartups : $100k in credits 2. @vercel : $3,600 in credits 3. @aforevc Grants $1,000 4. @joinedgecity grants : $5k-40K 5. @emergent_vc : upto 100k 6. @thielfellowship : upto 200K

Stripe offered to acquire us for $1.2 billion when we had $2M in revenue. Today, we've raised $330M at an $8B valuation and reached $1B ARR. We could've died three times during this journey. This is the story I've never told anyone before:

Launched http://searchable.com 12 days ago. 4,800 signups, hundreds of paying users, and $40K MRR. Today we’re announcing a $4M pre-seed led by Freestyle Capital. AI Search is real, and we’re building the infrastructure for it. If you want to come work with us in London, shoot me a message.

I've scaled 4 products past $100k MRR everyone asks for the strategy here's what actually worked: 1. week 1: build something, anything, ship it 2. find 5-10 people, get them to try it 3. become annoying - DM, email, call 4. watch them use it (most won't) 5. ask why, fix it, ship again 6. daily check-ins, daily updates 7. solve their actual problem, not what you think it is 8. keep shipping until they beg you not to change anything 9. that's your signal - now go loud 10. content everywhere, SEO grind, paid ads 11. double down on channels that work 12. cut everything else the gap between $0 and $100k? steps 3-8 most people never leave their code editor you can't build a business without talking to humans

Knowing how to send great cold emails is a superpower. My learnings over the years: • 2-3 sentences max, reads like a text • have a clear ask • feels personalized • punchy subject line • avoid vague requests like "pick your brain" • keep it casual • no signature

If you want proof of what a good deal YC is for founders, I just told a UK startup I've invested several million pounds in that I'd be happy if they wanted to do YC. I'd get diluted alongside them, but I know we'd all be net ahead.

vc website: "we invest pre-seed, and help you go from zero to one" vc response: "we like what you're building, but you're a bit too early for us"

When software was a fixed tool, seat-based pricing made sense. You bought chairs at a table. Everyone paid the same whether they logged in once a week or built their entire workflow around it. The misalignment was tolerable because the capability was static. But AI products aren’t tools anymore. They’re capabilities that scale with model intelligence. The gap between Claude Sonnet 3.x and 4.x shows why flat pricing becomes a trap: a user extracting 100x more value pays the same as someone checking in occasionally. Here’s the deeper tension: $20/seat becomes your cost ceiling. Every model upgrade has to fit inside that box. You either compress the intelligence you provide or don’t upgrade at all. It’s a scarcity framework baked into the business model. Usage-based pricing trades predictability for possibility. Customers think before they act. Finance teams lose their clean spreadsheets. But it’s the only model that lets you give customers the best intelligence available without worrying whether your margins can support it. An abundance mindset instead of artificial constraints. This isn’t about one pricing model winning. It’s about flexibility that traditional software never required. Different customers value different things. Some want predictable costs, others want maximum capability. AI companies need pricing architectures that can serve both without forcing an either-or choice. Anthropic, Cursor, and a few others nailed the hybrid: seat-based pricing for predictability and simplicity, with usage-based pricing layered on top for power users who want access to the absolute best models. The top students in the class get to push harder without breaking the whole structure. Most knowledge work companies will resist this for a few years. The cognitive load is real. The change management is hard. But as AI becomes the actual work instead of a feature, pricing has to follow capability. Outcomes matter more than seats. The best companies will shift from software as a tool to intelligence as a service.

linktree is a billion-dollar company????? a billion???????? dollars??????????????? for literally... links. in. a. tree.

You are losing a lot of revenue by not offering a reverse trial. I wish we had done this many years ago! Todoist conversion rates based on thousands of upgrades:

BREAKING: OpenAI ready to roll out ads in ChatGPT responses.

Today, we are excited to announce a new experiment in Search Console that offers site owners a unified view of their Google Search performance across their websites and social channels. https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2025/12/social-channels-search-console…

I'm absolutely f*cking amazed by what this Vibe Marketing agent can do: > it figures out a ton of ideas based on kw research > vibe codes mini tools to win SEO traffic > finds banger vids to convert them into articles > does real pSEO, templates, data curation > articles & news

if you're a founder read this most companies can get to $1M ARR with only two channels the channels you should pick from are - paid ads - cold email - cold DMs - yt influencer marketing + affiliate the channels you should not pick from are - SEO - email newsletter - organic social - video podcast why you need revenue tomorrow, list one makes that happen list two makes revenue happen in the future, they are long term investments that pay off 12 months from now this is the most common mistake i see founders make the framework to think about this with is how you think about personal finance when you're young, 80% of resources go to surviving and 20% to investment when you're old, 80% goes to investment and 20% to surviving apply this same idea to your young company gl hf

This doesn't work because a "product launch" isn't what it was 10 years ago anymore Back then you'd launch on Product Hunt and you'd get thousands or tens of thousands of users overnight and journalists would pick it up after A lot has changed since then Firstly, nobody cares anymore, there's too many products and things launching and unless your product is completely groundbreaking and new, a launch won't get much attention anymore Secondly, these days you essentially should be launching every day non-stop: you try get attention from potential new users, posting new features you build based on user requests, tapping into trends you see and then jumping on them You even see it with AI companies now, they just add the new version like Grok 4.1 or ChatGPT 5.1 without a big presentation. Just roll it out and improve the product for users So yes launching is dead I think

This is 7d chess marketing on Taplio by @GuillaumeMbh

BREAKING: Anthropic is preparing to go public by as soon as 2026 in what is expected to be one of the biggest IPOs in history, per FT. Anthropic is currently in talks for a funding round valuing the company at over $300 billion.

Today, we are excited to introduce a new feature in the Search Console Performance report: weekly and monthly views. https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2025/12/weekly-monthly-views-search-console… This new functionality allows you to adjust the time aggregation of any of the performance charts, helping you smooth out daily changes and focus on the overall trend of traffic to your website.

I wonder if we’ll eventually see “model fatigue” with LLMs the same way we saw “app install fatigue” with native mobile apps. Even though it’s just a tap to install a new app, every passing year it’s harder to get people to do so -even for slightly superior apps to what you have

Fun stat: Claude Code went from 0->$1b in run-rate revenue in 6 months since being made generally available