Founder Weekly (Issue 672 February 5 2025)

Welcome to issue 672 of Founder Weekly. I have a special announcement to make below.

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General

Y Combinator's Requests for Startups

Y Combinator has published a new list of startup ideas just three months after their last one, highlighting opportunities unlocked by recent AI breakthroughs. The list focuses on areas like AI agents using computers, advanced reasoning models, new compute infrastructure, and low-level optimizations, reflecting the rapid pace of innovation in the AI field.

What fully automated firms will look like

Everyone is sleeping on the collective advantages AIs will have, which have nothing to do with raw IQ: they can be copied, distilled, merged, scaled, and evolved in ways humans simply can't.

The Startup Drake Equation

Why do smart, driven founders fail, despite having great ideas and execution? This model offers an answer, and a path to increase the chance of success.

The Age of Fragmentation: AI’s Impact on Content and Code

How AI Splinters Culture and Software, and Which Startups Will Win.

Marketing, Sales and PR

Market Sizing in Vertical Software (Part II)

The Power of Starting Small: ACVs, Beachheads & Wedges.

How to hire an early-stage sales team from $0 to $1M ARR

An inside look at Unify’s sales hiring playbook.

My product went viral on social media but all I got were these shitty users

Andrew Chen explores the pitfalls of viral social media product launches, highlighting how rapid user spikes often bring low-quality "Looky-Loos" who quickly disengage. The key insight is that sustainable growth requires focusing on durable, scalable, and valuable user acquisition rather than chasing ephemeral viral moments.

Money and Finance 

Fundraising Milestones: Crossing the Seed to Series A Chasm in Application Software

The article discusses fundraising benchmarks for startups moving from Seed to Series A, based on a survey of 30 investors. It highlights that while $1M-$1.5M ARR is standard for a Series A, AI has shifted expectations, emphasizing stronger traction, accelerated growth, and metrics like retention, burn multiple, and growth efficiency.

Am I Getting a Good Deal from a Venture Studio?

A conversation with a founder as they negotiated with a venture studio.

The Four Pillars of Venture Investing

The article discusses four key roles of venture investors: finding, picking, winning, and supporting startups. It explores how these roles often conflict, creating trade-offs that make excelling in all areas challenging, as focusing on one aspect can hinder performance in others.