Founder Weekly (Issue 679 April 2 2025)

Welcome to issue 679 of Founder Weekly. Let's get straight to the links this week.

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General

How I Spent 17,784 Hours in 5 Years as a Startup Founder

Sam Corcos, co-founder & CEO of Levels, shares a detailed look into exactly how he spent 5 years building the company, with reflections on what changed in the transition from very early-stage to scale up.

What Founders Can Do To Improve Their Design Gam

This Design Review episode features Raphael Schaad (Notion Calendar) discussing the importance of design in startups and encouraging designers to become founders. Schaad emphasizes that understanding desirability, feasibility, and viability, combined with surrounding oneself with beauty and learning by doing, can significantly level up a founder's design game.

Roadmap: Data 3.0 in the Lakehouse Era

We’re moving beyond the modern data stack as a new architectural revolution sweeps the infrastructure landscape, ushering in unprecedented interoperability for enterprises in an AI age.

A better way to plan, build, and ship products

This video with Ryan Singer (ex-Head of Strategy at 37signals) introduces the "Shape Up" method, an alternative to Agile and Scrum that prioritizes shipping meaningful work within fixed timeboxes. It focuses on collaborative project definition upfront, valuing detailed planning and efficient use of engineering time.

Marketing, Sales and PR

Bull or Bear? A Mock Buy, Sell, Hold Report on Popular SaaS Marketing Practices

Learn the role of brand in SaaS marketing during an age when AI can generate our content and agents can engage with prospects.

It's not brand vs. growth

How to use your brand to drive growth.

Money and Finance

Everything I learned raising my first pre-seed round

The author shares lessons from raising his first pre-seed round, emphasizing that reframing fundraising as an opportunity to build relationships and meet inspiring people made the process more enjoyable and successful. He highlights persistence, strategy, and adaptability as keys to navigating the challenges of early-stage fundraising.

Key Startup Metrics VCs Care About: How to Track, Improve & Use Them to Raise Capital

Learn the key metrics investors actually care about—and how founders can improve them to unlock funding.

Fundraising: Preemption vs Process

Startup fundraising often comes down to a choice: accept a fast, preemptive VC offer or run a full process to maximize valuation and control. Each path has trade-offs—this post breaks down when to say yes, when to hold out, and how to use both to your advantage.

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