Startups

There is a specific kind of frustration that shows up in founder conversations around the Series A stage.The product works. The team is strong. The deck is polished. But growth feels harder than it...

Most founders I speak with aren't failing because they lack ambition, talent, or runway. They're failing because they're applying 2022 playbooks to a 2026 landscape, and the landscape changed faster than anyone's internal roadmap...

A founder I spoke with recently had done everything right, or so it looked from the outside.They'd hired a media buyer with a solid track record. They were running Meta and Google ads simultaneously....

There’s a conversation I keep having with founders right now, and it goes something like this.They’ve been using AI to accelerate marketing. Content is going out faster than ever. Ads are being tested in...

Most AI startups don’t fail because of bad technology. They fail because of bad marketing decisions made too early, too late, or by the wrong people. I’ve seen it repeatedly: a brilliant technical founder raises a...

A founder I worked with a few years ago told me something I still think about.They had just closed their seed round. Product-market fit felt real. Users were coming in, referrals were happening organically,...

Most founders don’t have a traffic problem.They have a structural problem.In 2026, attention is still available. In some ways, it’s cheaper than ever if you know where to look. But conversion? That’s where the...

Every year I speak to founders and executives who tell me roughly the same thing: “We’re doing all the right things, but it doesn’t seem to move the needle.” They’re publishing content. They’re running ads. They’ve...