The hottest Startups Substack posts right now

And their main takeaways
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Top Business Topics

My new book “Cyber for Builders" is now available on Amazon

Venture in Security • 707 implied HN points • 09 Jan 24
💼 Business Startups
  1. The book 'Cyber for Builders' is a comprehensive guide for building a cybersecurity startup.
  2. The book covers various aspects of cybersecurity industry including key players, trends, and essential insights for early-stage founders.
  3. The book has received praise from industry experts for its practical advice and guidance for navigating the complexities of building a cybersecurity company.

In PR or Marketing? Join me this week in SF

Startup Strategies • 128 implied HN points • 02 Dec 25
💼 Business Startups
  1. There's a panel at the PR Summit in San Francisco on December 3–4 focused on capital, communications, and AI.
  2. You can get a free ticket using the promo code VKG9HE.
  3. Founders, investors, communications leaders, and PR professionals will attend to discuss the future of influence, making it a useful networking and learning opportunity.

The Future, Now and Then: 2025 in review

The Future, Now and Then • 82 implied HN points • 29 Dec 25
🕹 Technology Startups
  1. This year’s writing moved from long, idea-driven essays to shorter, immediate pieces, with a clear intention to take bigger swings and return to deeper work next year.
  2. Silicon Valley is powered by three kinds of money—government contracts, product revenue, and speculative finance—and an overreliance on speculation warps incentives and creates bubble risk that can hide weak fundamentals.
  3. Big techno-utopian projects often ignore political and institutional veto points, so grand visions like abundance or network-states tend to be undercooked and clash with real-world constraints.

Are we ready for AI sales reps?

Kyle Poyar’s Growth Unhinged • 528 implied HN points • 06 Aug 25
💼 Business Startups
  1. AI can now take on tasks typically done by human sales reps, like answering common questions and helping with pricing. This means businesses can be available to customers 24/7 without delays.
  2. Good support documentation is crucial for AI success. If the AI has clear and structured information to work from, it can provide better answers and have fewer mistakes.
  3. While AI isn't ready to replace all sales jobs yet, it can definitely help support the sales process by filling in gaps and increasing efficiency for small teams.
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💡Explain benefits on sign up page

First 1000 • 1159 implied HN points • 18 Apr 23
💼 Business Startups
  1. Boost registrations by clearly articulating product benefits on the sign-up page.
  2. Experiment different approaches like highlighting product benefits or adding free basic account benefits to improve conversion rates.
  3. Engage in A/B tests to find the most effective way to explain benefits on your sign-up page.

Biotech Startup Stats

Rough Diamonds • 20 implied HN points • 05 Feb 26
💼 Business Startups
  1. Most biotech startups either fail or lose value after IPO, with only a small share of currently trading firms showing positive long‑term returns; many poorly performing public companies may simply not have failed yet.
  2. Location and company age strongly predict outcomes: firms based in biotech hubs (CA, MA, NY, NJ, PA) do much better, and newer firms are more likely to still be trading due to lifecycle effects.
  3. Scientific focus and pipeline stage matter: biologics (especially antibodies), rare disease and immunology focuses, targets like PD‑1, and IPOing at Phase III are linked to acquisitions or positive returns, while "other" modalities (e.g., formulations, natural products) tend to underperform.

You should be vibecoding for GTM

Kyle Poyar’s Growth Unhinged • 820 implied HN points • 28 May 25
💼 Business Startups
  1. Using AI coding tools can really speed up the process of building marketing tools. Even if you aren't a coder, you can create useful apps in just a couple of hours.
  2. Vibecoding allows you to bypass relying on developers for basic tools, giving you the power to manage your go-to-market strategies independently. This can save both time and money.
  3. You can create engaging and interactive tools, like an ROI calculator, that can enhance your sales efforts and make a better impression on potential clients.

A Framework to Prove Your Market Is 'Big Enough' to VCs! | VC Jobs

Venture Curator • 299 implied HN points • 19 Apr 24
💼 Business Startups
  1. VCs often need to see potential for at least one investment to have billions in enterprise value for a good fund return.
  2. Different approaches like top-down market size analysis and bottom-up market demand can help founders prove a market's size to VCs.
  3. Being aligned with broad mega-trends or using analogies can also help convince investors of a market's potential.

Investing 101

Investing 101 • 59 implied HN points • 03 Jan 26
💼 Business Startups
  1. Build a compounding engine of reading, research, writing, and investing that converts broad exposure to ideas into concrete actions and bets.
  2. Adopt concrete daily and weekly habits to feed that engine — aim for steady reading across categories, a nightly short story/poem/essay routine, and weekly micro essays to capture emerging ideas.
  3. Make investing an explicit output of the process by widening conversational reach, documenting thinking in an investing journal, and publishing portfolio updates, Requests for Startups, and idea notes to strengthen conviction.

Time to Build: Marc Andreessen on a World in Transition

Jakob Nielsen on UX • 27 implied HN points • 09 Feb 26
🕹 Technology Startups
  1. AI is a transformative amplifier that turns cheap silicon into powerful thought, democratizes elite one-on-one tutoring, and can boost intelligence beyond human biological limits.
  2. Demographic decline makes AI urgently needed to sustain economies, but institutional inertia, regulation, and risk aversion threaten to slow real-world impact, so human agency and action are essential.
  3. AI breaks down traditional role boundaries, enabling people to combine coding, design, and product or creative skills, which creates opportunities for superpowered individuals and even one-person or tiny-team billion-dollar companies.

The 9-9-6 Trap

Generating Conversation • 163 implied HN points • 20 Nov 25
💼 Business Startups
  1. Working long hours like the 9-9-6 schedule doesn't lead to better results. People can only focus well for a few hours each day, and too much work can actually hurt productivity.
  2. Life is more than just work. People need time for family, hobbies, and fun to stay happy and avoid burnout.
  3. Creating a healthy work culture where employees can enjoy life is key for long-term success. It's important to work hard but also take breaks to keep everyone energized.

AI Roundup 150: Empire State Defiance

Artificial Ignorance • 88 implied HN points • 27 Dec 25
🕹 Technology Startups
  1. New York passed the RAISE Act forcing big AI companies to publish safety protocols, report serious incidents quickly, and face stiff penalties. It directly challenges federal efforts and could make state rules the de facto industry standard.
  2. Nvidia struck a $20B licensing deal with Groq to gain low‑latency chip designs and talent, showing a playbook of absorbing specialized rivals instead of fighting them head‑on. That move fills a gap for fast inference workloads and helps Nvidia protect its market lead.
  3. Autonomous AI shopping agents threaten to cut retailers like Amazon out of customer relationships and margins, so Amazon is blocking bots, suing scrapers, and building its own agent tools. The technology is still early, giving Amazon a narrow window to influence how agentic commerce develops.

Acorn Genetics - Working Solid State Nanopores "Right Now"?

ASeq Newsletter • 29 implied HN points • 04 Feb 26
🕹 Technology Startups
  1. Acorn Genetics says it is building solid-state nanopore DNA sequencing technology.
  2. Solid-state nanopore sequencing has been extremely hard historically, with no clear proof-of-concept despite decades of work and hundreds of millions spent.
  3. The company raised about $2M to build an alpha and has roadmap timing for a beta around now, but the small funding and the field’s challenges make the timeline and prospects uncertain.

7 Implications of DeepSeek’s Victory Over American AI Companies

The Algorithmic Bridge • 1443 implied HN points • 27 Jan 25
🕹 Technology Startups
  1. DeepSeek is a new Chinese AI startup that has quickly become a big player in the AI world, challenging even leading American companies. This highlights a shift in innovation coming from China.
  2. DeepSeek's models are showing competitive results compared to top US models, thanks to their unique approaches and optimization strategies. They have managed to create effective AI solutions without needing as much expensive hardware.
  3. The company promotes an open-source philosophy, aiming to make AI technology more accessible. This could change how AI companies operate and compete in the market, possibly lowering costs for everyone.

Balaji, the Network State and mark-to-market thinking

Taipology • 91 implied HN points • 12 Dec 25
🔮 Crypto Startups
  1. A small startup community in Forest City is trying out the "network state" idea, blending intentional community life with tech and decentralization experimentation. It works like a real-world lab for new ways people might organize outside traditional nation-states.
  2. The geopolitical view presented is that the United States may be weakening while China grows into a dominant model, and many of those shifts are not yet fully recognized or priced into global thinking. If those trends continue, alliances, economies, and governance could change significantly.
  3. The future is uncertain so we should proceed carefully, learning through patient experimentation rather than rushing to a single outcome. Decentralized technologies and cooperative experiments might offer alternatives to state power, but they need responsible testing and time to prove themselves.

What about founder mental health?

Alex's Personal Blog • 131 implied HN points • 02 Dec 25
💼 Business Startups
  1. Most founders struggle with mental health issues, and it's important to talk about it. Taking care of mental health is vital in the stressful world of startups.
  2. OpenAI is feeling pressure from competitors like Google and Anthropic, and it's crucial for them to improve their products. If they don't innovate, they risk losing their market position.
  3. Apple is standing firm against a demand from India to preload a government app on their devices, which could harm user privacy. It's a bold move that highlights the importance of protecting democratic values.

Investors bet on Waymo's acceleration

Alex's Personal Blog • 98 implied HN points • 17 Dec 25
💼 Business Startups
  1. Big AI labs are deliberately diversifying cloud and chip partners and raising massive sums to secure compute capacity, which spreads vendor dependence across several big players. This reduces single-vendor risk but also deepens ties between top cloud and chip companies and the major AI models.
  2. The US is using public funds and joint ventures to build domestic critical-minerals processing capacity, backing a Korea Zinc-led smelter project with loans, equity stakes, and subsidies to onshore supply chains. That approach hands significant control to U.S. public and private actors while accelerating industrial capacity at scale.
  3. Waymo is gearing up to rapidly scale its fleet and expand into many new cities, including international markets, and is courting large financing at a roughly $100B valuation because investors expect quick revenue growth. Its main risks are eroding rider and regulator trust if it moves too fast and tougher competition from rivals.

Thursday State of the SubStacks: Walking the Tightrope Over the Attention-Economy Abyss

Brad DeLong's Grasping Reality • 138 implied HN points • 19 Nov 25
💼 Business Startups
  1. The platform is walking a tightrope: it needs discoverability to help writers grow paying audiences without turning into an ad-driven attention machine that just maximizes time on the app.
  2. The new Notes/social feed creates real risks — its algorithmic tuning can push short-form engagement at the expense of longform newsletters and amplify extreme or divisive voices, making moderation and content choices thorny.
  3. Substack (and rivals) need transparent, data-driven experiments with adjustable dials like teaser samples, patronage/tips, and premium perks so writers can sustainably earn while protecting an open public-good core.

Nativism is going to wreck the tech economy

Alex's Personal Blog • 164 implied HN points • 14 Nov 25
🕹 Technology Startups
  1. Nativism in U.S. politics may hurt the tech economy by limiting high-skill immigration, which is crucial for growth and innovation. This could lead to tech companies hiring less domestic talent and more workers from abroad.
  2. AI is affecting the job market negatively, especially for new graduates. More entry-level jobs are disappearing, making it harder for young people to find work and pay off student loans.
  3. Despite concerns about economic weakness, investment interest in tech startups, especially in AI, remains strong. Companies like Cursor are raising large amounts of capital, indicating that the tech sector may still have opportunities for growth.

hypercapitalism and the AI talent wars

luttig's learnings • 499 implied HN points • 13 Jul 25
💼 Business Startups
  1. The competition for AI talent is intense, leading to huge salary offers, which can really shake up the trust between companies and their employees. It makes people wonder if mission or money matters more now.
  2. Big companies have an advantage in attracting top talent, which makes it hard for smaller startups to compete. They need strong missions and enough resources to stand a chance in this new market.
  3. Investors must adapt to this changing landscape, as the old rules of fundraising don’t apply anymore. They need to rethink how they evaluate companies, especially those focused on AI.

Looking back on AI in 2025

Generating Conversation • 93 implied HN points • 18 Dec 25
🕹 Technology Startups
  1. Models stopped being the main story; improvements felt incremental. Success now depends on real applications and which products companies can own.
  2. Big companies are paying close attention and spending aggressively on AI, including large acquisitions. That accelerates enterprise adoption and creates big opportunities for startups.
  3. The field is still changing very fast, so specific predictions often miss the mark. The durable trend is base models becoming more of a commodity while value concentrates at the application and deployment layer.

We must stop the IPO-hungry CEO

Alex's Personal Blog • 98 implied HN points • 16 Dec 25
💼 Business Startups
  1. Boards will replace CEOs who push to IPO sooner than directors think is wise, because investors want leadership stability through a public debut.
  2. Trade and tech policy are now tangled, with the US pressuring allies over digital rules and taxes, which could stall international cooperation on AI and other tech issues.
  3. Public markets are sorting winners and losers: some hardware startups are failing despite demand, while companies like Waymo and Notion are showing revenue traction that could reset the IPO narrative if they list carefully.

Deep Dive on Aleph Alpha - Towards European AI Sovereignty

AI Supremacy • 491 implied HN points • 08 Feb 24
🕹 Technology Startups
  1. Aleph Alpha is a German AI startup focusing on AI governance, privacy, and ethics aligning with EU standards.
  2. Aleph Alpha's flagship product, Luminous, offers language models in multiple sizes and is known for its ability to explain outputs.
  3. Aleph Alpha's collaborative and 'sovereignty first' approach sets it apart from US AI companies, emphasizing data privacy and transparency.

Deepseek: The Quiet Giant Leading China’s AI Race

ChinaTalk • 1615 implied HN points • 27 Nov 24
🕹 Technology Startups
  1. Deepseek is a rising Chinese AI startup that has surpassed major competitors like OpenAI in some technical benchmarks. They are focused on foundational research and open-sourcing their models.
  2. The company has started a price war in the Chinese AI market by offering their technology at much lower rates than the competition, making AI more accessible.
  3. Deepseek's approach prioritizes innovation over immediate profit, aiming to contribute to the global technological landscape rather than just following existing trends.

The Big Short dude is worried about Big Tech earnings

Alex's Personal Blog • 164 implied HN points • 12 Nov 25
💼 Business Startups
  1. Investors are concerned that big tech might be misleading about their earnings due to how they report the costs of their data center investments. If companies extend the lifespan of their equipment, it can make their profits look better in the short term.
  2. A lot of private companies are hitting the $100 million annual recurring revenue mark, which is becoming a common milestone for startups aiming to grow. This level of revenue is a big deal because it's seen as a stepping stone toward going public.
  3. Despite worries about an AI bubble, many companies are growing quickly and generating significant revenue. This rapid growth could help stabilize their market positions, even if some projects fail.

Why I Left Norway

Common Sense with Bari Weiss • 1553 implied HN points • 10 Dec 24
💼 Business Startups
  1. High taxes in Norway, including a new unrealized gains tax, made it hard for entrepreneurs to keep their businesses profitable and maintain ownership. They struggled to balance their income with the need to pay these taxes.
  2. Many successful Norwegian entrepreneurs are leaving the country to escape burdensome taxes, and this trend is affecting the wealth distribution in Norway. A significant number of top taxpayers have relocated to protect their wealth.
  3. The situation in Norway reflects a troubling pattern where government policies may stifle innovation and entrepreneurship. This has created an environment where those who want to build businesses feel they have no choice but to move elsewhere.

Former Facebook Research Scientists Raise $20 Million Seed Round for Enterprise Foundation Model Startup

Newcomer • 982 implied HN points • 07 Jun 23
💼 Business Startups
  1. Former Facebook research scientists raise $20 million for a foundation model startup called Contextual AI
  2. Contextual AI's foundation model for enterprises aims to address existing model challenges like hallucination and data privacy
  3. Competition in the foundation model space is intense, with companies like Cohere and Vectara already in the game

$650 Million for Casetext & $1.3 Billion for MosaicML + Massive New AI Funding Rounds Mean Great Week for Generative AI

Newcomer • 963 implied HN points • 30 Jun 23
💼 Business Startups
  1. Significant AI startup acquisitions and funding rounds indicate a strong interest in generative AI technology.
  2. Acquisitions like Thomson Reuter's $650 million purchase of Casetext show genuine value placed on generative AI by established companies.
  3. MosaicML, with a $1.3 billion acquisition by Databricks, is contributing to the hype around AI startups, despite some skepticism over valuation.

DeepSeek Is a Wake-Up Call. Is America Listening?

Common Sense with Bari Weiss • 1219 implied HN points • 28 Jan 25
🕹 Technology Startups
  1. DeepSeek, a small Chinese company, has created powerful AI models for much less money than American companies, challenging the idea that the U.S. leads in technology. This means other countries can compete more easily in AI.
  2. The surprising success of DeepSeek caused significant drops in the stock prices of major tech companies, showing how big of an impact one smaller player can have on the market.
  3. DeepSeek's technology is accessible for anyone with limited resources, which could change the future of AI development and create potential instability in the tech landscape.

AI is everyone's favorite excuse to raise software prices

Enterprise AI Trends • 84 implied HN points • 17 Dec 25
💼 Business Startups
  1. AI is making software more expensive right now. Many SaaS vendors raised prices in 2024–25 and are likely to keep raising them through 2026–27.
  2. Companies are bundling AI features into existing plans and hiking fees, effectively converting subscription revenue into “AI” revenue and limiting opt-outs.
  3. Structural forces beyond direct product value — like customers tolerating higher prices for high-value AI improvements and halo effects from better foundational models — are giving vendors sustained pricing power and a temporary “AI windfall.”

How to Build a Company that OpenAI/Google Can't Eat

FutureIQ • 3 implied HN points • 13 Mar 26
💼 Business Startups
  1. Trust wins in high-stakes fields: using credentialed sources and training models only on vetted, domain‑specific literature (not the open internet) makes professionals trust the system and cuts hallucinations.
  2. Own exclusive data and build a flywheel: getting top practitioners and journals to use and partner creates unique, high‑quality signals that improve the product and attract more users and partners.
  3. Capture tacit, time‑sensitive context to monetize defensibly: real‑time usage data and tight integrations let you offer services big generalist models can’t replicate, creating a deep, hard‑to‑clone moat.