Founder Weekly (Issue 693 July 16 2025)

Welcome to issue 693 of Founder Weekly. Let's get straight to the links this week.

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General

How AI Companies Will Build Real Defensibility

AI startups must pair fast distribution and scaling with long-term defensibility through network effects, workflow lock-in, and deep embedding. Early growth is only a temporary edge; lasting success comes from building layered, durable advantages as the market matures.

We reached $1M ARR with zero funding

ProjectionLab was bootstrapped from a side project into a profitable business reaching $1 million in annual recurring revenue within four years, without any external funding. The founder attributes this success to consistent daily effort, focusing on building a quality product, and gradually expanding the team from solo development to include growth and community support.

SaaS 2.0

The post argues that today’s dominant enterprise software, like Salesforce, encodes industry expertise into opinionated workflows—helping users not just with mechanical tasks (like managing lists), but also with embedded best practices for their field. The essay speculates that future software could move beyond rigid, one-size-fits-all systems to AI-driven, customizable services that act like personal experts—managing your data and decisions dynamically, much like a trusted assistant, rather than forcing you to adapt to the software’s rules.

The Founder’s Guide to Building a V1 of Customer Success

A CS leader who has built the function from the ground up shares where founders should start, from how to hire to the most important metrics to track.

Marketing, Sales and PR

Fixing Marketing's Missing Middle

A detailed guide on how to better perform through the forgotten arm of your marketing.

Lovable makes $75m in 7 months—but is it nailing pricing?

The current (and future) monetization strategies of "Shopify for SaaS".

The Viral Loop Illusion

What startup lore doesn’t tell you about virality and how to stop wasting time on broken loops.

Money and Finance

Where do Tech Returns Come From?

An Analysis of 30 Years of Tech Returns, Value Accretion, Lessons, and What it Means Moving Forward.

QSBS 2.0 is Here

The One Big Beautiful Bill Act (OBBBA), signed in July 2025, significantly expands the Qualified Small Business Stock (QSBS) tax benefit: it shortens the holding period for partial tax-free gains to as little as 3 years, raises the lifetime exemption cap to $15 million per taxpayer per company, and increases the asset limit to $75 million, with both caps inflation-indexed starting in 2027. While these changes make QSBS more accessible and valuable for startups, investors, and employees, most benefits still accrue to high-income taxpayers, and strict eligibility rules (including C-corp status and active business requirements) remain in place.

SVB's State of the Markets

Venture investment is being driven by AI, which accounted for 48% of total VC funding in 2024, marking the third straight quarter of dominance, while non-AI startups have seen little to no funding growth. Other key trends include a 75% higher revenue benchmark for Series A startups (now ~$2.5 M ARR vs. $1.4 M in 2021), a ~8% YoY increase in burn for median Series B firms, and 50% of VC-backed tech companies expected to cash out within 12 months.

The Holding Companies of Our Hearts

Serial acquirers, companies like Berkshire Hathaway and Constellation Software, excel by strategically buying and holding high-quality assets, leveraging synergies, and compounding value over decades, contrasting sharply with venture capitalists who often focus on short-term gains and self-promotion rather than true strategic capital allocation. The essay argues that the real “artists” of investing are these long-term allocators, not VCs, and explores how AI-driven “rollups” are emerging as a new model for asset aggregation, while warning against the hype and “main character energy” of venture capital in these spaces.