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- Founder Weekly (Issue 704 October 15 2025)
Founder Weekly (Issue 704 October 15 2025)
Rahul Chaudhary
October 15, 2025
Welcome to issue 704 of Founder Weekly. Let's get straight to the links this week.
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General
The line between defense and commercial innovation is disappearing. Startups once built for narrow government use are now shaping entire industries. Investors who once avoided defense are now leading rounds. And acquirers are moving earlier than ever. Something big is changing in deep tech and it is reshaping how innovation, capital, and strategy intersect.
How modern founders are scaling to millions in revenue with tiny teams, lean systems, and zero bloat.
The State of AI Report 2025 highlights a year defined by AI reasoning breakthroughs and widespread commercial adoption, with 44% of U.S. businesses now paying for AI tools and AI-first startups growing 1.5 times faster than peers. China emerges as a strong competitor in AI capabilities, safety research focuses on practical challenges, and the geopolitical landscape hardens with the U.S., Europe, and China advancing distinct AI strategies.
The article argues that robotics has reached an inflection point thanks to advancements in AI, simulation, and hardware, but that scaling depends on achieving true generalizability and finding the right fit between robot morphology and market needs. It proposes practical principles for success, such as building for operator-shortage markets, focusing on high-value and structured tasks, and prioritizing retrofits, to guide the next wave of transformative robotics companies.
Marketing, Sales and PR
Learn how to use Reddit for SEO to improve your organic search and AI visibility.
DevCycle redesigned its onboarding process around Model Context Protocol (MCP), allowing developers to install its SDK directly within their IDEs using AI coding assistants. This shift eliminated friction from older browser-based tutorials and resulted in a 3× increase in completed SDK installs and faster time-to-value for users.
Behind-the-scenes with Credal and their AI platform.
Money and Finance
The video features Roelof Botha of Sequoia Capital discussing how the venture capital industry is currently broken due to excess capital chasing too few great companies, leading to return-free risk. He also explains Sequoia's culture, partner selection, decision-making process, and their unique approach to holding winners in the long term to maximize returns.
PitchBook's research shows that a sophisticated venture capital (VC) strategy, such as selecting top fund managers, only yields modest additional returns for limited partners (LPs), with alpha generation around 61 basis points annually over 25 years. This challenges the common belief that superior VC fund picking delivers significantly higher returns compared to buyouts, where manager skill creates less disparity in outcomes.
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