Founder Weekly (Issue 706 October 29 2025)

Welcome to issue 706 of Founder Weekly. Let's get straight to the links this week.

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General

The Dos and Don’ts of Cold Inbound to Investors

Warm intros help. But great cold emails still win meetings. Most founders don’t lose investor interest in the meeting. They lose it in the inbox. Here’s how to write the cold email that actually gets a reply.

The divine lever

The explores the concept of a divine lever as a purely good, non-selfish causal lever that drives a business's success by deeply serving demand. It highlights how focusing on such a lever generates sustained energy, creates unique business shapes hard to replicate, and aligns actions intuitively with the physics of startups, contrasting sharply with self-centered, short-term approaches that lead to decay and stagnation.

Why AI cannot simulate your customers behaviour

The article explains that while a recent paper claims large language models (LLMs) can simulate human purchase intent through semantic similarity ratings, this doesn't equate to simulating real customer behavior because it captures stated intent, not actual actions. It stresses that AI-generated insights lack the nuance of real customer conversations, especially in complex B2B contexts, and warns against overreliance on AI as a substitute for authentic user research, urging founders and product teams to prioritize direct customer interactions for discovering genuine unmet needs.

State of Crypto 2025: The year crypto went mainstream

The 2025 State of Crypto report by a16z shows the crypto industry has matured with market cap surpassing $4 trillion, driven by mainstream stablecoin use and institutional adoption. Blockchain tech is faster and cheaper, enabling new applications, while regulatory clarity fuels innovation and mass adoption.

Marketing, Sales and PR

Your pricing is (probably) broken

Why there's no such thing as a perfect pricing model.

Turning First Meetings Into Real Pipeline

Tactical ways to improve early-stage funnel conversion.

Money and Finance

Why pitches fail (+fix yours in 11 slides)

Steal this proven pitch deck framework to win over investors today.

What Early Stage Founders Should Know About Comp: The Rules To Break (And A Few You Should Actually Follow)

There’s no shortage of advice on how to structure compensation. Here’s how to know which of it applies to you — with insights from Clay, Google and Instacart.

When Power Laws Collide, Incentives Do Too

Why the same math that drives venture capital’s biggest successes also creates its greatest misalignments.