Opportunity → Starlink Plus
Framework → How to Move Faster
Tool → Kick
Trend → Distrust in Legacy Media
Quote → Getting Early Hires Right
🔗 Houck’s Picks
My favorite finds of the week.
Fundraising
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ICYMI
Discover the DNA of successful founders and unlock your startup potential.*
14 ways the tax code is written in favor of business owners (Link)
Marc Andreessen on the importance of startup timing (Link)
Positive signals to look for when hiring engineers (Link)
The 3 things your company needs to make AI act like an engineer (Link)
Opportunity: Starlink Plus
There are good reasons to be anonymous on the internet.
That shouldn’t be a controversial statement, but in some circles it still is.
It’s likely that the cohort who wants to be, though, will increase over the next few years.
So why not build an all-in-one bundle service to support them?
You might need a different name than Starlink Plus, but there’s something here.
🧠 Framework: How to Move Faster
Earlier this year Brian Chesky talked about how founders need to be “in the details”, and how this creates less work for them.
This is doubly true when you’re working with a time crunch.
Making something happen faster usually doesn’t mean leaving whoever’s working on it alone, surprisingly, it happens from being along for every step of the ride so you can make the right decisions faster, with a quicker feedback loop:
🛠 Tool: Kick
Most accountants you work with will want to manage your books in Quickbooks, at least to start.
Kick is making an interesting attempt at changing that, partially because you may not need the accountant.
It’s an AI-powered bookkeeping tool that actually does things on your behalf (like categorization, etc).
📈 Trend: Distrust in Legacy Media
This one’s been a long time coming. It’s not exactly a new trend, but it’s likely accelerating due to the US election.
It’s hard to make the case at this point that legacy media outlets are impartial, or even trustworthy, especially if your chosen candidate isn’t theirs.
It turns out that this has lasting impacts. Once you break trust it’s hard to get it back.
So what does this imply?
Put simply: people need somewhere else to find trusted information.
A lot of this is filled naturally by social media, but we’re already seeing companies like 6AM City build hyper-local media at some scale.
💬 Quote: Getting Your Early Hires Right
When the water level’s rising you just want to fix the leaks in your boat.
That’s how hiring feels when you’re either dealing with issues, scaling fast, or both.
The difference is that the wrong hiring decision can seriously set you back, most of the time way moreso than taking longer to plug the leak will.