June 9, 2025
Product#79 — Open-source LLM models vs. closed-source LLM models
Open-source AI models are crushing closed-source competitors on cost and performance for everyday business tasks.
June 7, 2025
Product#78 — Prompt engineering for startup founders
AI coding assistants are essential for startup speed – but founders need to invest in learning how to prompt them effectively.
June 5, 2025
Product#77 — What is (and isn't) Jobs to be Done?
As Jobs to be Done has exploded in popularity, two main – and incompatible – interpretations have emerged.
June 3, 2025
Go-to-market#76 — Optimizing Google Ads Quality Score
Don't let bad ads burn your runway. Google Quality Score a direct signal of whether you're speaking your customer's language.
June 1, 2025
Go-to-market#75 — What is Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)?
AI search is exploding – proactively optimize your content for direct answers not just links, or risk invisibility in a new era.
May 30, 2025
Go-to-market#74 — What is App Store Optimization (ASO)?
ASO ensures your app ranks higher in relevant searches, which is vital since search is the primary way users find apps.
May 28, 2025
Startups#73 — Best practices: When should you raise your Series A funding?
Timing is everything when it comes to raising Series A funding for your startup. Here’s how to know if the timing is right.
May 26, 2025
Startups#72 — Alternatives to venture capital
VC isn’t the only path – strategically choose funding that matches your timeline, model, and long-term vision to retain control and maximize success.
May 24, 2025
Language#71 — Thirteen essential tips for pitching venture capitalists
VCs fund confidence, not just ideas—know your market, your plan, and how they win with you.
May 22, 2025
Startups#70 — Best practices: How to raise seed money for your startup
Turn your startup idea into a fundable reality with a well-prepared fundraising strategy to secure seed funding.
May 20, 2025
Startups#69 — How to raise capital for your startup
Secure your startup's future by mastering the complete funding process, from bootstrapping to IPO and beyond.
May 18, 2025
Language#68 — What is a visual identity for a brand?
Visual identity isn't just pretty design—it's a business asset that drives recognition, trust, and revenue for startups.
May 16, 2025
Language#67 — How to pick a name for your startup
Choosing a startup name requires a blend of strategic research, creative inspiration, and a gut feeling to ensure it's memorable.
May 13, 2025
Language#66 — How to write key messages for a startup
Your key messages, meticulously crafted and validated, are a strategic asset, as critical as your product or your team.
May 11, 2025
Language#65 — How to write a positioning statement for your startup
Your startup's positioning guides everything from product decisions to securing investor confidence.
May 9, 2025
Language#64 — How to write a mission statement for your startup
Founders should treat their mission statement as a condensed strategic document – not a slogan.
May 7, 2025
Go-to-market#63 — How to make a marketing budget for your startup
Don't just budget your marketing spend; treat it as a 'dynamic strategic weapon' that guides your ascent from idea to impact.
May 4, 2025
Go-to-market#62 — Marketing tactics for startups
Everything from SEO and content marketing to paid advertising and community building—to effectively drive growth and build a thriving business.
May 2, 2025
Language#61 — How to do market research for a startup
For startups, a successful marketing strategy depends on understanding the competitors in your space.
April 30, 2025
Startups#60 — Cap tables for startups explained
A well-managed capitalization table (cap table) is essential for fundraising and strategic decision-making.
April 27, 2025
Go-to-market#59 — What is a go-to-market strategy?
Put new products and services in front of the right people and compel them to engage further.
April 24, 2025
Language#58 — Startup Strategy: Creating a winning business plan
It's not about having a brilliant idea, but about ruthlessly validating *who* needs it and *how* to reach them.
April 22, 2025
Language#57 — Determining your market positioning
Decisively determine your market position to focus resources, differentiate from competitors, and build a stronger product.
April 19, 2025
Go-to-market#56 — Startup SEO: Cut through the noise
Ditch generic SEO checklists. Focus on high-intent defensive keywords, niche long-tail searches, and solving real user problems.
April 16, 2025
Product#55 — Finding B2B product-market fit (Part II)
B2B PMF is a survival game. Master its 5 levels—from problem validation to paying customers.
April 13, 2025
Product#54 — Structuring B2B Marketplaces
Choosing your B2B marketplace structure—internal unit, spinoff, or startup—is a critical early decision impacting everything.
April 11, 2025
Go-to-market#53 — Scalable pricing for SaaS
Scalable pricing allows capturing more of the revenue that your customers are willing to pay, without putting off smaller customers that are not able to pay high prices.
April 9, 2025
Opinions#52 — Cold Take: 'No marketing' isn't a badge of honor
Early-stage founders who boast about 'zero marketing' are revealing dangerous gaps in customer understanding.
April 7, 2025
Language#51 — Crisis comms playbooks
The comms before the storm. Don’t get ready, stay ready. Because crisis can come when you don’t expect it — and when it does, there won’t be enough time to prepare.
April 2, 2025
Startups#50 — Leading in uncertain times
Economic uncertainty demands a different leadership approach. In times of crisis, how leaders respond defines not just their survival, but their company's future success. The most effective leaders combine push and pull styles, focus on the "4 C's" (Communication, Conviction, Confidence, Calmness), and build trust through competence, integrity, and benevolence.
March 27, 2025
AI#49 — Gemini 2.5 Pro
Google's new "thinking model" AI shows impressive reasoning capabilities with a 40-point lead on human preference benchmarks.
March 23, 2025
Opinions#48 — Cold Take: Broad automation trumps R&D acceleration
While institutions focus on AI for research breakthroughs, economic data suggests the real value lies in widespread automation.
March 22, 2025
AI#47 — Hunyuan-T1
Tencent unveils Hunyuan-T1, the first ultra-large Mamba-powered AI model that pioneers a new scaling paradigm using reinforcement learning.
March 20, 2025
Language#46 — The elements of effective storytelling
Master the five key ingredients of business storytelling to make your pitch memorable.
March 19, 2025
AI#45 — Orpheus
Canopy Labs releases Orpheus, a breakthrough family of open-source speech-LLMs that deliver human-level voice generation with emotional intelligence.
March 15, 2025
Product#44 — How "Reverse RAG" eliminates healthcare hallucinations
Mayo Clinic's innovative "Reverse RAG" approach nearly eliminates AI hallucinations in healthcare.
March 8, 2025
AI#43 — Claude 3.7 Sonnet and Claude Code
Anthropic launches Claude 3.7 Sonnet and Claude Code.
March 5, 2025
Opinions#42 — Cold Take: AI strategy beats funding
While tech giants pour billions into AI, nimble startups are finding strategic advantages through counter-positioning.
February 27, 2025
Opinions#41 — Cold Take: PLG isn't right for most early-stage startups
Founders are rushing to PLG too early, missing the crucial feedback loop that only comes from direct customer engagement.
February 20, 2025
Language#40 — Writing landing page copy that converts
Write copy that delights visitors, persuades prospects, and wins customers.
January 27, 2025
Go-to-market#39 — Your first 10 B2B customers (Part II)
The best way to find your first customers is to email (or LinkedIn DM) them. Sourcing customers directly gives you better results.
January 5, 2025
Startups#38 — Best funding options for startups (2025)
Explore funding sources, tips on preparing for funding conversations, and common mistakes to avoid.
December 21, 2024
Go-to-market#37 — Your first B2C customers (Marketplace Edition)
New marketplace platforms face a chicken-and-egg problem. Research on Uber, Airbnb, and Etsy shows the winning formula.
December 9, 2024
Product#36 — 4 principles for building truly useful AI products
As AI models evolve at breakneck speed, founders need a new playbook.
November 24, 2024
Go-to-market#35 — The rise of GTM Engineering
GTM engineers are emerging as critical roles in SaaS companies, combining technical skills with business acumen to build scalable growth systems.
November 7, 2024
Go-to-market#34 — The 4 fits you need to build a $100M+ revenue product
Most founders focus on product-market fit, but building a $100M+ revenue business requires aligning four critical fits.
October 30, 2024
Opinions#33 — Cold Take: Nontechnical SaaS founders need a CMO before a CTO
Marketing co-founders often outperform technical ones for early success in today's SaaS landscape.
October 8, 2024
Go-to-market#32 — Engineering sales pipelines to replace SDRs
A practical look at how to build automated pipelines instead of hiring SDRs.
September 20, 2024
Go-to-market#31 — Custom affiliate marketing systems: the forgotten channel
Custom affiliate systems are emerging as critical growth engines for startups seeking sustainable acquisition channels.
September 18, 2024
AI#30 — o1
The reasoning revolution: OpenAI's "o1" could transform how founders approach AI integration.
September 10, 2024
Opinions#29 — Cold Take: Sales prospecting is an engineering problem
Founders are replacing traditional SDR teams with automated prospecting pipelines, turning sales development into engineering.
August 13, 2024
Opinions#28 — Cold Take: Don't price your enterprise product until you have to
Good pricing is about figuring out what your concrete value is to an organization: don't rush it.
July 31, 2024
Go-to-market#27 — SDRs on autopilot with programmatic outbound (pOutbound)
How to built a programmatic outbound engine that generated pipeline with zero SDRs and minimal budget.
July 5, 2024
Language#26 — How to pitch angel investors
Angel investors fund 1,000+ startups annually with nearly $1B in capital. Learn how to secure angel investment.
July 4, 2024
Go-to-market#25 — Your first 10 B2B customers
Scrappily start your sales process by identifying, approaching, and converting prospects into customers one at a time.
June 17, 2024
Opinions#24 — Cold Take: You're going to fail your first pilot, and that's okay
Most startups fail their first pilot, but successful founders use these early setbacks to gather critical feedback.
June 11, 2024
Language#23 — What investors actually want from your early-stage startup pitch
Tell your company’s story more effectively, including specific details that matter to investors.
May 21, 2024
Product#22 — Effective survey design for startups
Write surveys that engage users, boost your brand, and deliver insights.
April 24, 2024
AI#21 — Llama 3
Meta drops Llama 3, startup founders take notice.
April 15, 2024
Product#20 — 7 Powers
What's your moat? Hamilton Helmer's framework identifies 7 strategic advantages that create enduring business value.
April 9, 2024
Product#19 — Finding B2B product-market fit through the 5 P's
Most B2B startups fail to find product-market fit, but a framework of 5 P's can dramatically increase success rates.
March 30, 2024
Go-to-market#18 — A primer on Programmatic SEO (pSEO)
The untapped growth lever helping startups like TripAdvisor and Zapier capture millions of search queries with minimal resources.
March 20, 2024
AI#17 — Claude 3
Anthropic unveils Claude 3 suite, challenging GPT-4's market dominance.
February 19, 2024
Go-to-market#16 — How to create subscription tiers that work
Learn how to structure tiers that maximize revenue, align with customer value, and create clear upgrade paths for growth.
February 6, 2024
Go-to-market#15 — Pricing SaaS
How to approach pricing and packaging a low-touch SaaS product.
January 30, 2024
Go-to-market#14 — SaaS: In a nutshell
Understand why SaaS businesses work and how to grow them.
January 24, 2024
AI#13 — ChatGPT 4 prompt engineering for founders
Master GPT-4's latest capabilities to build smarter products, automate workflows, and gain competitive advantage.
January 9, 2024
Language#12 — Crafting your fundraising pitch
First, nobody starts a company because they love fundraising. Second, your startup may not yet generate revenue but it must generate convinction.
January 1, 2024
Language#11 — Managing a board of directors
Board management isn't just governance. Here's how top founders maintain transparency, build trust, and channel investor expertise to accelerate growth.
December 18, 2023
Language#10 — The three-hour Brand Sprint
Google Ventures' Brand Sprint condenses essential branding exercises into a three-hour workshop.
December 3, 2023
Language#9 — Copywriting formulas
11 proven copywriting formulas that help founders craft compelling messages, drive engagement, and convert followers.
November 30, 2023
AI#8 — A Survey of Techniques for Maximizing LLM Performance
A practical guide to optimizing LLM performance.
November 29, 2023
AI#7 — Working with models
AI startups face critical decisions on LLM integration, migration, versioning, and sizing that can determine success or failure.
November 15, 2023
AI#6 — Tuning and Optimizing Workflows
Move beyond basic prompting to deliver more reliable AI products at lower costs.
November 8, 2023
AI#5 — Information Retrieval / RAG
RAG systems outperform finetuning for knowledge integration, offering startups faster updates and lower costs.
November 1, 2023
AI#4 — Prompting
Five evidence-backed prompt engineering techniques that deliver 80% of the value at 20% of the effort for AI-powered startups.
October 14, 2023
Go-to-market#3 — Your first 100 B2C customers
Why smart founders focus on making 100 people love their product rather than millions who merely like it.
October 12, 2023
Product#2 — Unlock customer insights with Jobs To Be Done
JTBD helps founders understand why customers really buy products, leading to better product decisions.
October 3, 2023
Language#1 — Positioning 101
Strategic positioning is the difference between market leadership and obscurity.
October 1, 2023
Startups#0 — Introducing Field⸻Notes
Founders have a hard job. The stakes have never been higher. AI is transforming every industry and unlocking unprecedented opportunities, but the competition is stiff (and well funded). These are notes from our team, who has decades of experience finding the right positioning, product direction, and go-to-market strategy for world-class startups. We hope they help. Good luck out there.
Strategic messaging isn't marketing fluff—it's the difference between burning cash on ads that don't convert and building a growth engine that scales.