Everyone Did Their Job. The Startup Still Lost.

The Dark Side of Hiring “A-Players”

January 07, 2026

In partnership with

Hey — It’s Charlie.

Welcome to the latest edition of Great Startups! Here’s what’s in store:

  • Your Startup Is Failing Quietly: and Your Best People Are the Reason

  • From PMF to Scale: The Founder’s Playbook for Performance Culture

  • Solution: Do you have a demand problem?

  • Question: Why pitches fail (and a template that will fix yours).

  • Targeting Made Simple: A step-by-step guide to finding your perfect customer.

  • Hidden Startup Debt: The silent killer that’s slowing growth.

Get ready to dive into these power-packed insights for founders and growth enthusiasts!

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Resources

  • Who cares about Mission and Vision? (LINK)

  • The Founder’s Playbook for Performance Culture (LINK)

  • Do you have a demand problem? (LINK)

  • Why pitches fail (and a template that will fix yours). (LINK)

  • Sam Blond on how to generate more demand. (LINK)

ICYMI

  • SoftBank just sold its entire stake in Nvidia. (LINK)

  • Netflix is getting into short videos with a new vertical feed for mobile. (LINK)

  • Cloudflare launches a marketplace that lets websites charge AI bots for scraping. (LINK)

  • The WordPress vs. WP Engine drama, explained. (LINK)

  • 1X will test humanoid robots in ‘a few hundred’ homes in 2025. (LINK)

  • Ray Dalio built a $14B empire by following core success principles that took him from humble beginnings to founding the world’s largest hedge fund.

  • Iman Gadzhi and Pierre de Preux launched a SaaS and hit 7-figure ARR in 9 months by moving fast, using Iman’s audience, and solving a real problem.

  • Lenny Rachitsky and Jen Abel on how to approach founder-led sales.

  • Carta shares 50 slides packed with insights for founders from 45,000 startups.

  • How One AI App Founder Makes $20K+ Monthly—and How You Can Too!

Recently Funded / Raised

  • Moniepoint raised $323M to expand its business banking, credit, and payments platform for enterprises across Africa and beyond.

  • Knownwell raised $50.6M to enhance its AI-powered commercial intelligence platform that helps businesses identify risks and growth opportunities.

  • Alto Neuroscience raised $301M to develop AI-driven precision medicines targeting mental health conditions.

  • CoMind raised $87M to advance noninvasive neural interfaces that connect the human brain with artificial intelligence.

  • Anrok raised $109.3M to streamline sales tax compliance for SaaS businesses through automation.

  • Findem raised $88.3M to grow its AI-powered Talent Data Cloud that automates and unifies enterprise hiring workflows.

  • Finster AI raised $16.8M to build an AI-driven research platform for asset managers and investment banks.

  • Africa Finance Corporation secured $6.78B in debt financing to fund large-scale infrastructure and industrial investments across Africa.

  • Niron Magnetics received a $171.6M grant to develop high-performance, rare-earth-free permanent magnets using Iron Nitride technology.

  • Cala Health raised $248.3M to advance its wearable bioelectronic therapies for neurological and chronic diseases.

Like these? Imagine getting an xls of 1000 - 2000 recently funded startups every month - with emails - for only $99/mo → https://leadbites.com/funded-startups-list/

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How Great Teams Accidentally Destroy Themselves

A lot of startups don’t fail because the team lacks talent, they fail because everyone is optimizing for their own scoreboard. Sales is winning deals that churn, product is shipping features nobody sticks around for, and engineering is polishing systems while customers quietly leave. Everyone’s busy, everyone’s “crushing it,” and somehow the company is still losing. The real problem isn’t effort or skill, it’s misaligned incentives.

The fix isn’t killing ambition, it’s redirecting it. When individual rewards are tied to shared outcomes (like retention, NPS, or real customer success), behavior changes fast. The best founders design systems where personal wins only count if the team wins too, and they celebrate collaboration publicly while rewarding top performers privately. Talent matters, but incentives decide what that talent actually works toward—and that’s what determines whether the startup wins or stalls. (LINK)

Ok that’s it for this week, We keep refining our newsletter content, just hit reply to let us know what you think about this issue.