Hey — It’s Charlie.

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

• Scaling Like Alexander the Great: What Alexander's Supply Lines Teach Us About Modern Scaling

• Vibe Coding: How to get most of it.

• Hot Leads, Cold Feet: Your Product’s in Purgatory—And So Are Your Profits

• 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!

Resources

• When systems break empires. (LINK)

• Five practical lessons to scale your data products. (LINK)

• How to get the most out of Vibe Coding. (LINK)

• Brand As An Enduring Moat. (LINK)

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

ICYMI

• Empower Local acquires SponsorBooker in a strategic acquisition (LINK)

• OpenAI is reportedly in talks to buy Windsurf for $3B. (LINK)

• Anthropic’s Claude can now read your Gmail. (LINK)

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

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

Quick Links

• 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!

Everyone’s Impressed. No One’s Buying. Let’s Fix That.

Ever pitched your product, had the perfect call, got all the right signals—nodding heads, compliments, even "we love it!"—and still… no sale? Welcome to Product Purgatory. It’s that frustrating place where people genuinely like what you’ve built, but it’s not high enough on their priority list to actually act. Even if your tool was free and magically integrated into their systems (hello, Magic Wand Test), they’d still pass if the value doesn’t dramatically outweigh the cost of change, friction, or risk. Founders often miss this because we’re too close to the product and too eager for validation.

And even when your product does pass the magic wand test, urgency is still king. Most buyers are juggling a million things—your product might be number 7 on their list, but it needs to be in their top 3 for them to pull the trigger. That’s why the secret to escaping purgatory isn’t more features—it’s tighter targeting. You need to find people who not only want your solution, but need it right now—due to regulation, funding, competition, or crisis. Find those pockets of urgency, and you'll go from "love it, but later" to actual deals getting closed. (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.