Hey — It’s Charlie.

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

• State of the product job market in 2025: There’s a lot to be optimistic about

• Vibe Coding: How to get most of it.

• The $500 Hack: Your Startup Doesn’t Need a Fancy Name—Just a Working Credit Card Limit

• 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

• State of the product job market in 2025. (LINK)

• How founders should think about runway. (LINK)

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

• David Politis on doing whatever it takes to stay in the game (LINK)

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

ICYMI

• OpenAI agrees to buy Windsurf for about $3 billion. (LINK)

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

The $500 Hack That Outsmarted Million-Dollar Software

Ever wondered why big companies spend millions on "enterprise-grade" software… but somehow still end up grabbing another, much cheaper tool? This piece tells the classic story of What's Up Gold—an oddly named, bootstrapped monitoring app with a horrendous logo that found itself in hospital IT rooms already equipped with expensive HP software. Why? Because What's Up Gold pinpointed one or two small features users desperately needed, at a price so low that IT guys could buy it outright without dealing with procurement nightmares. The kicker here: sometimes, pricing matters less about dollars and cents, and more about how easily your customer can actually hit "buy".

The founder learned another surprising lesson: talk openly with your customers about their daily habits, even about unrelated products—and watch actionable insights pop up out of nowhere. In this case, customers casually revealed they discovered the competing product through magazines they'd leaf through during bathroom breaks (yep, that's a serious business tip!). Acting on that very real strategy, they adjusted their marketing, pricing, and even the sales pitch on-the-fly, making initial sales simple (like, "throw-it-on-the-company-card" simple), and eventually landed much larger deals across multiple locations. Takeaway: really get to know your customers' lives—where they look for info, what annoys them, and how buying stuff fits their routines—and you'll find growth hacks hiding in plain sight. (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.