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Hey — It’s Charlie.

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

• Time Sinks vs. Money Sinks: The Hidden Engine Behind Every App You Use

• The Efficiency Paradox: Why Over-Optimizing Could Kill Your Startup

• Low Prices = Low Confidence: Stop Underselling Your Startup

• 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

• Why over-optimizing could kill your startup (LINK)

• You're doing quarterly planning wrong. (LINK)

• The art of cold-emailing a billionaire. (LINK)

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

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

ICYMI

• YouTube plans crackdown on repetitive, AI-generated videos. (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)

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!

Is Shadow IT already in your organization?

You wouldn’t allow unmanaged devices on your network, so why allow unmanaged AI into your meetings?

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Don't wait until it's too late.

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It includes a checklist, policy templates, and internal comms examples you can use today.

Download the Shadow IT Prevention Guide

Why Money Sinks Can’t Survive Without Time Sinks

It's become impossible to ignore the massive shift happening in digital media, and it all boils down to a simple but powerful idea: every product is engineered to be either a Time Sink or a Money Sink. Time Sinks are the masters of engagement—think TikTok or your favorite doom-scrolling news feed. They live on your home screen, demand daily attention, and are fantastic at building habit. Their dirty secret? They’re often pretty bad at making money from all that attention. On the flip side are the Money Sinks. These are the workhorses—the e-commerce sites, travel booking engines, and financial tools. You don't hang out there; you pop in with a goal, get a job done, and hopefully convert. They aren’t trying to be your best friend; they’re trying to be your most profitable transaction.

This fundamental tension is why we're seeing giants like The New York Times transform. News is their legacy, but Games and Cooking are their future—the engaging Time Sink content that makes the monthly subscription bundle feel indispensable. This isn't a random strategy; it's a survival instinct. The old model of using free news to sell ads was dismantled by the internet, so the new model is bundling paid time sinks together. For founders, the crucial takeaway is that your business model isn't just how you make money—it's the invisible hand that shapes your entire product. A Money Sink obsessing over daily active users is as misguided as a Time Sink ignoring engagement metrics. The most successful companies, from Netflix to Amazon, understand they need to master both sides of this equation, often by building a portfolio of products that feed into each other. The future belongs to the bundles. (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.