The Most Valuable Advice Isn’t Advice at All

Want to Fail Faster? Skip Finding a Mentor

September 24, 2025

Hey — It’s Charlie.

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

  • Don't Go It Alone: The Underrated Power of Mentorship in the Startup World

  • Why winners win: The $75 Billion Selective Listening Strategy

  • The Physics of Sales: 11 Ways You’re Breaking the Laws

  • No AI, No Job: The Future Is Already Here

  • 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

  • How to nail your next big talk. (LINK)

  • The $75 Billion Selective Listening Strategy. (LINK)

  • Six lessons after one year of Agentic AI. (LINK)

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

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

ICYMI

  • Atlassian acquires DX, a developer productivity platform, for $1B. (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!

Capital Weekly

  • You.com raised $195M (Series C) to push its AI-powered search engine blending chat, productivity, and personalized results.

  • Exa locked in $107M (Series B) to build its AI-centered search engine and developer-friendly APIs.

  • ID.me scored $814M (Series E) for its secure digital identity wallet powering login and verification.

  • Shift5 raised $180.5M (Series C) to secure planes, satellites, and vehicles with OT cybersecurity.

  • Ketryx brought in $57M (Series B) to streamline life sciences compliance with AI-driven workflows.

  • HappyRobot secured $60.7M (Series B) to scale its AI workforce automation platform.

  • Intella closed $16.9M (Series A) for Arabic AI speech tools powering transcription and analytics.

  • Recall.ai pulled in $50.7M (Series B) for its API that unlocks transcripts and meeting data.

  • Lead banked $170M (Series B) to expand its Banking-as-a-Service platform.

  • MagicDoor landed $6.5M (Seed) to disrupt property management with AI-first software.

  • Augment raised $110M (Series A) for its AI assistant tackling logistics and freight operations.

  • Charm Therapeutics scored $162.7M (Series B) to advance AI-driven small-molecule cancer therapies.

  • Kapital secured $471M (Series C) for its Mexico-based digital banking platform.

  • Orchard Robotics got $25.8M (Series A) to scale AI-powered crop monitoring and precision agriculture.

  • Interlune picked up $22.5M (Grant) to harvest lunar helium-3 and other space resources.

Like these? Get the complete funded startups list (1,000–2,000 each month, with emails) for only $99 → https://leadbites.com/funded-startups-list/

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How One Conversation Can Rewrite Your Startup Story.

Mentorship is one of those underrated growth hacks in the startup world that rarely gets talked about but often makes or breaks a founder’s journey. A good mentor doesn’t just hand you answers, they teach you how to think, push you out of your comfort zone, and help you see opportunities you might otherwise miss. Take Slack for example. Stewart Butterfield was ready to shut down his gaming startup until Chamath Palihapitiya nudged him to look at what they had actually built. That simple shift in perspective turned a failed game into a $27 billion company. The takeaway is that great mentorship isn’t about giving you a playbook, it’s about helping you reframe challenges so you can turn setbacks into breakthroughs.

Of course, mentorship isn’t always perfect. The wrong mentor can create echo chambers, give outdated advice, or even make you too dependent on them. The key is finding someone whose experience matches your stage and challenges. And in today’s digital world, mentorship is more accessible than ever. You can learn from quick conversations, global connections, and even industry-specific insights that save you years of trial and error. Whether you’re building SaaS, hardware, biotech, or consumer apps, the right mentor can completely shift your path. It all starts with asking the right questions, putting advice into action, and building genuine relationships. Sometimes a single conversation really can change everything. (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.