Hey — It’s Charlie.

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

• The Founder’s Dilemma: Grit, Grift, or Just a Giant Ego?

• Unstoppable Companies: How engineering for survival creates unstoppable companies.

• Grow as a Founder: A 6-step framework to grow sales as a founders

• 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

• It's not brand vs. growth. (LINK)

• How to ship like a startup. (LINK)

• Deep Research and Knowledge Value. (LINK)

• How Software Engineers Actually Use AI. (LINK)

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

ICYMI

• BuzzFeed is launching a new Social Media platform. (LINK)

• Instacart will pay shoppers to take videos of store shelves. (LINK)

• Google released its latest reasoning model: Gemini 2.5 (LINK)

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

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

Quick Links

• Simon Høiberg shares a game-changing strategy to hit $1K MRR in your first month

• Jack Friks is racing to 1K app downloads in 30 days—see how TikTok, Instagram, and UGC fuel his strategy!

• 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!

Brilliant or Just a Jerk?

The best founders? Assholes. The worst founders? Also assholes. The difference? One builds billion-dollar companies, the other burns them to the ground. Being opinionated, relentless, and willing to challenge the norm is a must for startup success, but when those traits tip into toxicity—think shady leadership, unethical decisions, or ego-driven chaos—things fall apart fast. Investors often mistake sociopathic tendencies for genius, funding the wrong people while overlooking those who can actually build something meaningful.

The real trick is telling grit from grift. Great founders hustle young, take wild risks, and hold strong (sometimes unpopular) beliefs—but they do it with purpose. Grifters? They chase clout, cash out early, and spin flashy narratives without real substance. The startup world desperately needs a better filter to separate the visionaries from the frauds because, right now, way too much money is ending up in the wrong hands. (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.