Hey — It’s Charlie.

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

• The Ugly Model: Why pretty frameworks fail.

• 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

• How engineering for survival creates unstoppable companies. (LINK)

• The definitive framework for scalable user acquisition. (LINK)

• Deep Research and Knowledge Value. (LINK)

• PostHog’s 50 lessons about building successful products. (LINK)

• What comes after coding, according to Vercel founder. (LINK)

ICYMI

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

• SoftBank might invest 25 billion on OpenAI. (LINK)

• One thing almost every $100k+ MRR app has (LINK)

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

• Anthropic sees revenue potentially soaring to $34.5 billion in 2027. (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!

Why the Messiest Models Make the Best Predictions

Let’s cut through the BS: most business frameworks are like those Instagram-perfect smoothie bowls - pretty to look at but nutritionally empty. The Mayans predicted eclipses with a model that had the Earth at the center of thirteen heavenly tiers - completely wrong, yet startlingly accurate. Modern business theory is full of similarly elegant but useless constructs: symmetrical 2x2 matrices, perfectly balanced 10-step processes, and personality tests that neatly categorize humans like inventory. The truly valuable models - like Wardley’s evolutionary maps or Plutchik’s uneven emotion wheel - are messy because reality is messy. They acknowledge that strategy isn’t about fitting into pretty boxes, but navigating a constantly shifting landscape of unpredictable variables and human irrationality.

Building a successful company is more like improv jazz than following sheet music - you need structure, but rigid adherence to any framework will leave you flat. The best founders understand that models are tools, not truth; they use them like a chef uses recipes - as starting points to be adapted, not commandments to be obeyed. Feynman’s approach of "undisciplined, irreverent" study applies perfectly here: the most valuable insights come from hands-on experimentation, not theoretical purity. Your competitive advantage won’t come from perfectly implementing someone else’s framework, but from developing your own unique understanding of what actually works in your specific context. The goal isn’t to build according to some idealized model, but to create something that thrives in the messy, imperfect (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.