Hey — It’s Charlie.

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

• Cold Email Playbook: A handbook every founder needs for outreach success.

• Resends’ Growth Framework: Lessons from their CEO on scaling smart.

• Grammarly’s Big Move: Why they just acquired Coda—and what it means.

• 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

• A cold email handbook for founders. (LINK)

• Resends' founder & CEO shares his startup growth framework. (LINK)

• Founder shares lessons from a failed computer vision startup (LINK)

• The Startup Finance Checklist (LINK)

• A guide on how to choose your target customer segment. (LINK)

ICYMI

• Automattic acquires AI startup WPAI. (LINK)

• Grammarly acquires productivity startup Coda (LINK)

• Agave, the startup behind Find the Cat, finds $18M (LINK)

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

• OpenAI makes AI video generator Sora available in the US. (LINK)

Quick Links

• Brett Malinowski reveals 5 micro SaaS making $100K/month and shares the genius strategy behind their success.

• This guy solved a simple problem, shared how he finds profitable micro SaaS ideas, and offers lessons you can apply in 2025.

• 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!

Hidden Debt That’s Killing Startups

Annual planning season is here, and the big questions are how to grow faster and stay efficient. Startups often focus on adding headcount to hit benchmarks, but the real issue? They rarely reevaluate their existing teams, budgets, and structures. This leads to “organizational debt” – the messy side effect of prioritizing speed over building the right team, culture, or structure. Like tech debt, it’s easy to ignore until it starts dragging everything down.

Fixing it means rethinking budgets and goals from scratch with zero-based budgeting. Instead of layering on new hires, leaders need to ask tough questions: Is the team structure still right? Are we carrying inefficiencies? Has AI or tech shifted what we actually need? It’s not about layoffs but optimizing for today’s stage. Ignoring organizational debt might slow growth, so tackle it before it quietly becomes a major problem. (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.