Founder Decisions
Why operators made a move, what changed in the market, and what it means for companies in adjacent categories.
Market Intelligence
The market intelligence briefing for founders who build.
The Founders Report covers the decisions, market shifts, and industry patterns that practicing founders, operators, and investors need to track. Published every Tuesday. Always free.
Edition
Vol. 01 / Spring 2026
Coverage
Briefings, profiles, signal essays, data notes
Market Signals
The pricing shifts, hiring patterns, partnership moves, and category indicators worth acting on before they become obvious.
Editorial Analysis
A point of view on what is happening, not a summary of what was reported everywhere else already.
Lead Story
Pricing
Five AI-Native Companies Repricing the Categories They Are Entering
These are real, currently-operating AI-native companies whose pricing decisions have been publicly explained by their founders or executives. Use this list as a reference for how AI-native pricing actually looks when founders own it.
Publication Formats
- Weekly BriefingEvery Tuesday
- Founder ProfilesTwice monthly
- The SignalMonthly
- Data BriefsMonthly
What We Cover
- The founder decisions and market moves reshaping categories in real time.
- Pricing shifts, hiring signals, and partnership patterns worth tracking early.
- Original analysis on what is actually changing, not a recap of what everyone already reported.
Editorial Positioning
Not news. Intelligence.
The Founders Report is for founders, operators, and investors who need more than headlines. Every issue covers the decisions that are actually moving companies, the market patterns worth tracking, and the analysis that turns information into a point of view.
Founder Decisions
Why operators made a move, what changed, and what other companies should learn from it.
Industry Movement
The shifts behind pricing, hiring, partnerships, launches, and the companies quietly changing a market.
Category Signals
How categories shift, which companies are defining new ones, and the signals that show up in coverage before they show up in valuations.
Publication Formats
Five formats. One publication.
The Founders Report publishes across five recurring formats, each designed to earn a different kind of attention and deliver a different kind of value.
Weekly Briefing
A recurring issue built around market movement, founder decisions, and the few developments that actually matter.
Founder Profiles
Decision-led interviews and features that show how serious operators think under pressure.
The Signal
A sharper editorial essay when the market shifts and the audience needs an angle, not just a summary.
Data Briefs
Structured evidence, pricing clues, hiring movement, and category indicators translated into readable intelligence.
Intelligence Indexes
Roundups, rankings, and curated lists designed to map a category and name the companies worth watching.
Recent Coverage
From the desk.
Founder Profile
How Brett Adcock Raised Capital for Figure Without a Product to Show
Rajiv Sankarlall
May 26, 2026
Founder Profile
What Dylan Field Did After the Adobe Deal Collapsed
Rajiv Sankarlall
May 19, 2026
Founder Profile
How Aravind Srinivas Priced Perplexity Against the Largest Competitor on Earth
Rajiv Sankarlall
May 12, 2026
From The Archive
01May 5, 2026
Founder Profile
Tobi Lutke's Public AI Memo: How a CEO Made AI Use a Hiring Bar
In April 2025, Shopify CEO Tobi Lutke posted a memo on X stating that 'reflexive AI usage is now a baseline expectation' at the company and that teams must justify why they cannot achieve goals using AI before requesting more headcount. The memo is the clearest public articulation by a public-company CEO of how AI is now a hiring filter, not a productivity tool.
Operations5 min
02Apr 26, 2026
Founder Profile
What Pieter Levels' Photo AI Pricing Reveals About AI-Native Solo Economics
Pieter Levels has publicly documented the build, launch, and pricing of Photo AI on his blog and on X. The numbers and decisions he disclosed are a working case study in AI-native pricing from someone with no team to defer the question to.
Pricing6 min
03Apr 23, 2026
The Signal
Pricing Is a Product Decision, Not a Sales Decision
The gap between founders who own pricing as a strategic discipline and founders who delegate it to sales is becoming the clearest predictor of category outcomes in 2026.
Strategy7 min