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
Growth
Find Your Activation Number Before You Redesign Onboarding
Twitter, Facebook, and Slack didn't optimize onboarding with more steps or better copy. They found the one number that separated retained users from churned ones, then rebuilt the first days around hitting it fast.
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.
The Signal
The Referral Loop Formula: Why Dropbox Grew 3,900% Without Buying a Single Ad
The Signal Desk
September 26, 2026
Data Brief
Customers Cancel Weeks Before They Say So: The Behavioral Signals That Predict Churn
The Markets Desk
September 24, 2026
The Signal
The Case for Building in Public: Why I Share the Systems I Build Instead of Hiding Them
Rajiv Sankarlall
September 22, 2026
From The Archive
01Sep 19, 2026
The Signal
The Documentation Test Before You Automate Anything
RPA projects don't fail because the bots are bad. They fail because the documentation underneath them describes a process to a person instead of specifying it precisely enough for a machine to run it.
Operations4 min
02Sep 17, 2026
Weekly Briefing
The One Meeting That Replaces All Your Other Meetings
Shopify deleted 10,000 calendar events in a single afternoon and then rebuilt its week around one protected day. The founders who keep small teams aligned without meeting sprawl aren't banning meetings. They're designing one fixed meeting, moving status updates to writing, and automating the reminder so the cadence runs without anyone having to enforce it by memory.
Operations3 min
03Sep 15, 2026
Weekly Briefing
Series B Founders Are Choosing Revenue Per Employee Over Headcount
Lovable hit $400 million in ARR with 146 employees and Abacum tripled revenue on a hiring freeze. Carta data shows Series B teams shrinking from 53 to 45 people since 2023, and the operator move is to test your own hiring plan against it this week.
Operations4 min