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
Strategy
Veeva vs. Salesforce Is the Test Case for Every Vertical SaaS Company
Salesforce named Veeva's own customers in a press release. Five weeks later Veeva answered with an acquisition, a relaunch, and a labor-reduction number. Procore already ran the same play in construction, and it is becoming the standard vertical SaaS defense against horizontal AI platforms.
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.
Intelligence Index
Five AI-Native Companies Repricing the Categories They Are Entering
Rajiv Sankarlall
June 9, 2026
Intelligence Index
Five Vertical SaaS Founders Whose Companies Became Category Operating Systems
Rajiv Sankarlall
June 2, 2026
Founder Profile
How Brett Adcock Raised Capital for Figure Without a Product to Show
Rajiv Sankarlall
May 26, 2026
From The Archive
01May 19, 2026
Founder Profile
What Dylan Field Did After the Adobe Deal Collapsed
Adobe announced its agreement to acquire Figma in September 2022. The deal was abandoned in December 2023 after the UK Competition and Markets Authority raised antitrust concerns. Figma went public in 2025. The path between those two events is publicly documented.
Strategy7 min
02May 12, 2026
Founder Profile
How Aravind Srinivas Priced Perplexity Against the Largest Competitor on Earth
Aravind Srinivas has been unusually open about how Perplexity is priced, why the $20/month Pro tier exists, and how the company thinks about competing with a free incumbent. The decisions are documented in his on-record interviews and the product's pricing pages.
Pricing6 min
03May 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