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
Hiring
The First Non-Engineering Hire Most Startups Get Wrong
Founders default to hiring a salesperson first. The data on early hiring patterns, and the reasoning behind Vanta's and Figma's actual first hires, says the real question is which specific gap you can't fill yourself.
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 Busy Founder Reads Your Cold Email for Nine Seconds. Write for That.
The Signal Desk
August 8, 2026
The Signal
The Vertical SaaS Moat in 2026 Is Proprietary Data, Not Agent Features
Rajiv Sankarlall
August 4, 2026
Weekly Briefing
The AI Label Is Now Worth a 5x Series A Premium, and Most Founders Don't Qualify
Rajiv Sankarlall
August 4, 2026
From The Archive
01Aug 4, 2026
Founder Profile
Why Series B Founders Are Copying ServiceNow's No-Backfill Rule
ServiceNow's CEO told investors in April 2026 he would stop backfilling attrition and let AI absorb the load instead. Carta and ICONIQ data show Series B founders are already running the same play, at a fraction of the headcount their peers carried two years ago.
Strategy4 min
02Aug 1, 2026
The Signal
Founder-Led Sales Without a Sales Background: Do the Unscalable Thing First
You do not need a sales background to sell your product. You need to be willing to do the manual, unscalable work personally, before you build a process or buy a tool to replace yourself.
GTM3 min
03Jul 30, 2026
Data Brief
Which Startup Metric Actually Matters Depends on Your Stage
The median Series A bar tripled since 2021 while the odds of clearing it stayed flat. Here is the metric that should worry you at each stage, from default alive to the Rule of 40.
Fundraising4 min