#startup-growth

#startup-growth

I sat down on the couch in my sweatpants, and just basically melted into [it] the whole weekend, probably almost 48 hours straight. About three weeks ago, an X post praising NanoClaw from famed AI researcher Andrej Karpathy went viral. About a week ago, Cohen closed down his AI marketing startup to focus full-time on NanoClaw and launch a company around it called NanoCo.

Her payment form wasn't connecting to the payment processor, and every attempt ended in an error message that made no sense. I understood her frustration. As a founder myself, I was acutely aware of the pain of trying to run a business and feeling like nothing was going your way. When I dug into her form, I found the problem a few minutes later: a mismatch between test mode and live credentials.

So it was 2020, prime time of COVID, and I was feeling a little bit unsure what I wanted to do with my life. I was still, at the time, sophomore in college, sent home halfway through university. And one of my friends had been sharing that she was working on a mobile app around biking. I basically contacted her. We decided to work together, and from there really grew from working and contributing as an intern, to founding engineer.

From the start, Nicholas and his team focused on solving real problems rather than chasing hype or inflated valuations. He is a firm believer that conviction should come from customers, not VCs, and that once Forethought delivered tangible value to real users, the hype and valuations naturally followed. His "7-Failure Rule" urges founders to embrace iteration over perfection and to expect a few misses before finding what truly clicks.

"I could never take notes and pay attention to the teacher at the same time," Dhawan said.

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Vibe-coding, also known as AI-assisted coding, is the latest obsession among both tech giants and startups. The concept is simple: developers use natural language to instruct AI tools to generate code. Over the past several months, AI coding platforms have attracted millions of users and generated billions of dollars in revenue.

In less than three years, Midjourney's ARR went from zero to $200 million. In 20 months, ElevenLabs, a voice AI startup, saw its ARR soar from zero to near $100 million. In three months, vibe coding darling Lovable went from zero to $17 million in ARR, this summer hitting $100 million in ARR. In its first six months, Decagon hit "seven figures" in ARR, the company reported.

The deluge of speculative tech investments unleashed by artificial intelligence is unparalleled in history. Never before has a technology which promises so much - but currentlydoes so little - managed to capture enough funding to threaten the US economy should it fail. With that kind of cash on the line, one would assume thattech startups have done their homework on the complicated reality of AI development before courting untold millions of dollars from overzealous investors - that's sort of their job, after all.

Ethan Smith is the CEO of Graphitethe leading SEO growth agencyand my go-to expert on SEO. After 18 years of mastering traditional SEO, Ethan has been at the forefront of what is called AEO: answer engine optimization, or, more simply, getting your product to show up in ChatGPT/Claude/Gemini/Perplexity answers. He's discovered that ChatGPT traffic converts six times better than Google searchand most companies are completely missing this opportunity.

To sell or not to sell. That's the major dilemma founders around the world face: Once they've started to get big enough to attract the attention of buyers, they face the decision of whether to cash out now, or use the compliment as fuel to go even bigger. While it may seem like a no-brainer to say yes to an acquisition to the tune of millions-or even billions-it can be hard to later rest easy thinking about how much more you could have made independently.

Startups often make the mistake of hiring a growth team far too soon, said Meta's chief marketing officer, Alex Schultz. Schultz, speaking on an episode of the "Twenty Minute VC" podcast published Saturday, said that founders often rush to delegate growth when it should be their top priority. At companies with only a few hundred employees, the entire team should be focused on driving growth - not a specialized unit.

After three decades in capital markets and entrepreneurial ventures, I've learned one hard truth: Most founders wait too long to think about their exit. They're focused on growing the business, product-market fit, hiring the right people or raising their next round, and understandably so. But here's the reality: The companies that scale, endure and lead are the ones built with the end in mind.

GAIA is transforming the legal industry through AI, streamlining legal work, and supporting legal professionals in achieving enhanced efficiency and effectiveness.

Melamud stated, "In my 16 years of investing, I had never come across such an enormous TAM (total addressable market) of greenfield opportunity," highlighting the potential for growth in unmanaged travel bookings.

Khan argued the IPO is "a great reminder that letting startups grow into independently successful businesses, rather than be bought up by existing giants, can generate enormous value."

Entrepreneurs chasing rapid growth often pour energy into product-market fit, scaling strategies, and fundraising. But there's an unspoken truth in the digital age: None of that matters if your marketing talent can't match the speed of your ambition.

In May 2023, Olympia, an AI-powered assistant service for solopreneurs, began with a minimal viable product (MVP) aimed at supporting small teams without large marketing budgets.

Germany has witnessed a surge in startups with 1,500 new companies established in the first half of 2025, a 9% increase over the previous six months.

Some of your most important growth moments? You'll never see them coming - and you'll never be able to track them.

Technology must align with customer needs, serving as an enabler for business objectives. A product-led approach prevents the creation of solutions that may be technically impressive but commercially irrelevant.

After nearly three years as CEO of Donkey Republic, I have decided to step down. This has been my own decision, and earlier this year, I began a constructive dialogue with the Chairperson of the Board to plan a smooth transition.

Anysphere, maker of AI coding assistant Cursor, is growing so quickly, it's not in the market to be sold, even to OpenAI, a source close to the company tells TechCrunch.