English/September 16, 2026
N26 and the operator diaspora
The lasting asset of N26 may be the operators who learned to scale a regulated product and now feed Berlin's next startup wave.
Knowledge path
Startup Strategy
Validation, venture design, market choices, and the practical work of building a company.
74 articles
Russian/16 сентября 2026 г.
N26 и диаспора операторов
Главным активом N26 могут оказаться операторы, научившиеся масштабировать регулируемый продукт и теперь строящие следующую волну Berlin tech.
English/September 14, 2026
Hugging Face: from chatbot pivot to a $13B exit
Hugging Face's path from a stalled consumer chatbot to open-source AI infrastructure and a reported $13B acquisition.
Russian/14 сентября 2026 г.
Hugging Face: от chatbot pivot до exit на $13 млрд
Путь Hugging Face от неудавшегося consumer chatbot к open-source AI infrastructure и сделке на $13 млрд.
English/September 12, 2026
What U.S. unicorn founders studied
Nearly 30% of U.S. unicorn founders studied Computer Science, but 42.7% came from outside STEM.
Russian/12 сентября 2026 г.
Что изучали основатели американских единорогов
Почти 30% основателей американских единорогов изучали Computer Science, но 42,7% пришли не из STEM.
English/September 11, 2026
Open-source tools that keep startup burn low
A practical early-stage open-source stack for keeping burn low and product velocity high before product-market fit.
Russian/11 сентября 2026 г.
Open-source инструменты, которые снижают burn стартапа
Практический open-source stack для раннего стартапа: меньше burn, выше скорость до product-market fit.
English/August 30, 2026
Sell first, then build
Founders should validate willingness to pay before building for six months. Real payment is a stronger signal than waitlists or market-size slides.
English/August 29, 2026
Companies are collections of old human decisions
Old org charts, processes and industry assumptions are human decisions, not physics. Founders should question the constraints everyone stopped noticing.
English/August 11, 2026
Quitting school is not a strategy
The dropout-founder myth survives because it is dramatic, but depth, networks and judgment usually take time to build.
English/August 8, 2026
Build an MVP in 14 days for about $101
A practical low-cost stack for taking a startup idea from blank page to a working MVP in two weeks.
English/August 6, 2026
Seven lessons from Sam Altman for founders
Seven lessons for founders from Sam Altman on conviction, timing, ambition, experimentation and customer understanding.
English/May 29, 2026
AI Made Building Faster—and Wasting Time Faster
AI accelerates product building, but it also accelerates the cost of avoiding customer validation.
English/May 29, 2026
Why Experienced Founders Often Win
Research challenges the myth of the 22-year-old founder and raises a better question about generational strengths.
English/April 12, 2026
Steve Jobs said something that still feels uncomfortable:
Steve Jobs said something that still feels uncomfortable: “All the work I’ve done will be obsolete in a few years.” Coming from the person who shaped the P...
English/April 4, 2026
You don’t need ads to hit your first $1M.
You don’t need ads to hit your first $1M. You need distribution. And one of the most underrated places to build it? Reddit. No budgets. No influencers. No...
English/March 21, 2026
founders’ mistakes
Founders keep asking me one thing: “What should I actually read?” 📚 After working with early-stage founders across Europe, one pattern is clear to me: The...
English/August 5, 2026
The 60-second pitch that makes investors lean in - not zone out
A practical 60-second pitch structure for founders: hook, problem, solution, traction, market, team and ask.
Russian/29 мая 2026 г.
ИИ ускорил разработку — и ускорил потерю времени
ИИ ускоряет создание продукта, но с той же скоростью увеличивает цену отказа от проверки реального спроса.
Russian/29 мая 2026 г.
Почему опытные основатели часто побеждают
Исследования опровергают миф о 22-летнем основателе и заставляют по-новому взглянуть на сильные стороны поколений.
English/May 26, 2026
AI startup
AI made launching startups dramatically easier. And standing out dramatically harder. Because now everyone has: → the same models → the same no-code tools...
English/May 25, 2026
NVIDIA
Most founders waste money on AI infrastructure way too early. GPUs. Custom stacks. Expensive APIs. “Scalability.” Before they even validated if anyone want...
English/May 12, 2026
AI for teams
Most companies are approaching AI automation backwards. They start with tools. Not with problems. So they end up with: 10 dashboards 5 disconnected automat...
English/May 9, 2026
startups
We’re about to see a new wave of consulting firms. Not the PowerPoint kind. The “make this actually work” kind. Because everyone talks about deploying AI a...
English/May 3, 2026
AI examples
Something funny is happening to corporate language. SEC filings are starting to sound… identical 😅 Just a reminder: SEC is one of the most influential org...
English/April 11, 2026
Strange realization lately.
Strange realization lately. The most risky thing about AI… isn’t hallucination. It’s agreement you make with them 😅 We thought we were building intelligen...
English/April 9, 2026
If I had to start again from Day 1 as a founder…
If I had to start again from Day 1 as a founder… I wouldn’t open Figma. I wouldn’t write code. I wouldn’t think about fundraising. I’d start somewhere much...
English/April 5, 2026
Top 10 things founders say… and what they actually mean 👇
Top 10 things founders say… and what they actually mean 👇 “We built proprietary AI” → we’re calling an API “We grew 200% last month” → from 3 users to 9 “...
English/April 3, 2026
Something subtle just changed in fintech.
Something subtle just changed in fintech. But it’s bigger than it looks. AI can now move money. The problem? No one really trusts it to. So the biggest pla...
English/April 1, 2026
Mark Zuckerberg isn’t just using AI.
Mark Zuckerberg isn’t just using AI. He’s building an AI agent to help run Meta 😳 And it’s already happening. What it does: – pulls data across a 78,000-p...
English/March 29, 2026
Hard to believe this sometimes.
Hard to believe this sometimes. Jim Simons built the most successful hedge fund in history… starting at 40. No Google. No cloud. No AI copilots. No “startu...
English/March 29, 2026
This might be one of the most important AI shifts this year.
This might be one of the most important AI shifts this year. And almost no one is talking about it. Google just released TurboQuant. And it changes how AI...
English/March 28, 2026
AI just quietly entered one of the oldest industries on Earth.
AI just quietly entered one of the oldest industries on Earth. Farming. A New Zealand startup, Halter, is now valued at ~$2B… for putting AI collars on cow...
English/March 27, 2026
80% of startups don’t fail because the idea is bad.
80% of startups don’t fail because the idea is bad. They fail before they ever get to their first dollar. No traction. No distribution. No clear playbook....
English/March 22, 2026
Being a startup founder isn’t that hard.
Being a startup founder isn’t that hard. You just need: A good idea. One that solves a real problem. For people who actually care enough to pay. Then you f...
English/September 15, 2026
411 rejections to close a single seed round
A strong product does not guarantee capital: investor segmentation, geography, capital efficiency and network quality matter.
Russian/15 сентября 2026 г.
411 отказов, чтобы закрыть один seed round
Сильный продукт не гарантирует капитал: важны сегментация инвесторов, география, capital efficiency и качество сети.
English/September 15, 2026
Microsoft has 78 Copilots
When every Microsoft tool becomes Copilot, the brand risks losing the meaning it was supposed to create.
Russian/15 сентября 2026 г.
У Microsoft уже 78 Copilot
Когда каждый инструмент Microsoft называется Copilot, бренд рискует перестать что-либо означать.
English/September 13, 2026
Claude Commerce Agents as the reasoning layer
Claude Commerce Agents suggest a strategy of owning the intelligence layer while retailers keep their existing commerce infrastructure.
Russian/13 сентября 2026 г.
Claude Commerce Agents как reasoning layer
Claude Commerce Agents показывают стратегию владения интеллектом поверх существующей инфраструктуры ритейлеров.
English/September 12, 2026
Nvidia is acquiring Hugging Face for $12.9B
The strategic logic behind Nvidia's reported $12.9B acquisition of Hugging Face and what it means for open-source AI.
Russian/12 сентября 2026 г.
Nvidia приобретает Hugging Face за $12,9 млрд
Стратегическая логика предполагаемого приобретения Hugging Face компанией Nvidia и последствия для open-source AI.
English/September 11, 2026
AI startups raised $100B+ at a $2T+ combined valuation
Summer 2026 AI funding shifted toward infrastructure, real revenue and strategic capital at unprecedented scale.
Russian/11 сентября 2026 г.
AI-стартапы привлекли $100+ млрд при совокупной оценке свыше $2 трлн
Летом 2026 капитал в AI сместился к инфраструктуре, реальной выручке и стратегическим инвесторам.
English/September 11, 2026
Anthropic, TAM inflation, and a $2 trillion valuation
Why extreme AI TAM assumptions and a possible $2T Anthropic valuation could create pressure to force automation into the economy.
Russian/11 сентября 2026 г.
Anthropic, инфляция TAM и оценка в $2 трлн
Почему экстремальные оценки TAM в AI и возможная оценка Anthropic в $2 трлн могут создать давление на экономику.
English/August 28, 2026
The model was never your hardest problem. Trust was.
Capability leaps and adoption timelines run on different clocks. For enterprise AI, trust and change management remain the bottleneck.
English/August 27, 2026
The most valuable part of AI is the applied layer
In applied AI, the moat often sits between the model and the person: workflow, trust, data access, evaluation and change management.
English/August 26, 2026
Robotics startups: the money is moving to the brain
Robotics valuations increasingly separate the physical robot from the intelligence layer, with investors betting that the brain carries the margin.
English/August 25, 2026
Harvey built its own legal AI model instead of renting one
Harvey's Tenet model is a bet that applied AI moats will sit in domain-specific systems rather than generic frontier intelligence.
English/August 16, 2026
Build for the AI mess, not the consensus
AI deployment is still fragmented. For startups, that heterogeneity is an opportunity to define categories before standards harden.
English/August 14, 2026
A 2.78 trillion parameter model just ran on 8 GB of RAM
A tiny C implementation running a trillion-parameter model on 8 GB of RAM is a useful lesson in questioning inherited constraints.
English/August 13, 2026
Google AI, org charts and where real power sits
Google's AI leadership reshuffle is a reminder that titles describe accountability better than they describe actual influence.
English/August 12, 2026
Automation does not remove the judgment call
More agents do not remove product judgment. They move the critical decisions further upstream, where founders must validate assumptions.
English/July 2026
Startup Visa Netherlands (2026): The Complete Founder Guide
Thinking about moving your startup to the Netherlands? This guide explains how the Dutch Startup Visa really works, what RVO actually evaluates, why promising applications are rejected, and how founders can prepare before investing months into the process.
English/May 29, 2026
Startup Investing After Theranos
The next generation of startup investing needs technical judgment, founder proximity and hands-on due diligence.
English/May 29, 2026
What Unicorn Rankings Miss
The highest-ranked unicorn investors are not always playing the same game as early-stage believers.
English/May 28, 2026
Design AI
Every startup logo suddenly looks like it belongs in a 1970s nightclub 🪩 Oh, man, I’m tired of that 😅 Spotify changes its icon into a disco ball for one...
English/May 28, 2026
SpaceX
SpaceX just filed for IPO… …and honestly it looks like Elon forgot he builds rockets 😅 I was reading the filing with a nice tea last night and had to doub...
English/May 27, 2026
Andrej Karpathy just joined Anthropic
Big signal from the AI world today 👀 Andrej Karpathy just joined Anthropic. For context: – founding member at OpenAI – former Tesla AI lead – one of the m...
English/May 26, 2026
Leopold Aschenbrenner
Everyone wants to invest in “the AI revolution”. Very few people want to invest in transformers, cooling systems and electricity 😅 And that’s exactly why...
English/May 13, 2026
AI models
Everyone talks about AI models. Very few understand AI systems. And that distinction is becoming the entire game. Most people still think AI = chatbot. Pro...
English/May 13, 2026
AI tips
99% of people learning AI agents never actually ship one. They watch tutorials. Save threads. Collect frameworks. Build another Notion dashboard. But never...
English/May 12, 2026
AI YouTube channels
Most people think learning AI requires: $1,000 courses. Bootcamps. Certificates. Some “AI guru” selling a roadmap. It doesn’t. We’re living through the fir...
English/May 10, 2026
AI instead of software engineer
When people hear “software engineer,” they still imagine Big Tech. Apps. Product teams. Shipping features. Feels a bit outdated now. AI agents are quietly...
English/May 7, 2026
AI-first smartphone
Is this an iPhone killer… or just a very expensive experiment? OpenAI is reportedly working on an AI-first phone 😳 Not just Twitter noise. There are real...
English/May 6, 2026
AI agents
AI isn’t just helping Wall Street anymore, it’s starting to replace it. Apoorva Mehta just launched a hedge fund where the portfolio manager isn’t a person...
English/April 8, 2026
Everyone talks about fundraising like it’s step one.
Everyone talks about fundraising like it’s step one. Like you need permission before you can build something real. But take a look here please: – Zoho → $1...
English/March 26, 2026
The GenAI leaderboard in 2026 looks… unreal.
The GenAI leaderboard in 2026 looks… unreal. A few years ago, most of these companies were just decks. Now the top 10 alone are worth $1.7T+ combined. And...
English/March 24, 2026
using AI
Founder burnout is real. And no – you can’t “raise energy” like a round. 😅 Some numbers to ground it: → ~72% of founders report mental health struggles →...
English/March 22, 2026
Founders keep asking:
Founders keep asking: “Where do you actually learn how startups work?” 🤔 Not from one book. Not from one mentor. But by consistently following people who...
English/March 18, 2026
Nebius investment
From “toxic legacy” to $27B deals. Nebius is scaling fast – but to earn trust is a bit different story. Nebius (ex-Yandex N.V.) just signed a $27B AI infra...