Colton Kaplan

@fatimayusf I’m hosting a tech career showcase on sf this Thursday. Would be great if you had a booth: luma.com/s396by7m

If you’re a growth marketer that operates like this, DM me. I’m hiring.

Thanks to @FounderSocial and @ColtonKaplan for co-hosting and helping bring together a great group. Next up, our Launch Night this Friday. See you there. RSVP now 👀 luma.com/6saewc7d

one of the most beautiful articles I've read on this app. from the Founder of Deel. - $1M to $100M arr in 20 months - $1B revenue in 6 years if you're building a startup if you're building an app if you're building a saas even if you’re working a job you NEED to read this:

Monday 1/26 ‣ Daytona AI GTM Leaders Dinner luma.com/bhnq0p8j ‣ SF Awesome AI Dev Tools luma.com/7kn1kan3 ‣ The AI Collective Tri-Valley | Brilliant at the Basics: AI Prompting Lunch & Learn luma.com/ai_prompting @AICollectiveCo ‣ Builders Night @ The Commons luma.com/y72p84gq @thesfcommons ‣ Founders Investors Panel Tesla (RedPoint Ventures + Coorelation VC) luma.com/InvestorsPanel @Naamoney_ @coltonkaplan @zhongsanchez

@NWischoff Congrats!

World, meet Cordelia 💓

@productizeguy 100%. Would love to chat.

Couldn't agree more here. This is why i'm even more bullish on strategic partnerships going into 2026. Partnership marketing will be the glue and fuel that will drive growth for companies. Relationships can't be automated.

ElevenLabs growth: - 0->$100M ARR: 20 months - $100M -> $200M ARR: 10 months - $200M -> $330M ARR: 5 months All powered by incredible customers - and their impact.

Sun's founder shares his hiring reality: "If you want strict 40-hour weeks, maybe startup life isn't the fit."⁣ ⁣ Early-stage teams need obsession. Work-life balance comes at mature companies.⁣ ⁣ Different stages, different needs.

Happy New Year! 🎆 As we step into 2026, I want to challenge us all to decide how negative experiences will shape us this year. Let those moments fuel action and bring more light into the world, not bitterness. Here's to 2026. #NewYearsDay

Just start. Start slow if you have to. Start small if you have to. Start privately if you have to. Just start.

Your entire life can change in one year. Not ten. Not five. Not three. One. One year of focused, daily effort. You’re one year of focus away from people calling you lucky.

misogi is a japanese ritual - one hard, year defining challenge i heard about it from @JesseItzler last year on the pod  for 2025 my misogi was… learning piano from scratch

Grateful for you. Happy New Year. Look forward to leveling up together in 2026! 🎉 #fsc #startup #life #intention

New episode out of Founder Social Club Podcast Sat down with @ArtinBogdanov, Founder @ SUN From Ukraine to Silicon Valley: Platform Risk, a16z Speedrun, and the Future of Audio Learning Watch now 🎧 youtu.be/LrUxZgo-aRU

2026 is the GREATEST time to build a startup in 30 years I’m 36. I’ve sold 3 startups, helped build companies that raised billions, and backed teams from seed to unicorn. 20 MEGA shifts that make this the BEST time to build in a GENERATION: 1. Hardware got smart. Download open-source AI models from HuggingFace to cheap robots and they're suddenly smart. Opens up tons of use-cases. 2. SaaS is imploding. AI can replicate $500K software for pennies. Enterprise software that took 30 engineers now requires 1 and a Claude Code subscription. Founders will go more niche and more custom and outprice incumbents. 3. Outcome-based pricing is eating subscriptions. With AI agents handling work automatically, founders can guarantee results instead of selling features. This creates a massive arbitrage opportunity to steal market share from rigid subscription models. 4. Vibe marketing is the new marketing. AI agents/tools like Lindy, Gemini and Claude Code Using agents to do personalized outreach, ads and content creation it’s getting good. This is like getting on social in 2005. 5. Social is FYP-ified. Distribution no longer requires massive followings, just content that hits. Founders can build audience from zero without ads and then convert them to owned media channels (text/email). 6. Interfaces are vanishing. Conversations are replacing dashboards across industries. This removes training barriers and means customers can use sophisticated products immediately. 7. Companies are obsessed with efficiency and cutting costs right now. Corporate budgets are getting reallocated to AI. Companies are cutting traditional software spend to make room for AI-powered alternatives. This creates fast-tracked approvals for startups delivering 10x efficiency. 8. 99% of MVPs won't need VC. Low-cost MVPs combined with creator partnerships and AI automation allow bootstrapped scaling. For most software businesses, outside funding is now unnecessary. 9. Global teams. You don’t need to hire in your own city anymore. Opens up tons of arbitrage opportunities and ways to create products unlike before. 10. Millions of creators want to get paid. If you have the right product, the right network of creators, you can hit scale insanely efficiently. Never before did this exist. Next gen founders are building startups community first, software second. 11. Prototyping is nearly instant. With Lovable, Rork etc, you can test ideas in days, not months. MVP speed is basically 1x/week. This creates room for multiple products from small companies (multipreneurship), helps get to PMF faster, 12. LLM APIs create building blocks weekly. I can’t even keep up with how many new APIs/tools coming out from LLMs weekly. Example: Nano Banana pro comes out, probably 1000 ideas built on top of that can be $5M/year businesses. 13. $1m+ revenue per employee. With the leverage of LLMs, community and agents, employees are way more efficient. It won’t be uncommon to generate $1m per employee. This will lead to a rise of "multipreneurship", small teams owning multiple products /businesses. Holding companies will be as common as startups. 14. Superniche is the new niche. Because costs to create software startups is 1/100th, you can service little niches (i call them superniches) and still have a life-changing business. 15. Mobile app ecosystem about to 10X. 2 reasons. First is, adding AI to apps make apps more useful. More useful apps, make more money. Second, 16. Compliance and boring workflows are suddenly buildable. Permits, audits, insurance, payroll edge cases, filings, RFPs. These were “too annoying” for startups before. Agents thrive on rules, checklists, and repetition. The least sexy problems now have the best unit economics. 17. Claude Code killed the “engineering bottleneck.” The constraint is no longer “can we build it,” it’s “do we understand the workflow deeply enough.” The winning founders are ex-operators who encode tribal knowledge into agents. Code is cheap. Taste + domain insight is scarce. 18. The long tail of software is now profitable. Niches that capped at $200k ARR can clear $5M with near-zero marginal cost. 19. Services are quietly becoming software. Manual agencies are one agent away from product margins. 20. if AI can replicate $500K software for $20/month, what’s your moat? distribution, customer service, brand, data etc. REALLY good time to be a world class designer/marketer. (and even more.... but this is getting long already!) We've entered the rarest of windows... when multiple technological shifts collide at once, creating a brief period where small teams can build things that were previously impossible. THE FUTURE OF BUILDING STARTUPS IS DIFFERENT. I know this... This unique moment won't last forever. Markets will adapt. Giants will respond. The window will close. But right now, a founder with clear vision and bias for action can build more in six months than was previously possible in years. (note: if you need an idea to get creative juices flowing, grab one at @ideabrowser) The next generation of great companies is being created right now, many by founders you've never heard of. Some by people who would never have had a shot in previous cycles. That's the beauty of these rare windows. The playing field briefly levels, and the future belongs to those who see it clearly and move first. It's a sacred time, don't bookmark/share this, build something in 2026, will ya? Happy building, my friends. 2026 is yours. Am I wrong?

Storytelling isn't just for movies - it's the secret weapon for pitches, product workflows, and customer acquisition.⁣ ⁣ Pixar's formula: Hero faces problem → struggle → breakthrough → resolution⁣ ⁣ Same structure that makes investors lean in and customers buy.

happy holidays fam

Most founders accidentally train their customers never to pay them. @MadhavanSF (the "pricing guru" of Silicon Valley - having worked with LinkedIn, Uber, and 30+ unicorns) calls it the 20/80 Pricing Trap • 20% of your features drive 80% of the willingness to pay • Founders give that 20% away for free to gain distribution • You are left trying to monetize the remaining 80% of features - the ones users don't actually value. The result? You build a charity, not a business. In this week's episode of The Library of Minds, we discuss the science of monetization and deconstruct how to architect ‘Profitable Growth’ - the core framework from his new book, Scaling Innovation. 03:33 - Netflix vs Blockbuster: The Pricing Decision That Changed Tech 08:06 - Why Most Startups Get Pricing Wrong 11:39 - Freemium vs Paid: When Free Destroys Value 15:38 - Pricing Models Matter More Than Price 16:28 - The AI Pricing Framework: Autonomy vs Attribution 21:49 - The Biggest Pricing Mistake Ever 25:05 - Why Steve Jobs Was a Pricing Genius 26:44 - Behavioral Pricing: How Founders 10× Deals Without Changing Product 31:02 - Data vs Conviction: How Great Founders Make Pricing Decisions

2025’s fastest-growing software vendors 🔥 Our customers poured spend into this top 50 list.

Being interviewed at this in about 30 minutes.