Founders send decks with no net revenue retention, no burn multiple, and a market slide that says $100B TAM. Then they wonder why no one replies. Run your deck through the SaaStr AI pitch deck review and see which numbers you left out:

Founders should take some money off the table. I read someone saying take 10% every round. That’s too much imo. It should be enough that you don’t need the company to pay for your life but not so much that you’ve mentally cashed out. If you're bullish on your company, even a small % seems like an opportunity cost.

Founders are so excited after speaking with FLock Because they know This / That gonna help them solve their problems and OWN the model! every company can be a model company. Just like everyone can be a 5min comedian. My dm’s open. Flock it.

Founders send me pitches every day. Here’s a better way: come to our hackathon! EVOLVE: 20 hours, overnight at 8090 in Redwood City, Nov 13–14. Build AI agents and tools that build software. The winning team, beyond recognition and a cool trophy gets two 1:1s with me, to help you refine a pitch or idea and then a follow-up. Use the time however you want. Ask me for advice, ask me for money or just make fun of me. All allowed if you win! Apply:

Founders: when the round closes, send everyone that bet on you a personal Thank You email Yes, maybe they were lucky to get an allocation But … they bet on you for a decade That quick email goes so far. And is so … rare.

Founders back other founders. 4 years ago my team @lab_22c got a panicked call from the leadership of @init_official the largest student tech group at @FIU. Their presenting sponsor had backed out. ShellHacks, Florida’s largest hackathon, was days from a hole in the middle of the weekend. Students were already coming from all over Florida . The rooms were already booked. We were a startup too. So @lab_22c wrote the largest check we had ever written to make sure it still happened. (See First picture). Not for a banner. For the builders. Fast forward to this past weekend. Look at this room. (second picture) 1,200+ students. 36 hours. 10th year. Packed balcony. Packed floor. Hands in the air before a single project shipped. Second photo: my good friend Dr. Jack Puleo, the new dean of @FIU_CEC, kicking off the largest hackathon in Florida. Same house. Same hunger. Bigger. Florida has raw builder energy in every corner of this state. This is in fact @AmbitionAccel Also shout out to my friends like @FrancisSuarez @melmedina305 @mdcpresident @FeleciaHatcher and many more who’ve always held that belief. Let’s keep backing them. 🚀

FOUNDERS FRIDAYS EP. 13: @AdrianBrz_ from @ridemarkets 1️⃣ What makes you most bullish about @Solana today? The cost structure, and what it does to behaviour. Look at tokenized equities: Solana holds under a quarter of the ~$3B of tokenized stock supply on-chain - BNB Chain and Ethereum both hold more. But almost all the actual trading happens on Solana. Issuance follows regulation and distribution deals; trading follows execution cost. When a transaction costs a fraction of a cent, people trade twenty times a day with $5 at stake, and that behaviour simply doesn't exist elsewhere. Every chain wants to be where assets get minted. I'd rather build where they get used. 2️⃣ Where are the biggest hidden opportunities for new builders? Anything to do with how capital actually gets allocated. I've spent the last five years on both sides of it building DAO governance infrastructure and working on DeFi exchanges and the same pattern shows up everywhere: we have endless ways to trade and almost nothing that decides who gets to deploy capital and on what terms. Most DAO treasuries just sit there while a few people on a multisig argue about a proposal. The same gap is now opening in tokenized equities the assets are arriving fast, but the things you'd want around them (credit, structured products, portfolio tooling, anything that treats a tokenized stock as collateral rather than something to flip) barely exist yet. Governance tooling and treasury ops are the same story: unglamorous next to a new DEX, and far less crowded. 3️⃣ What’s your number one piece of advice for someone starting from zero? Ship something small in public before you feel ready, then keep cutting until one thing works properly. Do it where people can see it post the ugly early version, contribute to open source, fix someone else's issue. Distribution compounds slower than code but it lasts longer, and most of the opportunities I've had came from work that was public before it was good. And the thing nobody has really priced in yet: since January I write almost no code by hand I write the spec and review what the model produces. If you're starting today, the skill worth building is judgment, knowing what to ask for and what to reject, not typing speed. That's a real advantage for beginners, because the thing you'd have spent three years grinding is no longer the bottleneck.