The founders who consistently make better decisions are better informed. They know that global M&A hit $2.8 trillion in H1 2026, that SpaceX paid $60B for Cursor, and that Fox’s $22B bid for Roku is reshaping who competes with Netflix next.
That’s why this issue opens with market news and conferences. We curate the deals, the funding rounds, and the calendar, from TechCrunch Disrupt to How to Web Bucharest, so founders can have more time acting on the information.
Every person in these pages has sat on one side of a term sheet or the other. They’re
asking harder questions about why they’re raising, whether customers are paying, and whether the story holds up
across every meeting.
Inside this issue, you’ll find North Forge’s Joelle Foster on coachability, OpenVC’s Shaun Gold on what makes a startup fundable, Ludovic Granger on closing Leadbay’s $4.3M seed round, and many more stories.
North Forge sees 75% of its
Pathfinder cohort pivot after real customer conversations, and investors say the same
things kill deals, including a shifting TAM, multiple decks, and “AI” bolted on with no
real advantage underneath.
The deep dive in this issue, Nobody Closes on Vibes, is a practical, stage-by-stage guide to running a raise, from deciding whether to raise at all through term sheets and close. It’s built on conversations with Shaun Gold at OpenVC and Ludovic Granger, who just closed Leadbay’s $4.3M seed round.
In this issue, we spotlight founders who are
raising with conviction and making deliberate decisions about when they raise,
who they raise from, and why it matters.
These are founders at the intersection of fintech and adjacent technology, backed by people who understand what investor-readiness looks like and are asking the hard questions.
