Here’s a roundup of interesting startup links I came across today:
How Wicked Saints Studios Turned A Mission-Driven Game Into A Creator-Embedded Campaign For Real-World Connection
The approach reflects Wicked Saints’ broader thesis that games can be designed not just for engagement, but for activation. Founded in 2020, the studio was created to address a problem its co-founder and CEO, Jessica Murrey, encountered repeatedly across journalism, public-service media, and global peacebuilding: social-impact initiatives are effective at raising awareness, but far less reliable at helping people believe they can take action.
A business that scales with the value of intelligence | OpenAI
What began as a tool for curiosity became infrastructure that helps people create more, decide faster, and operate at a higher level.
How to understand customers – by Rob Snyder
Forward deploying everybody gives your company shared context about how your customers behave and what they are trying to accomplish. This enables you to build the right thing despite imperfect communication. The alternative is building the wrong thing, even with near-perfect communication.
Raising money fucked me up
And so raise we did. We brought in four phenomenal angels, including, and this is relevant, my last few bosses (PostHog co-founders James and Tim and Doublepoint co-founder Ohto), and then decided to look for an early-stage fund. We eventually landed with Broom Ventures and passed up on a few other opportunities to limit dilution.
I’m addicted to being useful
I don’t mind the ways in which my job is dysfunctional, because it matches the ways in which I myself am dysfunctional: specifically, my addiction to being useful.
A Great Startup Idea Doesn’t Make A Great Startup Business | by DC Palter | Jan, 2026 | Entrepreneurship Handbook
So how much is that idea worth? I want to say a nickel, but that’s dating myself. With inflation and tariffs, a fair price in 2026 is somewhere around 57 cents. For a really good idea, I might be prepared to pay a full dollar.
The Commoditization of Services – by Carl Cortright
Right now, we are in the boom cycle of the infrastructure build-out. We are obsessing over GPUs and data centers. But as this technology gets deployed, the value of the actual services delivered on top of that infrastructure is going to plummet.
Fintech Forecast: Momentum Builds With Big Deals, IPO-Ready Companies And More AI
The AI conversation has shifted the VC mindset into bubble territory from a valuation perspective, yet the underlying growth and performance of companies in the age of AI is “astounding and unlike anything we’ve seen before,” even relative to 2020 and 2021, according to Amias Gerety, partner and head of U.S. investments at QED Investors.
What AI Is Teaching Us About Management
The skills that make AI agents reliable are identical to the skills that make human teams effective
Gusto’s Path to Product-Market Fit — How Listening to Customers Built a $9.6B Company
Cold-calling from a walk-in closet taught Tomer London how to recognize what PMF really feels like.