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Startups
27 posts about Startups. Every summary links to the original.
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Start Good Trouble: Mastering SaaS metrics with Equals' Bobby Pinero - The Intercom Blog
Equals co-founder and CEO Bobby Pinero joined the Start Good Trouble webinar to discuss how SaaS metrics unlock business potential and tell a compelling story. He argued that spreadsheets remain central despite the explosion of new BI tools, because everything eventually ends up back in a spreadsheet connected to live data. Drawing on seven years as Intercom’s senior director of finance, where he scaled ARR from under $1 million to over $150 million, Pinero highlighted the complexity of early-stage metrics like CAC, LTV, and retention. Equals recently published The Guide to SaaS Metrics to help leaders understand, optimize, and report on key drivers, and Pinero emphasized the need to tailor metrics to the business model and start with the story. He also recommended writing consistently and authentically to clarify ideas and connect with audiences, and noted that horizontal products require narrowing down use cases to scale effectively.
CX leader Camille Acey on the evolving dynamics in customer service - The Intercom Blog
Camille E. Acey, a seasoned CX leader and consultant, describes the profound transformation underway in customer service, driven by AI, layoffs, and rising customer expectations. She advises startups to avoid over-hiring senior full-time roles and instead use fractional CX leaders who can establish strategy while junior or mid-level staff manage daily operations. Camille emphasizes that AI cannot replace human empathy and should be deployed first on repetitive, low-hanging tasks, preserving simpler issues for junior talent development. She notes that layoffs will degrade service quality unless leaders secure organizational buy-in, communicate resource impacts, and prioritize essential functions. Customer service teams must partner with product to prioritize requests that deliver the most value for the right target users, not fulfill every wish.
All that glitters is not gold: Angel investor Christoph Janz on finding the right opportunities in AI - The Intercom Blog
Angel investor Christoph Janz of Point Nine Capital, an early backer of Zendesk and Clio, shares his mental map for generative AI investment opportunities, describing ChatGPT’s launch as a wake-up call that surprised even AI experts. He argues that incumbents like Microsoft dominate horizontal categories such as spreadsheets through bundling and zero pricing, requiring startups to deliver a 10x better and cheaper product to win. Janz recommends targeting vertical markets like dentistry, where direct customer acquisition via industry channels reduces competition, and new categories for previously unsolvable problems, avoiding broad horizontal markets. He notes that relying on GPT-4 may force startups to accept lower gross margins or negative margins temporarily while betting on future cost reductions. For vertical SaaS, he believes persistent 30-50% year-over-year growth over 15 years can yield sizeable businesses due to direct customer access and less competition from large players.
Intercom on Product: Product strategy in the age of AI - The Intercom Blog
In this episode of Intercom on Product, co-founder Des Traynor and CPO Paul Adams discuss how AI, particularly since the launch of ChatGPT, will transform the software industry and urge product leaders to reconsider their strategies for disruption. They argue that to truly disrupt established categories, startups must offer a unique attack angle that incumbents cannot easily replicate, rather than merely adding AI features without strategic differentiation. For product managers, they recommend evaluating AI opportunities by whether they expand the user base, enhance users’ abilities, or eliminate entire tasks, citing customer support as a domain rich with potential. They note that incumbents may survive disruption by integrating AI through APIs, making the ratio of new work required versus existing advantage critical. Traynor advises rereading ‘The Innovator’s Dilemma’ to understand true disruption and warns that many AI startups risk becoming unpaid R&D for larger companies that can copy their features.
Small Talk with Emiliano Bonilla, CEO and Co-Founder of Synnax
Emiliano Bonilla, CEO of Synnax, built the company after witnessing rocket engine testing operations ruin multi-million-dollar hardware because Excel and Python could not handle real-time control. Synnax is a platform that replaces decades-old aerospace tools, capturing sensor data in real time and tightening the loop between collection and action. The team built its own real-time programming language, Arc, in about six months after finding existing tools unsuitable. Synnax currently focuses on aerospace but is expanding into cryogenic control for quantum computing, oil and gas, and manufacturing. The company uses JetBrains IDEs, citing their debuggers and merge conflict resolution as critical to balancing speed and quality in mission-critical software.
Introducing The Cold Start: pitch your startup live at Cloudflare Connect
Cloudflare announces The Cold Start, a live startup competition at Cloudflare Connect in San Francisco on Monday, October 19, 2026. Five early-stage companies with less than $10 million raised will each get five minutes on stage to pitch their vision to judges including Cloudflare co-founders Matthew Prince and Michelle Zatlyn, and CTO Dane Knecht. The winning startup receives $500,000 in Cloudflare credits, a billboard in San Francisco, and an invitation to the VIP speakers dinner. Applications close Friday, October 2, 2026, and Cloudflare will pay travel for the five finalists. The competition is inspired by Cloudflare’s own launch at TechCrunch Disrupt in 2010 and is part of its Cloudflare for Startups program, which offers eligible companies up to $350,000 in credits.
Announcing the 2026 Built
Databricks has announced its third annual Built-On Databricks Startup Challenge, inviting early-stage startups that use Databricks as a core part of customer-facing, B2B applications to compete for more than $1M in prizes. Eligible companies must have been founded within the last five years, be incorporated in one of the listed countries, and be no later than Series B if funded. The competition offers a potential Databricks Ventures investment of up to $600,000, up to $500,000 in Databricks product credits across finalists, and access to Databricks resources, workshops, mentorship, and feedback. Judging considers Databricks usage, market potential, and founding team strength and experience; applications close May 22, 2026, with judging in late May and winner announcements during the week of June 15, 2026, at the Databricks Data + AI Summit in San Francisco.
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