Chris Herd

$10M CEOs: "Talk to support." $17B CEO, Alex Bouaziz: "I can answer your query" This is the customer obsession most Founders miss. Guillaume Moubeche, founder of lemlist, brought this up on Truthworks podcast recently. He mentioned Alex Bouaziz, CEO of Deel. Deel was last valued at $17 billion+ And the CEO still personally responds to customer queries about the product. He's not hiding behind layers of support. He's not "too busy" to talk to customers. He's on the forntlines! Guillaume said he does the same thing. In the early days of Lemlist, when customers would publicly trash the company online, he wouldn't hide. He'd jump in and say: "I'm the founder, let's hop on a call. I want to understand your problem better." What happened next? Those same angry customers would delete their negative posts. And replace them with: "I had an issue, but I talked to the founder. Solved in 7 minutes." Haters turned into raving fans! Here's what most people don't understand: → Your support team solves problems → A founder showing up creates STORIES When a CEO personally responds, customers don't just get a solution. They get a story they'll tell everyone. That ripple effect? No marketing budget can buy it. Something I think is a huge differentiator: Customer obsession shouldn't diminish as you grow. The best founders never stop showing up. Your competitors can copy your product. They can't copy you personally caring. Listen to Guillaume Moubeche's episode on Truthworks here: https://lnkd.in/gJCujq_D

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CEO Mistake After analyzing more B2B SaaS companies in the SF Bay Area, I’m noticing a mistake that often appears after a CEO has correctly identified a problem: They choose the most obvious action instead of the highest-ROI decision. Pipeline is weak → hire SDRs. Conversion is low → redesign the website. Growth slows → increase marketing. Enterprise prospects appear → build enterprise features. AI becomes strategic → add more AI. Each action can sound perfectly reasonable. But a reasonable action is not necessarily the right decision. The real constraint may sit one layer deeper. Weak pipeline may actually be an ICP problem. Low conversion may be a positioning problem. Slow growth may come from poor retention. Enterprise demand may be coming from customers you shouldn’t build the company around. This is one of the strongest patterns I’m seeing through our Business Reviews at Prosperity AI: The quality of execution cannot compensate for choosing the wrong problem to solve. CEOs are constantly under pressure to act. But speed of action and quality of decision are two very different things. Before asking: “What should we do next?” I think the better sequence is: What is actually constraining growth? What alternatives do we have? Which decision produces the highest expected return relative to cost, risk and time? Then execute. Because the expensive mistake isn’t moving slowly. It’s executing extremely well on the wrong decision.

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YC just said the quiet part out loud. ❗The fintech tradeoff is dead❗ For years, fintech founders had to choose: Regulated → capped upside. High-growth → legal risk. That constraint is gone. Not because regulation softened. Because infrastructure economics flipped. Three forces are colliding: 1️⃣ Stablecoins became regulated rails. - Not DeFi theater. - Not a TradFi cosplay. - Compliant, interoperable pipes for yield, cross-border settlement, tokenized assets. 2️⃣ AI agents are the new operating system. - Not “AI-powered features.” - Agent-native funds and platforms — research, execution, risk, compliance - designed for machines first. 3️⃣ Governments are buyers, not blockers. - Fraud drains tens of billions from Medicare every year. - AI that detects and recovers faster isn’t a nice-to-have. - It’s national infrastructure. This is why Y Combinator’s Spring 2026 RFS matters. 👇 Here’s the real takeaway: When compliance becomes scalable and new rails are legitimized, infrastructure locks in early - and permanently. That’s why we’re backing teams building the primitives now: • Transaction monitoring • Cross-border settlement • Agent-driven compliance automation By the time the market feels “comfortable,” the cap tables will already be closed. The next fintech winner won’t win on UX. They’ll own the rails. If you’re building one of those layers — this is the moment.

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You don't need funding, revenue, or a single paying customer to become a target. You just need "Founder" in your LinkedIn headline. Nick Goodman found that out building Everyday Security: fake invoices, fake trademark notices, "investors" who want your cap table before they've asked your name, and consulting pitches that read like a phishing kit with a Canva template. Scammers target founders because founders move fast, answer their own email, and are trained to say yes to anyone who might write a check. Not because founders have money -- most pre-seed founders don't. Nick is running a session on the specific scams hitting startups right now and how to spot them before they cost you time, data, or worse. I'll be there - hope you will be, too. Thursday, September 3, 10-11am PDT, over Google Meet. Register: https://luma.com/voi9aud9

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The brutal reality of VC math – and what it means for you as a founder! https://lnkd.in/eqMWjxf2 ~50% of investments are complete losses ~35% return at best 1–2x ~15% generate meaningful multiples 👉 And only a handful of deals ultimately carry the entire fund. That means: a single company may need to return the whole fund. My brief thoughts - VCs are largely memetic beings that pattern match against the past where group-think and bias often lead to the same people getting funded. - VCs not honest about expertise they offer and 90% do not offer any value beyond cash - Most VC's are overpaid and should not be a VCs

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YC's acceptance rate is under 1%.... What's the best signal you can send on your application? Your pedigree? your deck? your idea? Nope, Revenue. YC W26 just closed. 3x more startups hit $1M ARR in three months compared to previous batches. With applications numbers going up and acceptance harder than ever, revenue is a solid proof point you are on the right track. While it's not everything - 70% of the batch applied with zero revenue - I suspect that will be lower next batch.

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