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<div style="display: none; max-height: 0px; overflow: hidden;">Navan is going public at a $6.9 billion valuation, well below its private-market peak. Half its customer support is now handled by an AI agent </div>
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<a href="https://tracking.tldrnewsletter.com/CL0/https:%2F%2Fwww.connextglobal.com%2Fcontact/1/01000199e7d412b2-3f3f2041-b70c-4731-b738-adeddd531d14-000000/uqPxvIvEp-D_lIMNbgW0JWlzNB3_uzeZWVRXYqIyYbM=427"><img src="https://images.tldr.tech/connext.png" valign="middle" style="vertical-align: middle !important; height: 100%;" alt="Connext"></a></td></tr></tbody></table>
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<h1><strong> TLDR Founders <span id="date">2025-10-15</span></strong></h1>
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<strong>Headcount will destory your runway - but the top 1% of global talent still costs 70% less than hiring locally (Sponsor)</strong>
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In 2025, you can pay $120K+ per hire - and easily upwards of $250K for A-players. But with remote work and accessible global talent, there are better ways to use your runway.<p></p><p><a class="underline" href="https://tracking.tldrnewsletter.com/CL0/https:%2F%2Fwww.connextglobal.com%2Fcontact/3/01000199e7d412b2-3f3f2041-b70c-4731-b738-adeddd531d14-000000/gXSE54jKeZwXfECn_xgK0Xq6K-01x3P-B5CpfYxqg30=427" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank"><span>Connext Global builds custom offshore teams</span></a> with the top 1% of global talent:</p>
<p>✅ Zero upfront costs.</p>
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<p>🎁 Start with a free gift: <a href="https://tracking.tldrnewsletter.com/CL0/https:%2F%2Fmeetings.hubspot.com%2Ftgoucher%2Fconnext-introduction/1/01000199e7d412b2-3f3f2041-b70c-4731-b738-adeddd531d14-000000/3LyQ7GW9y3lAAaIoWFcTz_IUPQuWaAev7gg8sH3uUns=427" rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" target="_blank"><span>Book a 30-minute consultation</span></a> and you'll get a <strong>free Yeti Cooler</strong>.
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<h1><strong>Headlines & Trends</strong></h1>
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<a href="https://tracking.tldrnewsletter.com/CL0/https:%2F%2Ftechcrunch.com%2F2024%2F10%2F15%2Four-favorite-startups-from-pear-vcs-invitational-demo-day%2F%3Futm_source=tldrfounders/1/01000199e7d412b2-3f3f2041-b70c-4731-b738-adeddd531d14-000000/izKH_6gIeUSdqWxOVcWg3MH6_F_oW1BilhwitY0Bu5w=427">
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<strong>Our favorite startups from Pear VC's invitational demo day (4 minute read)</strong>
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Pear VC's demo day spotlighted 20 startups with a strong focus on AI, including Neutrino AI, which optimizes infrastructure for AI applications, and Quno AI, automating market research. ResiQuant develops catastrophe models for home insurance, while Self Eval uses AI to detect manufacturing errors in real-time. TeachShare offers personalized lesson plans, helping teachers tailor content to classroom needs.
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<strong>Navan's IPO is partially AI-predicted (3 minute read)</strong>
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Navan, formerly TripActions, is going public at a $6.9 billion valuation, well below its private-market peak. Half its customer support is now handled by an AI agent named Ava, pushing gross margins from 60 to 72 percent. The company's numbers show what investors want to see: efficiency through automation.
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<strong>Airtable Expands AI with DeepSky Acquisition, New CTO (4 minute read)</strong>
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Airtable has appointed former OpenAI leader David Azose as CTO and acquired DeepSky, an AI superagent. The move transforms Airtable into a multi-product, AI-native company by enhancing its AI capabilities. DeepSky will operate as a standalone product and integrate with Airtable's platform to streamline research and application development.
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<h1><strong>Strategies & Tactics</strong></h1>
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<strong>32 things we've learned about building a startup that scales (4 minute read)</strong>
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Everyone thinks scaling kills speed, but what if it's the opposite? When PostHog grew from 11 to 150 people, teams capped at six shipped faster. One pessimist kills momentum faster than bad code, and compromising on a hire always backfires. They replaced interviews with “SuperDays” to see candidates actually work, and built around simple goals like “ship stuff,” not OKRs. They learned PMF isn't permanent, agencies disappoint, stretch goals die, and even enterprise buyers just want fun, human brands.
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<strong>The False Consensus Effect (3 minute read)</strong>
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif;">
Marketers often assume customers think like they do – and pay for it. The “False Consensus Effect” explains why: we mistake our own tastes for the norm. Netflix proved the power of testing assumptions when it dropped House of Cards all at once and watched viewers binge six episodes in days. Amazon built its empire on A/B tests, not opinions. Sometimes you're not your customer, so stop building for yourself.
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<a href="https://tracking.tldrnewsletter.com/CL0/https:%2F%2Fmicroventures.com%2Fassessing-a-startups-defensibility%3Futm_source=tldrfounders/1/01000199e7d412b2-3f3f2041-b70c-4731-b738-adeddd531d14-000000/cfLKn-U5VeuAqjz9qr9NJcVwfo_Y6ItHTuUDLkLLOUI=427">
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<strong>Assessing a Startup's Defensibility (6 minute read)</strong>
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Assessing a startup's defensibility focuses on evaluating its economic moat, product-market fit, and competitive advantage. Key factors include cost advantages, intangible assets, network effects, switching costs, and efficient scale for economic moat; strong retention rates, NPS, and usage metrics for product-market fit; and intellectual property, team capability, and scalable business models for competitive advantage. Investors use these criteria to determine if a startup can sustain market share and scale effectively against competition.
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<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 36px;">⚒️</span></div></div>
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<h1><strong>Tools & Resources</strong></h1>
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<strong>How I Built TLDR (TLDR's Inc. Profile, 5 minute read)</strong>
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This is the first time I've told the backstory behind building TLDR, hope you find it interesting!
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<strong>Alai (Tool)</strong>
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif;">
Generate high quality presentations with AI.
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<strong>Slashit App (Tool)</strong>
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif;">
Text automation tool with AI commands and templates to speed up writing and replies.
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<strong>LetMeCheck.ai (Tool)</strong>
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<span style="font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif;">
AI tool that analyzes codebases to provide quick, reliable quality insights.
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<div style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: 36px;">🎁</span></div></div>
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<div style="text-align: center;"><strong><h1>Miscellaneous</h1></strong></div>
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The “modern data stack” once promised freedom through specialization, i.e, tools like Fivetran for ingestion and dbt for transformation. However, with compute giants Snowflake and Databricks now controlling 72% of the market's revenue, gravity is pulling everything back together. Their scale lets them eat margin across the stack. The Fivetran–dbt merger shows how survival now means scale, two startups combining to stand a chance as data recenters around the giants.
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<h1><strong>Quick Links</strong></h1>
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<strong>Pursuit of Pain (3 minute read)</strong>
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This founder thought grit was his superpower until it almost killed his company.
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Real business isn't learned in classrooms, it's learned on the street: selling candy bars, closing scrappy deals, taking hits, and learning to think fast.
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<strong>Reducto Studio (Tool)</strong>
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Reducto Studio is a platform for building, optimizing, and deploying production-ready document pipelines with performance insights and confidence-scored extractions.
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