It's Time to Build... Faster

Hey y’all — don’t worry, I’m not going to get political.

That’s not what this newsletter is for.

This newsletter is about startups.

But the return of Trump to the presidency will impact founders.

He’s promised to:

• Dramatically reduce federal regulations

• Introduce tariffs for foreign goods

• Support crypto and AI

• Lower taxes

Regardless of your politics, it has the potential to be a pretty big deal for founders and anyone thinking of becoming a founder (if he’s able to implement his agenda).

Here’s what I mean…

On the Pod: Zayd Ali

Zayd sold his first startup in high school and has now raised $3M for Valley, an AI SDR.

We covered a lot:

• How to raise a pre seed round

• How to balance startup life in your 20s

• How to talk to investors about competition

• How to execute a pivot after raising funding

• How to find your first 10 customers in B2B SaaS

• How to talk to investors about defensibility as an application layer AI startup

Check it out below on YouTube, Spotify, or Apple Podcasts.

New Case Studies

• Rize ($2.9M raised) → Multi-time founder returned capital to an investor when shutting down their last company, only for the investor to offer it back for their new one.

• Usko Dental ($1.8M raised) → 2x exited founder’s story of pivoting from a web3 company to a dental marketplace.

Get full access to our library of 80+ case studies here. It’s growing every week.

It’s Time to Build… Faster

On April 18th, 2020 Marc Andreessen published “It’s Time To Build” to acknowledge a crisis of ambition in society and call for people to aim higher.

At least in SF, it became a technocratic rallying cry against the depths of pandemic-era depression.

In the four years since, the big story in tech has been the arrival of LLMs. We’re still seeing that play out and will likely for the rest of the decade.

But the rallying cry is about more than just AI — it was, more broadly, to care about society’s problems and work to solve them. AI is just a tool.

Now, we’re presented with a new wrinkle: building things will be more encouraged by the government.

Not because of new tech, but because of less red tape and the ability to better compete on price.

Here’s how the two biggest changes will impact the environment for builders:

Tariffs

I’ve seen a lot of bad takes on tariffs recently.

People claim that tariffs increase prices because international sellers will simply raise their prices to allow them to absorb the tariff.

The international sellers will increase prices, but this creates the opportunity for domestic companies (and startups) to undercut them.

Any industry that’s powered by overseas goods where cheap labor has made it cheaper to ship products in than build them in the US is suddenly up for grabs. And the wealth created stays in the US.

Reduced Regulations

I like working on hard problems, but I don’t like working on problems that are hard just because people decided to regulate them excessively.

There’s a point where it feels like rules designed to help consumers are actually getting in the way of allowing them to get help.

Bill Gurley talked about his experience working with (and being asked for bribes by) government officials in this fantastic talk he gave at the All In Summit a couple years ago. Listen to the first 2 minutes (and the rest tbh):

Elon’s crusade to cut red tape will result in two main things:

• Lower barriers to entry → startups can get up and running faster to try new approaches or get products in the hands of users

• Reduced compliance costs → incumbents won’t be able to prevent competition by lobbying for regulations that increase costs for startups, and that budget can get used for growth, product, etc. instead

And the result of those is faster innovation cycles, expanded markets, happier users, and more value being delivered in society.

When you combine all of this with everything that’s now possible because of AI, there’s never been a better time to start a company.

If these regulatory changes are able to be implemented, we will enter a new industrial revolution. It’s no coincidence that the last time the government was funded by tariffs in the late 1800’s, that’s exactly what happened.

The sheer amount of new startup opportunities that will be created is staggering to think about.

My Recommendation

So what should you do about all of this?

It’s simple.

Follow the news about tariffs and regulations closely over the next few months (or longer). Act quickly to attack opportunities when they emerge.

This is a new call to arms, to build in areas previously impossible for US-based companies to compete in.

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