Long Live Vibe Coding

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It’s been growing like crazy thanks to y’all, and now we’re thinking about what other services we can build that you’d find helpful.

So, tell me:

Anyway, here’s today at a glance:

🔗 Houck’s Picks

My favorite finds of the week.

Fundraising

• Peter Walker on equity trends for first 8 hires (Link)

• Chris Tottman on de-risking at different funding stages (Link)

Growth

• Michael Mignano on remaining moats (Link)

• 15 lessons learned from scaling an app to $45K MRR (Link)

ICYMI

• Stop Just Wishing. Start Achieving. GF Coaching provides the proven framework for success in work and life. (Link)*

• Sarah Levinger on psychological pricing tips (Link)

• Mrinal Singh on how to interview at YC (Link)

• Peter Kazanjy on the thee enterprise deal closes (Link)

• Palle Broe’s top 30 AI unicorns with fewest employees (Link)

• Andrew Chen shares DoorDash’s v1 (Link)

• How to launch your own AI business (Link)

• Marc Lou on how to find startup ideas (Link)

💡 Opportunity: AI Domain Problem Solver

One of my favorite niche industries is domain purchasing specifically because it’s such an annoying part of running a company.

Most good .coms are long taken or being squatted on, which presents a situation where if a founder wants the legitimacy of a .com they almost always have to overpay (and often by quite a bit).

That means the negotiation process of acquiring those domains is a tense moment for most founders. Is that the type of situation where you’d be more (or less) likely to trust an AI agent over yourself?

Basecamp’s Jason Fried thinks so, because it’s not pleasureful work for most people:

What other “busy work” agents could be businesses?

🧠 Framework: Small ‘s’ strategy

This one’s for the later stage founders.

If you’ve achieved PMF, and have a scalable growth channel, you’ve probably raised your Series A (at least) and have various heads of departments and senior leaders at the company.

With that level of stability, you can begin running the “small s strategy” — the ‘s’ stands for strategy, with a “big S” being a 3-5+ year strategy, and a “little s” being more like ~2.

At this stage you’re probably thinking about the big S but more practically focused on the little s still.

Maybe it’s your first time leading a team of senior execs on a product strategy sprint. If so, this framework that was featured in Lenny’s Newsletter can help:

📈 Trend: Vibe Coding

A quarter of the most recent YC batch isn’t bothering with software engineering.

Nope. Instead, they’re vibe coding.

For these startups, 95%+ of their code is written by AI. This might seem crazy but it actually makes sense:

Most of the code you write early on when you’re exploring the idea maze needs to be done quickly so you can get user feedback faster, and will likely get thrown out later anyway.

The gain you get by using AI in terms of speed is, therefore, more valuable than what you lose in control.

For products with highly unique requirements, regulatory concerns, or otherwise extremely challenging codebases will likely not fall into this group anytime soon but — let’s be honest — most products likely could.

Garry Tan and YC explain why vibe coding is the future:

💬 Quote: No One Is Coming to Save You

Another week, another reminder that being a founder requires a lot from you.

If you’re looking for comfort, there are corporate 9-to-5s.

We build products and businesses because we want more than that — both in terms of fulfillment and financial upside (and the freedom that comes with it).

Don’t procrastinate the hard conversations and hard decisions. No one is coming to save you.

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