Chad Fowler

GTM goals for early stage technical companies: 1. Be referenced often in internal meetings of your prospects (exploratory phase of adoption) 2. Be referenced often in externally facing architecture diagrams of the top companies in your market (first path to production + PMF) 3. Be endorsed often in communities as experts/influencers see 1 + 2 appear without your promotion (your real ARR + NRR story happens here) 4. Be endorsed as the gold standard by communities (moat, hang on for dear life and keep shipping and making money) #2 is v hard as things shift often, but Founder time should be with customers to make this occur as often as possible. #3 + #4 become your roadshow focus over time so you can scale your company.

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Yes, I’ve read the Culper short report on AppLovin. My thoughts: No, it’s not revelatory. Pre-loads and one-click installs on Android are common practice. Digital Turbine and ironSource offer similar products. App developers pay on app open. In fact, there’s no way to confirm the install absent an open. AppLovin also offers ROAS bidding. The notion that Google Play would be unaware of any malicious activity by AppLovin, the largest in-app broker ad network, is not credible. AppLovin is more than a decade old. Just because you’ve never heard of it doesn’t mean it’s a young company. Regarding front-running Meta spend: given the scale of AppLovin’s eCommerce advertisers’ Meta spend, they can necessarily measure incrementality. They wouldn’t scale on AppLovin if they didn’t see incrementality. I also don’t see how genuine front-running would be possible in an auction for in-app inventory. Further, it’s obvious why performance across the channels would be correlated. Full disclosure: I have a small, long-dated call position on AppLovin that amounts to <5% of my PA (notional). I have no commercial relationship with the company.

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Isn't it funny that some companies selling digital transformation run their own ops on Gdocs and Slack tribal knowledge? We're building systems to revolutionize how others work while our own processes live in people's heads or get buried in endless message threads. But it's the reality for so many of us. Sure, maybe you have some documentation. Maybe even a lot of it. But let's be honest - it's probably scattered across folders inside folders with no clear structure. And as you grow, you end up with managers managing managers managing knowledge gaps. And this "knowledge tax" eventually catches up. Onboarding new team members takes forever. The same questions get asked over and over. Critical processes change depending on who's executing them. Every time someone leaves, a piece of your operational knowledge walks out the door. When you step back, you see the truth: your growth ceiling isn't market size or product - it's your ability to translate strategy and knowledge into execution This is even more critical in MicroSaaS, where operating leverage is king. So, we built what I call "the system that informs all systems" - an interconnected knowledge framework on Notion with: > Operating models that define objectives and metrics > Playbooks that provide context and approach > SOPs that give step-by-step instructions Nothing revolutionary about the concept, but the impact has been transformative. I've documented our entire approach - templates, real-world examples, and implementation steps from operating our MicroSaaS here >> https://lnkd.in/eaE3abt4 #operations #business #entrepreneurship #saas

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Prediction: The next billion-dollar SaaS companies won’t charge for software, they’ll give it away for free. Some of the most successful founders we’re backing at SignalFire aren’t focused on selling licenses or seats, but rather on owning entire workflows and ecosystems. We've found that when you embed AI into a high-friction, under-digitized process in industries (education, healthcare, government procurement), you can win the trust of the user who controls the action -- even if they don’t control the budget. That clears the way for you to monetize transactions downstream like payers, suppliers, logistics, finance. We call this model "Networked SaaS", and we’re seeing it reshape entire categories. It's already working really well across some of our our portfolio companies: - Verse Medical gives nurses free AI-powered ordering tools, then monetizes fulfillment - Grow Therapy handles therapist ops, and gets paid through sessions and payers - Stampli turns accounts payable into a real-time financial engine for enterprises We believe that for founders building in complex, multi-stakeholder markets, this will be the winning playbook. More in our latest thesis from Wayne Hu: https://lnkd.in/g7tgsUcG

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I’ve come to believe that early experiences carry disproportionate weight - far more than we often acknowledge. For designers and builders, “minimum viable” may suffice for validating core functionality, but it rarely earns trust or sparks genuine delight. While velocity matters, I’ve always struggled with the notion that early versions should be merely viable, especially in a world where attention is scarce and emotional resonance is everything. This extends beyond product. Do you show up as the minimum viable version of yourself in your work, your relationships, your craft? I would encourage you to challenge the conventional MVP framework. Replace it with the Minimum Awesome Product. This doesn’t mean it’s fully-featured or pixel perfect. But it should be worthy of attention. Memorable, even evocative in the way it triggered emotion. The kind of product that prompts someone to say, “I didn’t know I needed this, but now I can’t live without it.” You can refine mechanics over time, but the emotional experience of a first interaction is singular and unrecoverable. Don’t settle for viability. Build something worth remembering… and make it awesome! ❤️‍🔥

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Startups building for national security can’t afford to waste time fighting through bureaucracy just to test, iterate, and deploy. That’s why I’m fired up to share a new resource for Black Flag teams: thanks to our partnership with Second Front, participating companies now get free access to the 2F Workshop dev environment — the fastest on-ramp to fielding software on DoD networks through Game Warden. This isn’t a sandbox. It’s a launchpad. If you're building in defense, intelligence, or dual-use tech — apply to Black Flag and plug straight into the real-world infrastructure that matters. 🏴‍☠️

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I thought this was a good and very reasonable talk by Eleanor Millman on how to prioritize projects for a platform engineering team: https://lnkd.in/gaYtUHRH A few insights I took from it: - Unlike product features which can be more directly tied to revenue, platform engineering work is a couple steps removed. But that doesn't mean it's unimportant! Far from it, platform engineering projects can make everyone at the company more efficient, able to produce higher quality software, etc. - While "urgency" is always going to be a factor, you don't want to just be putting out fires, you want be able to prioritize work which is "high impact" ... even if that impact isn't felt immediately. - Good rule of thumb: prioritize "highest impact for lowest effort". - The talk has some ideas on what factors to choose for impact, and how to blend them. For instance "speed of development" is one factor, "cloud cost optimization" might be another. The weighting of different impact factors can change over time, depending on the needs of the business. I would say that a lot of companies don't have much methodology here but I can really see the value in codifying it. You can always change the methodology or the weighting if it's spitting out results that don't pass the smell test or you really feel it is leading the company astray. Clarity can give the org more freedom to put resources behind projects that would otherwise never be taken on. When things are unclear, prioritization still happens implicitly, but the decisions tend to be a lot more random and fear-based and the org is worse off as a result.

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I've been in tech long enough to watch Stripe and Notion go from startup toys to enterprise infrastructure. Win the frontier first. The enterprise follows. "It’s just for startups" is a feature, not a bug. Cristina Cordova from Linear resurfaced this critique last week. Her response: It's "the starting line, not the finish line." She's totally right. Here’s what I’d add: A category isn't just a product - it's a new way of working that makes the old way obsolete. Instead of adding features to email, Slack created a category where work happens in channels vs. inboxes. Figma created a category where design happens in browsers, not desktop apps. Here's why "just for startups" is an incredibly strong signal that a new category will win: 1. Startups have zero switching costs and tons of urgency An enterprise takes 6-18 months to switch tools. A startup switches in 18 minutes. When you're burning $50K/month and have 6 months of runway, every tool either multiplies your velocity or dies. This selection pressure doesn't exist anywhere else. The frontier doesn't tolerate mediocrity. 2. Categories spread through people, not procurement That junior PM using your tool at a seed startup moves into leadership at a growth-stage company within two years. They don't evaluate vendors. They install what worked before. One operator infects an entire org. Discord went from "just for gamers" to the default community platform for countless startups. Airtable was "just a spreadsheet" before VCs started running entire funds on it. Large organizations have immune systems. They reject foreign objects. New formats are foreign objects by definition. They violate existing workflows, break departmental boundaries, and make current expertise obsolete. Startups don't have antibodies because they don't have institutions to protect. Of course, you can build enterprise-first and succeed - especially if you're solving problems enterprises already know they have. But if you're trying to create new categories that change how work happens, the frontier is often the clearer path. You're optimizing for the organism, not the immune system. That’s why "just for startups" isn't a critique. It's confirmation you're building something new.

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This isn’t just faster dev. It’s faster everything. There’s something happening right now in the design systems space that’s worth your attention, especially if you care about shipping real product faster, with less handoff and less guesswork. I’ve been experimenting with a lot lately with various workflows that connects Figma's MCP server to our internal design system (Altitude) using Cursor. The results are hard to ignore. → Figma component selected → Code generated using our tokens, variants, and structure → Functional, testable, fully coded component in minutes But that’s only half the story. The second half is where things get really interesting. I built a Storybook UI Generator that runs a local MCP server, talks to the codebase, and lets non-devs create and update UIs using natural language prompts. That’s the jump from dev to product, from coded to customized. It’s not just faster handoff. It’s faster everything. This setup creates two accelerations: → One from design to dev → Another from dev to product-ready UI The whole thing is still early. There are no benchmarks yet. But the signal is strong, and the impact feels real. I pulled together some thoughts and all the demos here: 👉 https://lnkd.in/gEBciwFD If you’re building design systems, front-end infrastructure, or any kind of internal tools, this is worth testing. Don’t overthink it. Pick a simple setup or plug it into something you’re already using. Just try it. #designsystems #ai

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Warp is now growing super fast (~$1M ARR added per week now) but it's been a long road. I sat down with Aakash Gupta to break down how we are Warp is building something uniquely useful in the agentic development space. 🎥 Full conversation: https://lnkd.in/eNhwcmKs 🎧 Spotify: https://lnkd.in/essmYAff 🍎 Apple: https://lnkd.in/e-qxpVUW Here’s some of what I’ve learned from Warp's journey: 1. Start with the problem, not the tech. We began as a better terminal, but our breakthrough growth came when we repositioned as an "agentic development environment" built around how developers actually want to work with AI. 2. Find the native integration point. We tried chat panels like everyone else, but realized the command line is already about telling computers what to do - we just needed to let people do it in English instead of terminal language. 3. Catch users at the moment of need. Instead of product tours or tooltips, we surface agent suggestions when users hit errors or friction points. This creates immediate value and naturally introduces the agentic workflow. 4. Dogfood relentlessly. We have a "coding mandate" requiring all engineers to start every task with a prompt. The feedback loops from our own team using Warp to build Warp have been invaluable. 5. Build for the new workflow, not the old one. Most AI coding tools bolt chat onto traditional IDEs, but we designed from first principles around prompt-driven development with seamless handoffs between human and agent. 6. Invest heavily in evals once you have demand. We started fast without evals to validate market need, then built comprehensive testing including public benchmarks like SWE-bench where we're now top performers. 7. Pricing for agents breaks traditional SaaS models. Fixed subscriptions create perverse incentives where heavy usage hurts margins, while pure usage-based pricing makes users watch the meter constantly. 8. Focus on depth of engagement over breadth. The strongest predictor of paid conversion is users having long, complex conversations with agents on a regular basis, not just trying it once. 9. Intelligence as a primitive changes everything. Just like you used to choose databases or APIs, every product builder now has access to intelligence as a fundamental building block that can transform any workflow. 10. We're still in the early phases. Most people don't know what AI agents are yet, but within a year the majority of development tasks will start with a prompt - that's how fundamental this shift will be. I do a pretty cool live demo of building using only voice as well -- check it out!

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In 2026, everything I do will be in service of founders. Specifically: helping founders cross the line from 'builder' to 'operator.' It’s the first Sunday, and I felt inspired to share a mini-manifesto for the year ahead. This transition (from builder to operator) is where I see many high-potential founders struggle most. Building is the easy part (for most of you). - You can ship. - You can hustle. - You can close early deals. Where companies actually die? Business systems and operations. I’ve helped build three different businesses past $20M ARR. Never alone. Always with teams. Always with systems. At a certain point, founder-led everything becomes the bottleneck. Sales is usually the first place this shows up. When sales lives in the founder’s head + inbox, growth caps. Not because the founder can’t sell, but because the business can’t operate without them. From ‘Founder Chapel’ to ‘David Beats Goliath,’ and through the projects and partnerships I take on this year, everything will serve one goal: Helping founders transform into EXCEPTIONAL operators. The kind people want to work with, follow, invest in, and trust with real responsibility. Builders are common these days. Operators are much rarer. Companies scale when systems carry the weight founders were never meant to carry alone.

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Last week's musings. You'll notice some reoccuring themes... 𝟭. 𝗜𝗻𝗱𝘂𝘀𝘁𝗿𝗶𝗮𝗹 𝗿𝗼𝗯𝗼𝘁𝗶𝗰𝘀/𝗱𝗮𝘁𝗮 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗥𝗟 🍇 (𝗿𝗲𝗾𝘂𝗲𝘀𝘁 𝘁𝗼 𝗷𝗮𝗺)  -recurring idea i've been mulling -robotics is happening particularly in industrial setting  -still lots of problems, but the revolution is happening and there are  work arounds until the tech is really there -prices in theory are highest they will ever be (impact of tariffs?) -folks looking for pre-training data, but eventually will also need fine tuned data -what data fidelity is good enough? 𝟮. 𝗧𝗿𝗮𝗻𝘀𝗗𝗶𝗴𝗺 𝗮𝘀 𝗶𝗻𝗰𝗿𝗲𝗱𝗶𝗯𝗹𝗲 𝗯𝘂𝘀𝗶𝗻𝗲𝘀𝘀 + 𝗲𝘅𝗽𝗹𝗼𝗿𝗶𝗻𝗴 𝗵𝗮𝗿𝗱 𝘁𝗲𝗰𝗵 🍇  -it's an absolute monster, $75B market cap and up 300% over the last 5 years. - aircraft parts, 90% proprietary but high margin - killer aftermarket business  - how many software biz have lifetime value of 50 years?! -has lots of things software investors look for (sticky revenue, high margin, defensibility in GTM and unique flywheel, focus, etc.)  -makes me think way more about hard tech viability 𝟯. 𝗧𝗿𝘂𝗲 𝗳𝗼𝗰𝘂𝘀 - from Neil Shah on Invest Like the Best - incredible listen - few people have maniacal focus and it's so important for founders 𝟰. 𝗦𝗽𝗲𝗿𝗺 𝗥𝗮𝗰𝗶𝗻𝗴 -WTF  𝟱. 𝗖𝗼𝗿𝗹𝗲𝗼 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗥𝗼𝗯𝗼𝘁 𝗛𝗼𝗿𝘀𝗲 -Kawasaki released prototype and it's wild! Substack for full thoughts: https://lnkd.in/gzNtkEHk

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