Tech and startups 04-11-2025
Startup funding skyrockets, OpenAI plans massive IPO
đŁ Headlines
⢠Startups are embedding regulatory strategy as a competitive moat, while the EU plans to expand SEC-style oversight over crypto and stock venues, making legal and compliance expertise a scaling advantage.
đ§ Company Engineering Blogs
Building a GenAI Agent for Partner-Guest Messaging (bookingâ.ai). GenAI agent for partner-guest messaging using Python, LangGraph, FastAPI, OpenAI GPT-4 Mini, with PII guardrails and multilingual retrieval
Designing for Flow: How Leaders Create the Conditions for Team Productivity (engineeringâ.gustoâ.com). Leadership-focused guide to designing flow: reducing cognitive load, setting rhythms, and enabling deep work for sustainable team productivity
Improving performance by prefetching product pages from Etsy Search (etsyâ.com). Prefetching product pages from Etsy Search to reduce latency and improve user experience with techniques and instrumentation
đŁď¸ Personal Essays & Career
Hired Through GitHub: Part 2 (zedâ.dev). Two open-source contributors share paths into Zed: Smit fixing Linux and core editor bugs, Bennet pairing and interning before a staff role
Comparing interviews at 8 large tech companies (blogâ.pragmaticengineerâ.com). Puneet Patwariâs 60+ interviews across Meta, Amazon, Uber, and more reveal patterns in large-tech interview processes and outcomes
Why Engineers Can't Be Rational About Programming Languages (spf13â.com). Explores why engineersâ language choices are driven by identity and emotion, not data, with examples from PHP, Perl, Go, and Rust
A Newcomer Baby & Reflections on Newcomer's Five Year Anniversary (newcomerâ.co). Esther Emilia Newcomerâs birth amid reflections on five years of Newcomer, profitability from events, insider tech media, conflicts of interest, and team growth
30 Little Thank-Yous (cweagansâ.net). A reflection on software as a people-centric craft, urging November LinkedIn recommendations to acknowledge colleagues and mentors
2025-11-01: Free Man! (curmudgeons-cornerâ.com). Curmudgeon's Corner Episode 960 discusses job layoff, burnout, remote work, tenure, and corporate culture with Sam and Ivan sharing personal experiences
đ Founder Mindset & Ideas
Why You Should Never Start a Software Business (thebootstrappedfounderâ.com). Thoughtful, sometimes sarcastic look at why solopreneurs should slow down starting a SaaS, with lessons on loneliness, burnout, change, and persistence
Startup idea for better tacos (ryanckulpâ.com). Entrepreneurial ideas in tacos, feedback loops, and restaurant iteration; mentions Paul Graham, live chat, and Startups
065: We're in the 3rd age of SaaS (shareâ.transistorâ.fm). Discusses three eras of SaaS, bootstrapping vs. consulting, marketing, and the impact of LLMs on the SaaS landscape
Time to Start is Now! (shailendrabishtâ.substackâ.com). Midlife realignment, Nvidiaâs $5T milestone, AI-enabled platforms, and Indiaâs Startup20 shift toward infrastructure for builders
đĽ Engineering Leadership & Teaming
My Mistakes and Advice Leading Engineering Teams (newsletterâ.eng-leadershipâ.com). Leadership lessons from scaling from 1 to 5+ teams, focusing on delegation, coaching, and executive relationships
a Junior, a Senior and I - on Team Efficiency (thinkinglabsâ.io). Focus on outcomes not output and continuous integration as a holy grail for team efficiency and collaboration
Technology Executive Fireside Chat with Thierry de Pauw (thinkinglabsâ.io). Thierry de Pauw discusses feature branching vs trunk-based development, CI, testing, mentoring, and AI code tools like Copilot and Code Whisperer
Bias towards action (tedspenceâ.com). Bias towards action for software teams: default paths, faster decisions, and safer drafts in code reviews and signoffs
Benjamin Button Software Engineers (avivbenyosefâ.com). How senior engineers from big companies can slow startups; adjust expectations, tradeoffs, and transparency to avoid velocity loss
On Developers in C-Level Meetings (radekmieâ.dev). Practical guidance for developers in C-level budget meetings, emphasizing clarity, questions, and value of technical perspective
đ Product Strategy & Discovery
It only took 20 years, but the Strategic Management Society now Believes the Lean Startup is a Strategy (steveblankâ.substackâ.com). Steve Blank traces Lean Startup origins from wartime OSRD to Stanford, VC shifts, and a learning-driven strategy under uncertainty
The Best Product Managers Optimize For Reversibility and Optionality (mdalmijnâ.com). Reversibility and optionality guide product decisions, using poker analogies and modular architectures to delay commitments
What Is Product Discovery? A Tactical Guide for Product Managers (aakashgâ.com). Describes product discovery as a three-pillar framework (Desirability, Viability, Feasibility) with continuous discovery habits, OSTs, and real-world examples like Airbnb, Netflix, and Slack
How to Find Your Wedge (speedrunâ.substackâ.com). Kick off with a tightly scoped product wedge, test fast, and plan a broader vision for fundraising and scaling
Plan for learning, not certainty (timcheadleâ.com). Plan for learning over certainty; hypotheses, reversible decisions, and collaborative validation to build agile products
Customer Acquisition Trumps Perfect Code in the AI Era (bartsâ.space). Generative AI lowers software costs; focus shifts from perfect code to customer acquisition and rapid go-to-market strategies
𧰠Build Guides & Stack Choices
Why startups choose React (and when you shouldn't) (evilmartiansâ.com). Startup funding favors React, but higher-quality, cross-framework projects and developer satisfaction reveal deeper ecosystem dynamics
Plan for "Untitled" tvOS App (rizwanâ.dev). Planning a tvOS app with SwiftUI, GitHub, and Claude/Sonnet 4.5 to draft a milestone-driven spec.md and milestones.md
How to Build a SaaS App with AI: From Idea to Production in 2025 (aakashgâ.com). AI-assisted SaaS building with Claude Code, Cursor, GitHub Copilot; PRD to production in 9 steps for non-c programmers
The Never Rewrite Podcast, Episode One Hundred Twenty-Eight: The Pains Caused by Differing Abstractions (shermanonsoftwareâ.com). Discusses a SaaS rewrite tragedy, extending the Objective-C compiler, and lessons from experienced developers
đ ď¸ AI Agents in Products & Ops
How Resolve AI is Building Agents to Keep the Worldâs Software Running (greylockâ.com). Resolve AI builds AI agents to autonomously triage, debug, and resolve incidents, aiming to 70% faster resolution and 20 hours saved per engineer
AI Coding Agents Economics (diego-pachecoâ.blogspotâ.com). AI coding agents, productivity claims, tech debt, and assumptions from industry leaders like Google, Goldman, and AWS in a tech-blog discussion
Andrew Shindyapin: AIâs Impact on Software Development (skmurphyâ.com). GAUNTLET AI bootcamp insights on AI-driven software development, BMAD method, Cursor rules, Claude/OpenAI tools, and legacy code strategies
Councils of agents (theengineeringmanagerâ.substackâ.com). Using Claude Code to build expert councils of agents for technical and executive decision-making
What if software shipped with a software engineer? (manuelâ.kiesslingâ.net). Embedded AI engineer enables onâdemand features with versioning, tests, and stability in a traditional app
Build in Public: Day Zero (datobraâ.com). Building an open-source 'WYKRA' real-time AI agent to discover influencers and communities across platforms using Bright Data and n8n
đ¤ AI Coding & Vibe Workflows
New trend: programming by kicking off parallel AI agents (blogâ.pragmaticengineerâ.com). Explores parallel AI agents (Claude Code, Codex, Cursor) and impact on productivity, flow, and software engineering practices
Live from the OpenAI forum: Learning to code in the age of AI (stackoverflowâ.blog). OpenAI Forum fireside chat with Stack Overflow CEO on AI-assisted coding, developer roles, and future collaboration
The rise of coding with parallel agents (leaddevâ.com). AI-enabled parallel coding with agents like Claude Code reshapes workflows, requiring orchestration, prompts, and agent wranglers
The new calculus of AI-based coding (blogâ.joemagâ.dev). AI agents boost code throughput, but require faster tests, tighter feedback, and improved CICD and coordination
Vibe Prototyping & Cursor (hvpandyaâ.com). Vibe coding with Cursor: practical tips, Git workflows, taxonomy, plan mode, and real-data prototyping insights
I Shipped a Game with ChatGPT: Why Vibe Codingâs Probably Not for Everyone (productpickleâ.online). Product Manager uses LLMs for Vibe Coding to ship three daily puzzle games with ChatGPT, detailing challenges and outcomes
đ§ LocalâFirst & Data
Constraints, leading metrics, and local-first software đĄ (refactoringâ.fm). Strategies for constraints, leading metrics, and local-first software with TOC, developer experience, and Adam Wiggins
There's no such thing as neutral technology (werdâ.io). Values-driven tech choices for newsrooms; assess alignment, create exit ramps, and consider data ownership and encryption
Commented on "Making a Shows Tracker with Jazz" (noeldemartinâ.com). Building a Shows Tracker with Jazz; exploring local-first stacks, Jazz vs Solid, React/Svelte options, and self-hosted sync engines
Started "Making a Shows Tracker with Jazz" (noeldemartinâ.com). Developer explores building a local-first shows tracker with Jazz, comparing React, Svelte, and Vue options while self-hosting a sync backend
Small Data Becomes Big Data (tomtunguzâ.com). From local DuckDB to cloud via two letters, scaling from 50 to 2,000+ podcasts and leveraging MotherDuck for auto-processing
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