Howardism · Vol. 03Plate II · No. 02
Startup, tagged.
Notes6TagStartupOldest18 May 2026Newest23 May 2026
Every article tagged startup, newest first.
| Title | Summary | Date |
|---|---|---|
| The AI-Native Safe-Choice Inversion | Buying the legacy incumbent used to be "safe"; post-AI, *being* the incumbent = not AI-native; boards give buyers air cover; a counter-positioning play | |
| Campfire | AI-native ERP (YC S23) pulling customers off NetSuite; custom foundation model + agent platform; Series B (Accel/Ribbit); doubling ARR/quarter since Q4 2024 | |
| Founder-Led Sales Discipline | Stay founder-led until PMF; don't offload sales to an AE *or* an agent; explicit tension with Founder As Agent Orchestrator | |
| Narrow Wedge into a Legacy Market | Disrupt without being feature-complete: be the best for a narrow customer profile (tech cos outgrowing QuickBooks); Google-Sheets MVP; the wedge-flip lesson | |
| Product Velocity as Moat | Shipping speed as differentiator + trust signal ("you'll scale with us"); a treadmill that must convert into durable lock-in | |
| AI-Native Startup Lifecycle | Anthropic's May 2026 reframing of Idea/MVP/Launch/Scale assuming AI infrastructure: each stage's headcount/capital/skill gates dissolve; lean unicorn as deliberate target |