Reading an Acqui-Hire Before You Sign: People, IP, or the Company
A platform-backed exit can hand over people and a license while leaving the entity behind, so founders should price the deal around what the buyer can actually take.
Company Profiles
Companies and the decisions that shaped them
Buy the logos, not the team: when a rival deal beats building
A four-call playbook for buying a rival's logos and feature set, keeping the price quiet, and deferring integration until after peak demand.
How to price and protect a product when one AI vendor supplies the brain
Treat the AI vendor as a rented capability: price the recurring relationship, keep customer data, and contract for an exit before you sign.
Run this Supabase dependency audit before the next reprice
A short audit separates agent-friendly growth from data-layer lock-in before pricing follows the pivot.
Buy vs build: Replit's Atta integration as a checklist
A quick integration shows what to check before buying a capability.
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Pricing a platform sale: the shell is the exit math
When a buyer takes the product and people, the founder's real deal is the cash, debt status, and tax losses left in the listed shell.
Kill a popular product, then rebuild: the Lightfield sequence
A practical sequence for founders deciding whether a popular product is mission-critical or just a viral distraction.
Two-Number Test: When User Growth Stops Funding
A lean founder should stop treating users as a funding strategy when remaining runway cannot reach a round the revenue, retention, and burn can support.
Price a maturing SaaS exit with the Miro deal
A roll-up buyer's cash offer is a test case; price the exit on ARR quality, multiple, net cash, restructuring, rollover, and closing risk.
Audit founder control after Automattic's 33-hour CEO reversal
Run a founder-control audit before a hostile board vote can move you.
Coding-Agent Dependency Checklist: Factory's $5B Jump
A sharp valuation jump turns an AI coding tool into a vendor decision; use this checklist before standardizing it across engineering.
Run This Observability Vendor Check Before Standardizing on Datadog
A practical check for founders standardizing on Datadog: agent lock-in, cost controls, BYOC, external logs, and enterprise signals.
When Twilio Is Worth the Lock-In
A practical scorecard for founders deciding whether Twilio is a reasonable early-stage notification stack or a default that quietly becomes a lock-in.
Before Moving Treasury to Mercury, Run This Five-Point Check
A Mercury treasury switch is a cash-management decision: check deposit insurance, sweep limits, net yield, minimums, and exit terms before moving idle cash.
Corporate-card vendor check, starting with Brex
Approve a corporate card only after matching eligibility, rewards, fees, and controls to the company's actual age, entity, and spend.
Deel EOR Vendor Check: 2026 Payroll Map
A founder checklist for testing EOR and contractor platforms on coverage, legal employer status, pricing, payment rails, and stablecoin treasury risk.
Use Figma's Revenue Report to Renew, Negotiate, or Switch
Figma's revenue report gives buyers a scorecard: revenue growth, ARR customer mix, retention, and margin/AI usage.
Use Shopify's revenue model to find the costs that grow with your sales
Shopify's fees form a dependency map: subscription baseline, payment take-rate, and app spend, with a margin threshold for each layer.
Choosing a Banking Data API: Plaid's Truist Deal as a Stress Test
Score banking data APIs on coverage, migration path, pricing, integration risk, and regulatory exposure before defaulting to the biggest name.
How to read a $44 billion spend-management raise without betting your roadmap on it
A big spend-management raise is a category signal. Use the funding tests before you build another card.
Map Stripe in 60 Seconds: Payments, Billing, Fees, and Founder Programs
A founder-facing map of Stripe's payments, Billing, global coverage, fees, uptime, and startup programs.
Canva's Public-Status Profile for Vendor Decisions
Canva's private status is a disclosure gap, not proof of instability; founders should profile listing, liquidity, financial trend, and dependency before relying on it.