Founder Diaries Newsletter - Issue 14
Welcome to our weekly digest of the latest news — from industry trends, AI, and founder stories to best practices.
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This Week in Tech: SaaS Headlines, Breaking Revenue Milestones & Startup Spotlights ⚡
📰 The Biggest Headlines in SaaS
Stay updated with the most significant developments in the SaaS industry, from groundbreaking product launches to major market shifts.
💰Revenue Records
Stay updated on leading companies breaking revenue milestones and fueling the future of technology and business growth.
🚀 Great achievements from TOP startups
Get insights into emerging startups poised to disrupt industries and lead innovation in the coming months.
Your curated roundup to stay sharp, informed, and ahead of the curve.
📰 The Biggest Headlines in SaaS
📰 OpenOps now integrates with Claude, ChatGPT, and other LLMs. According to Amit Saar:
“You can now connect the LLM that you already trust to OpenOps, and use it to help you write CLI commands and SQL queries, CUR queries and more - while building automated OpenOps workflows.”
“This is just the first step. We will be adopting all the industry standards we see forming for the new AI software stack - all with one thing in mind - helping practitioners build and run automations safely and govern their cloud.”
Stay tuned and follow for more.
📰 TikTok is coming for Google Maps 👀According to Jamie Frew:
“TikTok have been showing reviews on location tags for a while now.But they are now testing showing reviews inside the comments of location tagged videos. Which is a huge difference.”
“This means as you scroll through a creator’s video — you’ll see actual star ratings, written reviews, right alongside the comments.(Currently TikTok is showing Google reviews alongside TikTok reviews)”
One more thing for marketers to have to keep an eye on!
📰 Sam Altman just made his boldest move yet with OpenAI's new CEO of Applications. According to Kevin Henrikson:
“The vision is clear: Fidji drives business while Sam advances research—a complementary leadership ery agent lives ienabling commercial growth without compromising innovation.”
📰 Revolut plans $1.1 billion French expansion. According to Sam Boboev:
“British finance company Revolut said on Monday it plans to invest 1 billion euros ($1.1 billion) over the next three years on expanding in France and will soon apply for a French banking licence.”
“In an announcement as part of the "Choose France" investment summit, hosted by French President Emmanuel Macron at Versailles Palace near Paris, Revolut said it would open a new office in Paris for its operations in Western Europe and create at least 200 new jobs in France.”
📰Microsoft began laying off about 6,000 workers Tuesday, nearly 3% of its entire workforce and its largest job cuts in more than two years.
“Microsoft employed 228,000 full-time workers as of last June, the last time it reported its annual headcount. About 55% of those workers were in the U.S.”
“Microsoft announced a smaller round of performance-based layoffs in January. But the 3% cuts will be Microsoft’s biggest since early 2023, when the company cut 10,000 workers, almost 5% of its workforce, joining other tech companies that were scaling back their pandemic-era expansions.”
📰Amazon enlists AI for streaming ads.
“Imagine you're sobbing your way through a tearjerker on Prime Video. You hit pause — and the ad that pops up offers you tissues. That's the vision Amazon laid out this week: using AI to generate "pause ads" related to whatever you're watching. “
“Pause ads have been around since 2018, but Amazon hopes to remake them as "extensions of the entertainment experience, not interruptions." It's an experiment with a massive test audience: The ad tier of Prime Video now reaches more than 130 million Americans.”
💰Revenue Records
💰 Cyrus Shirazi, CEO at Haven just crossed $5M in revenue and 400+ customers at Haven.
"Here are a few things I’ve learned along the way:
1. Community beats cold ads 2. Help your customers, even when it’s not your job
3. Hire fast. Fire fast.
4. Be careful what you buy
5. Doing A+ tasks only. "
💰Amos Bar-Joseph, CEO @ getswan.com is happy to share that they’ve added $300K ARR in the last 30 days with a one-person GTM operation.
"Three principles into the system that changed everything:
- Mission Control: Evn Slack, creating a single nervous system for our entire GTM motion.
- Adaptive Intelligence: Built-in feedback loops turn every interaction into learning, making the system exponentially smarter over time.
- Strategic Oversight: Strategic decisions always flow through human judgment, scaling execution without sacrificing trust and intimacy.
The result? A system that doesn't just execute - it evolves!"
💰 Maor Shlomo, Founder at Base44 is on track to make $100K profit this month.
“89% of the cost still goes to model usage - with Claude 3.7 leading the charge and burning through my bank account.”
“I’m trying to keep things lean, relying on tech instead of hiring wherever I can.”
💰 Lovable hits $50m ARR after just 6 months!!! According to Seb Johnson’s post: “Yesterday the CEO and Founder of Lovable Anton Osika shared that the company had just hit an insane milestone: $50m ARR after just 6 months.”
"This follows:
🚀 Hitting $4m ARR in 4 weeks
🚀 Hitting $17m ARR after 3 months"
💰 Austin Hughes, Co-Founder & CEO @ Unify is thrilled to announce that Unify grew ARR 12% in April alone!
"Here’s what our team of 39 got done last month:
1/ Hired 5 new team members
2/ Built a 6-figure book of expansion opportunities
3/ Brand, vision, and mission refresh"
🚀 Great achievements from TOP startups
🚀 Justin Lee, Co-founder @ Den is planning the biggest SaaS launch in silicon valley history.
“SaaS is about to be unified forever.”
🚀 Isabelle Dijkhorst, Co-founder & CEO @Foundity is launching Foundity 2.0 is on May 26th
"We’re launching:
- A global startup database to showcase your team, traction, and updates
- The Circle: our community forum for real conversations, advice, and insights
- A learning hub with blogs, videos, guest webinars from top guest speakers and more."
🚀 Win Wang, Founder @ ParaQuery just launched on YC!
“ParaQuery uses GPUs to 5x your data warehouse's efficiency”
🚀 Lennard Schmidt, Co-founder & CEO at Langdock is excited to launch the Langdock mobile app!
“Over the past few weeks, we've been building mobile apps for iOS and Android. This week, we finally released them to all of our users.”
🚀 Jonathan Courtney, CEO @ AJ&Smart GmbH finally has a website for his new business: AJ&Smart Partners!
“We're not an agency though, more like part-time advisors (that feel like co-founders) and we take a cut of revenue or profit depending on the size of your business when we start. Most of the work happens through calls, in-person hangouts and texts.”
🚀 André Monforte, CEO at @Aidvize is launching a completely new way for Marketing teams or Product teams to generate qualified leads & show their product.
“It’s a smarter top-of-funnel engine, one that gives your Sales team context-rich, intent-driven leads and opens the door to real conversations, faster. If your marketing motion is generating leads but not pipeline, this is your unlock.”
🚀 Sofiia Shvets, CEO at Claid.ai is happy to share that you can now generate fashion model photos using just one input image.
"We’ve also built a model library with different body type and poses, so you can create entire campaigns in consistent style. More categories coming!"
Cofounder at Den (YC X25) hiring!!!
2moIsabelle Dijkhorst Win Wang 🤝 it’s lonely at the top
Founding GTM @ Haven
2moThanks Spendbase - Haven will get your accounting & tax sorted, guaranteed
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Comp mi
Co-founder & CEO at OpenOps
2moThank you for sharing the news Spendbase ! Worth noting the new features are available as open source on our GitHub repo: https://github.com/openops-cloud/openops