Brex's 58% Haircut: The Fintech Reckoning Arrives
Capital One acquires Brex for $5.15 billion, 58% below peak valuation....
Lessons from founding companies, advising startups, and watching hundreds of ventures succeed or fail. Strategy and fundraising.
23 articles
A comprehensive checklist for evaluating startup technology: architecture, code quality, infrastructure, team, and security.
Capital One acquires Brex for $5.15 billion, 58% below peak valuation....
The fintech funding winter wasn't death - it was a reset. Capital is flowing to companies with real traction and clear unit economics. The 2021 playbook is dead....
Down-rounds hit 15.9% in 2025. AI takes 33% of VC funding. The 2026 math favors bootstrap more than any time since the pre-VC era. Here's how to decide....
Why a wave of AI startups will collapse in 2027: unsustainable unit economics, model commoditization, and the venture math that no longer works....
Most pivots destroy more value than they create. Knowing when to iterate versus pivot is a survival skill....
MVP was meant to be a discipline for validated learning, not permission to ship half-finished software....
Per-seat pricing is a legacy model from when humans were the unit of work. AI is exposing the lie: vendors want seats, not efficiency. Here's what's replacing it....
The outsourcing boomerang: every company that outsourced its core engineering eventually had to bring it back in, at higher cost and worse quality....
Knowing when to shut down is harder than knowing when to start. The sunk cost fallacy kills more founders than failure....
48% of founders planning to sell have no exit strategy. M&A accounts for 85%+ of VC-backed exits. The founders who get the best outcomes planned for them....
Despite the comforting acronym, a SAFE is often anything but safe for a founder. Learn why priced rounds offer better protection for your cap table....
VC funding creates misaligned incentives. Bootstrapped companies often build better products and more sustainable businesses....
