BurnRate

The finance tool for GTM leaders. Revenue, headcount, capacity, and demand planning to help you beat your targets.

[GTMnow @GTMnow_]

NEW: AI has killed the sales “discovery call.” It’s now a “validation call.”

Buyers now complete 70–80% of their decision before ever talking to sales. The seller’s job has shifted to validate (or reframe) what the buyer already believes.

The Founder & CEO of @testboxofficial sits down with @sophiebuona to break down what’s happening to the B2B buying process and how to adapt.

Highlights:
2:43 - How buying has changed
5:48 - What founders/CROs should do now
7:05 - GEO: AI version of SEO
9:02 - Why mid-funnel is expanding
21:17 - Agent-to-agent procurement
26:02 - All procurement by agents in 3-5 years
29:09 - How vendors differentiate beyond product
33:30 - The croissant campaign breakdown
45:50 - 15 AI experiments per week
47:10 - Analyzing prospects via video AI
48:29 - Building AI culture in your team
52:39 - Book recommendations

[Andrea Waltz @GoforNo]

Great advice especially the part about a specific ask and the offer. Clarity.

[Brian Halligan @bhalligan]

Technical founders: hiring salespeople is where you will most likely get wrecked.

[davidlee @davidlee]

I've sent this to founders countless times over the past 20 years.

Still the best framework for a pitch at any stage - deck should be 10-15 pages long addressing these questions with long appendix.

The most common mistake for early stage founders is trying to answer each question. Emphasize 1-2 points and acknowledge the rest is to be discovered.

[Autism Capital 🧩 @AutismCapital]

There’s an unspoken rule when using products. Any time a brand starts using Corporate Memphis art style, run. It’s over. The brand is lost.

[Southern Equity @SouthernEquity]

2026 is expected to be a defining year for fintech as the industry shifts from rapid disruption toward greater operational maturity. The focus is moving away from speed alone and toward stronger foundations across payments, governance, and infrastructure, even as the global fintech market is projected to reach roughly $460B in 2026, signaling continued growth alongside maturation.

Industry leaders anticipate that AI-enabled systems, real-time payments, and resilient multi-cloud architectures will play a larger role in how financial services operate, with governance and trust becoming more prominent considerations. ⇢

As the sector evolves, we’re inspired by fintechs like @Mercury and @BurnRate_io that are building with durability in mind, prioritizing scalable infrastructure, intelligent automation, and disciplined financial operations to support long-term stability.

► Read the full article: https://t.co/cbpmdVPcDP

► Stat source: https://t.co/fKik53sSBw

#Fintech #VentureCapital #PrivateEquity #StartupTrends #FintechTrends

[Soumitra Sharma @soumitra_sharma]

This is actually a great thread on how to drive momentum during fundraising!

[Lenny Rachitsky @lennysan]

Testing out the new Claude Cowork.

I asked it to go through every Lenny's Podcast episode and pull out the 10 most important themes and lessons for product builders. Then, the 10 most counterintuitive truths. I gave it access to a folder with 320 transcripts.

First, it said "This is a substantial task - 320 podcast transcripts to analyze!"

15 minutes later...

The 10 most Important themes from Lenny's Podcast

1. Activation Is Everything — Slack's "2,000 messages" moment, Gamma's 30-second magic. Get users to value fast.

2. Storytelling as a Superpower — Compelling narratives align organizations better than documents.

3. Positioning Is Strategy, Not Marketing — April Dunford's 5-step framework that starts with competitive alternatives, not messaging.

4. Product Discovery Before Delivery — Teresa Torres' Opportunity Solution Trees and Marty Cagan's Four Risks framework. Talk to customers weekly, not quarterly.

5. Ruthless Prioritization — Shreyas Doshi's LNO Framework (Leverage/Neutral/Overhead) and focusing on opportunity cost over ROI.

6. AI is Transforming Product Development — Model maximalism, evals as core PM skill, CEOs becoming ICs again.

7. Empowered Teams vs. Feature Factories — Marty Cagan's distinction: give teams problems to solve, not features to build.

8. Build Your Operating System — Claire Hughes Johnson's framework for founding documents, operating cadence, and decision frameworks.

9. Pre-Mortems and Risk Anticipation — Shreyas Doshi's technique to surface failure modes before they happen.

10. Small Teams, Outsized Impact — Jason Fried's 2-person/6-week constraints, Shopify's pair programming culture.

The 10 most counterintuitive truths:

1. Fear Gives Bad Advice—Do the Opposite — Whatever you're afraid to do (hard conversation, telling the board bad news) is exactly what you should do.

2. Adding Friction Can INCREASE Conversion — Adding personalization questions to signup improved Amplitude's conversion by 5%.

3. Fewer Features = More Value — The Walkman succeeded because Sony REMOVED recording. QuickBooks wins with half the features at double the price.

4. Adding People Makes You Slower (Absolutely) — Companies produce MORE total output after layoffs. Coordination overhead is the silent killer.

5. What Customers Say They Want Is Meaningless — 93% said they wanted energy-efficient homes. Nobody bought them. "Bitchin' ain't switchin'."

6. Goals Are Not Strategy—They're the Opposite — Richard Rumelt says confusing goals for strategy is the most common strategic error. OKRs are often just wish lists.

7. Don't A/B Test Your Big Bets — Instagram and Airbnb actively reject testing for transformational changes. You can't A/B test your way to greatness.

8. Your Gut IS Data — Intuition is compressed experiential learning that isn't statistically significant yet. Don't discount it.

9. By the Time You're Thinking About Quitting, It's Too Late — Stewart Butterfield killed Glitch while it was still growing 6-7% weekly. That's why he could start Slack.

10. Most PMs Are Overpaid and Unnecessary — Marty Cagan himself says feature teams don't need PMs. Nikita Bier calls PM "not real."

Nice job @claudeai

[Blake Scholl 🛫 @bscholl]

I started Boom knowing literally zero people in aerospace. Networks are built naturally when doing something interesting—they are not a precondition.

[BurnRate @BurnRate_io]

We always appreciate it when our competitors help beef up our brand visibility. 😉

Joking aside, congrats to @blader & the Runway team on the raise! Siqi is a great human and his team has built a fantastic product. 🤜🏻

Now, excuse us while we go load up on hot sauce 😂

[Robert McLaws @robertmclaws]

Probably one of the Top 10 most important threads you can possibly read as a Founder.

[Jesse Tinsley @JesseTinsley]

Your company isn’t a family.

Stop pretending it ever was.

For years, companies pushed the we’re a "family” narrative.

- All hands with vibes.
- LinkedIn posts full of heart emojis.
- Leadership preaching loyalty, togetherness, belonging…

Then the market turned.

And guess what?

That “family” laid off 30% over Zoom.
Ghosted people who gave them everything. Traded loyalty for runway overnight.

You don’t get to call it a family when it's only one sided. You don’t get to fire your “cousin” to hit EBITDA.

Let’s stop with the performance.

You’re not building a family.

You’re building a team.

A team is clear.
A team is accountable.
A team earns their spot and knows exactly what winning looks like.

This doesn’t mean we don’t care about our people.

It means we respect them enough to tell the truth.

Strong teams don’t need fake slogans. They need real leadership.

If you want unconditional love, go home.

If you want to win, act like it every meeting, every deadline, and every decision.

[Mern Singh @mrinalsingh02]

What we learned growing revenue from 0-$1M+ at Bolto:

1. Hyper-specifically define your ICP and the problem you want to solve
2. Solve that problem for a small test-group until they are ecstatic
3. Expand the group and iterate

That's it.

That's the whole playbook we ran.

Keep it simple, focus on one problem, then expand once you've nailed it.

[Alex Friedman 🤠 @heyalexfriedman]

I've been a part of a few conversations now where founders have hired their first or second employee... then ~3 months in, that employee comes back saying they deserve half of the founders equity.

Not just more equity... EQUAL, or almost equal to the founders share.

It always puts the founder in a brutal spot and never ends up well for the employee.

Greed is a hell of a drug.

[Dan Hightower @Danhightower]

Yeah, I'm narrowly focused on complex b2b workflows, where I've been experimenting with both approaches.

B2b apps (think the systems of record) have a weird disincentive to make robust APIs openly available to support MCP. So they ship these quasi-APIs and only grant certain partners access.

In this context, MCPs fall short, and browser use shines.

[Jesse Tinsley @JesseTinsley]

Founders: You didn’t raise $10M.

You sold $10M worth of control.

Let’s break the illusion.

You think you just raised a Series A, B, C etc.

Congrats on the external validation: the social media announcements, family thinks you've finally made it, conferences and podcast invitations pile up, Tech media headlines etc.

But here’s the cold hard truth of what actually happened:

You sold a piece of your company your control in exchange for money you’re not even keeping.

You’re taking their money…
…to hire their people
…to chase their targets
…to hit their timeline

All while holding a subordinate class of stock which effectively makes you an employee in your own company.

You didn’t take chips off the table. You put more chips on and let someone else start calling bets.

And if you think you’re still in control, wait till growth slows, CAC spikes or someone on the board gets “strategic.” That smiley partner turns into your part time boss real fast.

Raising money isn’t bad. But let’s stop pretending it’s free. You’re not building your dream you’re co-building theirs.

Raise if you must.

But know this:

- Every check has strings attached.
- Every round is a trade off.
- Every round decreases exit options.

And if you don’t know what you’re selling by raising capital...

Then you’re the product.

[Jesse Tinsley @JesseTinsley]

Everyone’s chasing the next big thing.

AI. Web3. Creator economy. Sweaty Startups. Holding companies.

Founders think the secret is some new trend.

It’s not.

- It’s answering support tickets faster.
- It’s making your 1st customers actually successful.
- It’s setting up automations that save you countless hours a week.

You want to build a unicorn?

Start by doing something basic that every company has to have done.

The best companies don’t chase trends.

They fix pain.

They don’t talk about “changing the world.”

It's not Sweaty Startups or AI either its what I'd call "Boring Startups".

They make it easier to file expenses, do bookkeeping, schedule payroll, or file taxes etc.

There’s nothing sexy about business back office software until you start a business and realize every company in the world has to do the same exact things over and over.

And then it’s the only thing that matters because it unlocks growth...

Build the boring stuff.

That’s where the money is.
That’s where the moat is.
That’s where the next unicorn is.

[Rachel ten Brink @rtenbrink1]

"Great product no customers" is something I've been observing lately. PMF can be both a product and GTM challenge:
- lots of AI solutions looking for a problem
- great technical teams but no one who can sell

[Jason Cohen @asmartbear]

I've found that freemium users often drown out the voices of paying customers in feedback forums.

The 95% who will never pay can lead you down the wrong product path; they’re obviously not your ideal customers, because ideally, they would pay.

[Jen Abel @jjen_abel]

startups: free pilots are not a strategy nor a GTM