Dylan Field and the design tool Adobe couldn't buy
Figma's $20B deal with Adobe collapsed in December 2023 under regulatory pressure. The independent path that followed turned out to be the higher-variance outcome — and the more valuable one.
This week
The most important act of a founder this decade will not be building. It will be deciding what not to build. Restraint is the unwritten chapter of every great company — and the next four years will reward it more than any cycle in memory.
The feed
Global Startup Funding Hits Record $510B in H1 2026
Global startup funding hit a record $510B in H1 2026, primarily driven by an AI investment boom that reshapes the venture landscape for founders.
Donald Trump Jr.'s VC Firm Pioneers 'Patriotic Capitalism' Investment *A New VC Trend*
Donald Trump Jr.'s new venture capital firm, American Venture Solutions, introduces 'patriotic capitalism' to fund U.S. companies in critical sectors, challenging traditional investment models.
Quantum Systems Valued at $1.2B Amid Defense Tech Boom *Fueled by geopolitical demand*
German defense drone startup Quantum Systems secures $63.7M, hitting a $1.2B valuation, reflecting surging investor confidence in defense tech driven by global instability.
Bhavin Turakhia's Neo: $30M Bet on AI-Native Work Platform
Serial entrepreneur Bhavin Turakhia launched Neo, an AI-native work platform backed by $30 million, aiming to unify fragmented enterprise AI and streamline operations for founders.
Luca Ferrari's Failure Playbook Behind Bending Spoons' $18B IPO
Bending Spoons achieved an $18 billion IPO valuation by embracing co-founder Luca Ferrari's 'failure playbook,' a strategy of rapid experimentation and learning from early setbacks.
Founders desk
Plate 01Cover · Issue 47Lina Ouedraogo
Three exits over fourteen years. A method built on saying no — and the long interview to prove it.
Plate 02Dylan Field
Dropped out of UPenn on a Thiel Fellowship, spent six years building a design tool that ran in the browser, said no to Adobe's $20B all-cash offer when the regulators killed it, and IPO'd anyway.
Plate 03Mira Murati
Was the CTO who shipped GPT-4 and Sora. Left OpenAI at the peak of its public arc to start a research lab — Thinking Machines — that raised one of the largest seed rounds in history before it had a product.
Plate 04Aravind Srinivas
Left Berkeley, left OpenAI, and built the first AI-native search engine — Perplexity — that took Google's most defended product and treated it like a research problem.
By desk
Read with the people who build the next decade.
Wednesdays at 7am Pacific. One letter, four minutes, and the five stories that actually mattered — chosen by the desk, not by an algorithm.
- ✓ The week's five most important reads, briefly
- ✓ One short interview, often unpublished elsewhere
- ✓ A memo from the editor — three minutes, one idea
- ✓ No ads, no roundups, no growth tactics