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
SpaceX vs. Blue Origin: The Employee Wealth Divide *Musk vs. Bezos's Equity Models*
Investigate the contrasting employee equity models of SpaceX and Blue Origin, where Musk's strategy generates wealth and Bezos's causes talent drain, offering vital insights for founders.
Asian AI Startups Launch 'Mythos-like' Models Reshaping Global AI
Asian AI startups are launching advanced 'Mythos-like' models, directly capitalizing on a US export ban that has impacted American companies like Anthropic, creating a substantial market shift.
Agentic AI Secures $107M for Regulated Industry Automation
Agentic AI secures $107M Series B funding, co-led by Accel and Salesforce Ventures, validating the market for enterprise-grade AI in regulated sectors like finance and healthcare.
OpenAI Postpones IPO to 2027: CFO Warnings & White House Pressure
OpenAI's IPO is delayed to 2027, influenced by CFO Sarah Friar's internal readiness warnings and White House pressure on AI safety, highlighting the growing importance of governance in tech.
Tech Giants Build Custom AI Chips, Hazy Secures $6M And Specialized AI Startups Thrive
As tech giants like OpenAI and Google design custom AI chips to challenge Nvidia, specialized startups like Hazy secure funding by addressing critical needs in the evolving AI landscape.
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.
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