Founder Mode - 14 Dec 2025

Hi there,

Welcome back to Founder Mode, every week I’ll keep you updated on the top finds and opportunities, so that you save time and stay in the know.

Thanks for reading, and let’s dive in!

🔥 Top Finds

There is No Substitute for Thinking
AI can help you move faster, but it can’t do the one thing that compounds, thinking. Outsourcing cognition is basically strength-training in reverse your brain atrophies when you stop doing the hard reps. Use AI for scaffolding if you want, but keep the thinking part human. 

OpenAI releases GPT-5.2
GPT-5.2 is out, and reported improvements center on reasoning, speed, long-context work, and better image understanding. So basically it is more “do the work with me” and less “here’s a generic answer” than previous models.

Google, Nvidia, and OpenAI - The Empire Strikes Back
Ben Thompson frames the last few weeks as Google putting real pressure on both OpenAI (model leadership) and Nvidia (hardware dominance). Gemini 3 raises the bar, Google’s TPU push starts to look like an actual alternative to Nvidia in some channels, and suddenly both moats feel more contestable than the market was pricing in.\

Solo Founder Report
The data point that jumped out: solo founders now start over one-third of new companies, up sharply from 2019, suggesting the “you must have a cofounder” rule is turning into a guideline. The conclusion seems straightforward: modern tooling expands what one person can build and sell, so solo is becoming a normal starting configuration, not an outlier path. 

1,000 Simultaneous Experiments: The Next Mental State for Founders
Founders need to shift from “software as tools” to “software as employees,” then learn to orchestrate parallel work at a totally different scale. The practical implication: instead of running 5–10 experiments in a phase, you’ll run 50–100, and your job becomes designing the system and keeping quality and truth-seeking intact while the agents sprint.

🎯 Startup Opportunities

🛠 Tool of the Week

Canva
You probably already know Canva, but it keeps earning its spot because it’s the fastest way to go from zero to “looks legit” without needing a designer on payroll. Decks, social posts, one-pagers, thumbnails, simple landing visuals, internal docs. Canva turns all of that into a repeatable workflow that your whole team can use.

This week’s newsletter is supported by:

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💬 Founder Mode Quotes

🙂 Fun Mode

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