Founder Mode - 20 March 2026

Hi there,

Welcome back to Founder Mode. Hope everyone is staying safe and working hard to make the world a better place.

Thanks for reading, and let’s dive in!

🔥 Top Finds

The Infinite Game: What Artists Know That Founders Don’t
Artists play infinite games, they keep creating, iterating, and compounding. Founders often play finite ones - raise, scale, exit. The best companies feel more like art than projects.

World Models: Computing the Uncomputable
World models are getting a lot of attention, but still hard to grasp. The simplest way to think about it: AI that simulates reality, not just predicts outputs. With Fei-Fei Li and Yann LeCun both raising ~$1B and NVIDIA pushing it hard, this feels like a big shift that is still early.

Microsoft Considers Legal Action Over $50B Amazon–OpenAI Deal
Microsoft put $11B behind OpenAI with one clear condition: everything runs on Azure. Now OpenAI has reportedly signed a ~$50B deal with Amazon to host its new enterprise platform, Frontier, giving AWS access to what was supposed to be exclusive.

Jeff Bezos Plans $100B AI Manufacturing Roll-Up
Bezos isn’t chasing another app he’s going after the physical economy. The plan: buy traditional manufacturing companies and upgrade them with AI. This seems like the new playbook for value creation.

Travis Kalanick is back
After being ousted from Uber, he spent eight years building a ghost kitchen company. That was the cover story. He renamed City Storage Systems to Atoms and revealed what he was actually doing: building a robotics company across food, mining, and autonomous transport

Apple Is Still the King of Laptops
While everyone’s focused on AI hype, Apple just keeps executing. Latest benchmarks show their chips beating every x86 processor in single-core performance. All the PC makers are not sure how they can compete now that Apple is coming after the entry level market.

🎯 Opportunities

Aerospace Open Innovation Challenge 2026

Open innovation challenge with real industry problem statements across digitalisation, productivity, sustainability in aerospace/space value chain. Registration open to global innovators.

Deadline: 17 April 2026

SLINGSHOT 2026

Asia’s deep tech startup pitching competition is back with its 10th edition! Compete for attractive grant prizes, connect with top investors, and showcase your innovation at SWITCH 2026.

Deadline: 30 June 2026

The Pitch by Deel

Enter with your 2-minute pitch to win a $1,000,000 investment for your startup. The Pitch is a global tournament built to reward the world’s best founders.

Deadline: 23 Mar 2026 Onwards depending on region

🛠 Tool of the Week

Stitch
Google is turning Stitch into a “vibe design” tool. Describe what you want and get high-fidelity UI instantly. It tracks your whole project, lets you branch ideas, and iterate fast. Best of all, it is free and awesome.

Hubspot

The Future of AI in Marketing. Your Shortcut to Smarter, Faster Marketing.

This guide distills 10 AI strategies from industry leaders that are transforming marketing.

• Learn how HubSpot's engineering team achieved 15-20% productivity gains with AI

• Learn how AI-driven emails achieved 94% higher conversion rates

• Discover 7 ways to enhance your marketing strategy with AI.

Outpace your competitors by mastering AI.

Get Your Free Guide

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