Newsletter for Tech Entrepreneurs Vol 51
Helping technology entrepreneurs achieve product-market fit.
Congratulations to Flick TV as they raised $2.3 million to expand their micro-drama OTT platform in India, targeting mobile-first short-form video fans—backed by Stellaris Venture Partners.
Now let’s get to the newsletter!
-Greg
Section One - Polishing Your Craft
Tip – Act On It
Do quarterly support shifts. “Working in support at least one day a quarter” gives any founder a “huge boost of user empathy” and real-world context.
Takeaway: Talk regularly with your customers. As the founder, this is your job. If you are not tight with your customer’s feelings, needs, frustrations, and joys, you can’t possibly make good offering decisions.
Idea – Learn It
Empathize is the first stage of design thinking. The core is to fully step into users’ worlds—observe, interview, and map experiences—to uncover hidden insights. Try building an Empathy Map (what they say, think, do, feel) to highlight unspoken motivations and pain points.
Takeaway: Busy founders often forget the most important part of interacting with and learning from customers – documenting their learnings so they can be shared with the rest of the organization.
Case Study – Study What Works and What Doesn’t
Design Continuum of Milan, Italy, designed a series of baby bottles by using empathetic design techniques where a team of designers collected data on user needs by observing kids in kindergartens and immersing themselves in the homes of some first-time mothers. The first Baby Bottle on the market is Take Up. It is easy to hold and can be laid down vertically or horizontally without spilling to allow the baby’s intuitive use. It holds as much as a regular bottle, but its compact design makes it easier to warm it up in a microwave, wash it by hand or place it in a dishwasher.
Takeaway: Empathetic design is the only way to go. And every founder should be deeply involved in the process – you can have outsourced design firm design and execute the work, but founders need to be in the room with the customers during the process.
Section Two - General News In The Nine Gap Areas to Track
1. Competition
The crypto startup wave is surging—$145 million raised this week alone, with DeFi infrastructure taking over half the total . Fierce competition, but massive opportunity.
Takeaway: Always understand your niche within a vertical with thick competition. You can have competitors near you, but going head-to-head with several well-funded competitors is challenging.
2. Economy
Consumers in the early part of June took a considerably less pessimistic view about the economy and potential surges in inflation, according to the closely watched University of Michigan survey.
For the headline index of consumer sentiment, the gauge was at 60.5, well ahead of the Dow Jones estimate for 54 and a 15.9% increase from a month ago.
Takeaway: Boy-oh-boy, the economic outlooks and forecasts are whipping around both up and down. For now, consumer sentiment took a jump up. While generally this is good news, take it with a grain of salt. Not because of issues with the University of Michigan survey, but because economic policies are changing on a near-daily basis.
3. Environment
Only seven countries in the world, or less than 4%, had air quality levels at or below the healthy annual average recommended by the World Health Organization (WHO) in 2024, a new report has found. The report reaffirms previous WHO data indicating that air pollution levels exceed safe values almost everywhere in the world, with at least nine out of 10 people worldwide living in places with low air quality.
Takeaway: The vast number of opportunities in both prevention and mitigation is mind boggling. Are you creating a new dating app, or are you helping people breath? Go for it. The opportunities are huge.
4. Expressed Buyer Desires
Today’s content consumers aren’t leaning back—they’re swiping fast. Platforms like TikTok, YouTube Shorts, and Reels “serve up user-generated short-form content” specifically designed for vertical screens and on-the-go attention spans. Smartphones now dominate as the go-to device for 69% of weekly video viewers. The message is clear: buyers want quick, mobile-first entertainment that fits into moments, not schedules. Flick TV is riding exactly that trend with its micro-drama model.
Takeaway: Make ethical practices part of your AI solutions. You already do this, right? Right?
5. Laws & Regulations
The world's forum for banking regulators published a framework for disclosing climate-related risks on Friday, making the implementation voluntary, following pushback from the U.S. The Basel Committee on Banking Supervision, made up of banking regulators and central bankers from the G20 economies and other countries, said it would be up to national regulators to decide whether to require banks to disclose climate-related risks, a proposal that has been under discussion for years. Policymakers and banking regulators around the world have been debating the extent to which climate change should be embedded into regulation and central bank policy, a tussle analysts say is likely to shape decision making.
Takeaway: In the future we will have more data and documentation providing transparency into the impacts from climate change. This information will surface new and expanding gaps that can be filled by entrepreneurs.
6. Social Habits & Norms
Notable shift: Ciroos’s AI site reliability engineering (SRE) agents are replacing traditional on-call culture, showing how automation is redefining tech roles and norms. Modern digital architectures—spanning microservices, multi-cloud, and edge—have outstripped the cognitive bandwidth of even elite SRE teams. Boards are waking up to the reality that AI-assisted operations are no longer a luxury; they are a strategic necessity for risk mitigation.
Takeaway: The future includes relying on and interacting with AI. This is a completely new norm.
7. Style Preferences
Conversational and voice UIs are rising fast: chatbots and voice assistants that enable “natural dialogues” are gaining traction as users move away from clicks and menus . Bottom line: build interfaces that feel effortless, human‑centric, and optimized for modern consumption habits.
Takeaway: It is fast becoming table stakes now. Make your offering conversational.
8. Technology
Electric vehicles are set for a major upgrade as groundbreaking advances in battery technology promise to significantly enhance their capabilities – like a new 3,000-mile range. Today’s most common battery anodes are made from graphite, a reliable material but limited in energy storage. Scientists have long sought alternatives like silicon because it can store significantly more energy. Yet silicon has posed its own challenges. It expands when charged, potentially causing battery damage and creating safety risks. These issues have kept silicon from widespread use despite its clear advantages. Recently, professors Soojin Park and Youn Soo Kim from Pohang University of Science & Technology (POSTECH) collaborated with professor Jaegeon Ryu at Sogang University to tackle silicon’s drawbacks. Their team developed an innovative binder material that effectively prevents silicon from swelling during charging. This crucial development allows batteries using silicon anodes to safely store ten times more energy than those relying on graphite. This isn’t just an incremental improvement—it’s a game-changer.
Takeaway: This will be a massive enabling leap. What problems will you solve with these new silicon batteries?
9. VC Investment
Investment in robotics reached a high-water mark in 2021, with aggregate worldwide investment exceeding $19 billion, investment was down in 2022 and 2023. Even though there has been a rebound in investment in 2024 (investment reached $18.5 billion), much of that financing activity was concentrated in approximately 50 companies closing financings of $50 million or more. A lack of successful M&A exits or public offerings among robotics companies has caused investors to be skeptical about the likelihood of positive returns from the sector. Such uncertainty has resulted in a concentration of value in a few high-profile robotics companies but has contributed to the continuing challenge for smaller or earlier stage robotics companies to obtain meaningful financing. As a result, some robotics companies are seeking alternative avenues of investment.
Takeaway: If you have a game-changing offering, you’ll be able to get financing. Money is always available for good ideas.
Download our free 10-page guide, “Product-Market Fit Demystified: Your Journey to Entrepreneurial Success.” A powerfully actionable guide that helps you define your customer, their unmet needs, and create communications and alignment for your business.
