Hanan Maayan

Linear became a profitable $1.25B company with <80 people by bucking the “growth at all costs” mindset. CEO and co-founder Karri Saarinen focuses on craft, not metrics. On The Review, he details the company’s slow and deliberate path to product-market fit. He shares how he’s operationalized quality at every step, like: -Validating the idea with coworkers before quitting to work on the company full-time -Building a highly opinionated prototype that met the co-founders’ high standards -Launching in private beta and handpicking early users to join -Staying focused on the day-one ICP of IC product builders even with subsequent product launches -Designing enterprise sales as an extension of the product Read the full story below.

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With all the crazy acquisitions last week, we didn’t want to be left out of the party. Excited that Prefab has joined Reforge! AI has created the opportunity to “collapse the stack,” as Scott Belsky has said and enable “full-stack builders” as Tomer Cohen has written about. The result will be not only increased speed from Insight to Launch but, more importantly, better products. Since early this year, Reforge has been on a mission to build this platform: First, with the launch of Reforge Insights, which aggregates, analyzes, and acts on your customer data. Next, with the creation of Reforge Research, which helps you capture new insights with AI-powered user interviews and surveys. Most recently, with the closed beta of Reforge Build , which helps you explore and prototype ideas for your existing product. Prefab will help us fill in the final step: Launch. Launches are the last mile between your team’s best ideas and your customer’s experience. The entire Prefab team has joined us. I’m extra excited to reunite with Jeff Dwyer from our HubSpot days. In the coming months, Prefab’s feature flag and config system will be rebranded and integrated into the Reforge product suite, but you can start using it today.  More info 👇 https://lnkd.in/eqkryPdi

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Base44 sold to Wix for $80 million in cash  six months from idea to exit  no VC  just clarity and execution Why this matters for Italy? The Base44 exit happened in Israel - one of the most developed startup ecosystems in the world. But for the first time, this story is also a positive signal for Italy, showing that such outcomes are no longer out of reach. Crucially, success of this kind is no longer bound by the years of digital and technological gap that once separated Europe from Silicon Valley and Israel. AI has erased much of that distance, making these achievements attainable here too. Italy’s AI market grew 58% in 2024, reaching €1.2 billion, and with lots of funds ready to be deployed on the topic. AI has leveled the tech playing field  building tools is easier than ever  the real gap now is go-to-market and moat creation Italy has the ambition and the infrastructure  the next Base44 could be built there

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Everyone’s talking about AI hype. I shared my take with Ramzan Kamali on Yahoo Finance’s Morning Brief. We also covered: → Why companies of all sizes, from global giants to scrappy startups, are choosing Synthesia to scale their comms with video. → How new products like AI dubbing aren’t just bells and whistles for Hollywood studios, they’re accelerating enterprise adoption in a very real way. → The future of jobs in the age of AI (spoiler: it’s not as dystopian as some make it out to be). → And why even if we are in an AI bubble, it still feels fundamentally different from the metaverse or crypto hype cycles. This one will actually produce generational companies. If you’re curious about where AI is going and how video is becoming the new default for workplace communication, give it a watch.

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⚠️ WARNING: I'm about to start pontificating around agentic commerce in terms of different evolutions (I know, I know...) Agentic commerce 1.0 (pre-LLM era): Roku launched their shoppable ads platform 3+ years ago which has been a big success 💰 and feels like a precursor to all of this in a lot of ways Agentic commerce 2.0 (chatbots): OpenAI's ChatGPT Commerce efforts and Perplexity Shopping are really just a further extension of the social shopping trend(s) over the past 5+ years with TikTok shopping and Instagram links 🛒 with accelerated discovery efficiency thanks to AI + LLMs 🤖 Agentic commerce 3.0 (the new browser wars): this is where I think things are about to get verrrry interesting (and, admittedly, also a logical progression from existing behaviors where a consumer stores their card inside a browser). Comet from Perplexity is pretty sweet and I've heard nothing but great things about Dia from The Browser Company (though people really don't want to lose access to Arc!!). This medium actually makes more sense to me in terms of how agentic commerce *should* work but maybe that's because I'm a bit of a geezer. Imagine agentic wallet infrastructure living natively inside a browser that could store and manage verified credentials for both identity AND payments, and could provide authenticated and permissioned access to any agent or website 🤯. We are partnering with both Visa (Intelligent Commerce) and Mastercard (Agent Pay) and built a very slim protocol to enable all of this. Here is an example we built for Google Chrome. Come build and play with us!!

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Sora: OpenAI goes Social. Your attention becomes inventory. 🛒 My thoughts on the Sora App Launch: 1. The Strategy is obvious. OpenAI is putting more focus on monetization and possible revenue angles. The company is seeking out “inventory” options beyond the existing product offering. Sam Altman's thinking: “How can I create more spaces where users spend the better part of their day on my products?” – and then profit from it. 2. First Search, then Social. After the latest news about their new Instant Checkout feature (Shopify x ChatGPT partnership), it’s fascinating to see that OpenAI explores right away not only the search/shopping space, but is already testing social as a revenue avenue with Sora2. If this works, it would be gigantic. Not even Google or Meta can fully cover both areas, social and search (yet). 3. Who’s next? OpenAI went live just a few days after Meta announced a similar product called Vibes (there’s a great post about this from Judith Dada, linked in the comments). The question I keep asking myself: who will be next to launch a similar product? My bet would be on Google Gemini. 4. What I find dangerous. The app's “anti-doomscrolling nudges” and “well-being reminders” won't work. It’s like sending a push notification to an alcoholic saying “Maybe don't drink.” Instagram’s ‘Daily Limit’ proved it. Dopamine wins. You can’t – or don’t want to – control yourself. OpenAI knows this. Altman himself said short-form content is toxic for kids. That’s not protective. That’s pretentious. 5. Everyone’s responsibility. Which makes it even more important that everyone pays close attention to what is happening right now. If we don’t understand this - or regulate it - the risks to society will only grow. And yes, I use and enjoy social media. But the thought of my son spending hours on a platform trapped in AI-generated versions of himself and others troubles me. #AttentionEconomy #DigitalWellbeing #EthicsInAI #Regulation

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I watched Elena Verna (Head of Growth at Lovable) speak at #ProductCon AI yesterday, and one idea stuck with me: “Your brand can be your moat.” 👀 Not just a layer of polish or a marketing wrapper, but a true product differentiator. One that makes your experience easier, more delightful, more trustworthy. One that users actively choose, even if alternatives exist. We often talk about brand like it’s a billboard or a campaign, but increasingly, brand is shaped through product. It’s the little moments: ✅ how fast the product loads ✅ how support speaks to you ✅ how copy is written ✅ how you feel when you finish a task In that sense, building brand isn’t something the marketing team “does”. It’s a product and growth lever, and a compounding one at that. The takeaway for me: If you’re not actively building your brand into your product, you’re probably leaving defensibility on the table. #brand #moat #lovable

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Let’s talk about customer revenue concentration at B2B startups and scaleups. When we first started Factored our biggest customer represented over 70% of our revenue for the first 6-8 months or so. This is not that rare as early stage startups seek to prove their value prop with early adopters, but it is scary AF for founders and employees. A year later, our biggest customer was about 33% of our revenue. Even as recently as 2 years ago, our largest account represented about 25% of our revenue. Today, we don’t have a single customer that represents more than 7-8% of our revenue, despite us growing our existing accounts very nicely. This has more to do with also signing and growing new accounts. For a business, reducing revenue concentration has great advantages: 1. Reduces your risk exposure to any one account or their own business risks or industry troubles. 2. Increases valuation multiples as your revenue becomes more predictable and signals stability. Acquirers and investors often discount companies with too high a concentration. 3. Improves your negotiating position. Both parties now have options. 4. Demonstrates scalability and market fit as more customers and more segments desire your services. 5. Improves banking and financing options (banks also discount revenue that is highly concentrated because of perceived default risk). 6. Increases upsell and cross-sell opportunities as you develop new product or service offerings that you can offer to a broader base of customers. 7. Increases your company’s resilience to specific company risks or industry cycles, and gives you and your team much more peace of mind should something go wrong with a specific account or their sector. 8. You and your team sleep better because of all of the above, and if it happens, the rare crisis becomes less scary. So as you empower your best account managers to grow your most promising existing accounts, also consider the importance of closing and growing new accounts as well. Not all dollars are worth the same my friends. Highly concentrated dollars are often heavily discounted. Shoot for less than 10% from your top account.

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Klaviyo's First Investor Day: Building the B2C CRM of the Future 🚀 Yesterday, Klaviyo held its inaugural investor day as a public company, and the results and vision speak volumes about its transformation from email marketing automation to a comprehensive B2C CRM platform Key highlights 👇 Impressive growth since IPO in September of 2023 📈 Revenue run rate up 68% to $1.078B Customer base grew 30% to 176,000+ across 100+ countries Free cash flow increased 65% to $155M. AI-powered Innovation Engine 🤖   Launched Marketing Agent and Customer Agent for agentic workflows 270+ daily deploys with 200+ features shipped in 2025 Multi-product adoption driving 37% more customer-attributed value - the market will argue about Klaviyo taking too much credit sometimes, but generally seeing this go up is good. Strong Expansion Momentum 🌍  International revenue is up 43% annually (35% of total revenue) - this is meaningful diversification and TAM expansion since IPO. Mid-market customers ($50K+ ARR) growing at 40% YoY and represent the fastest-growing part of the business. This segment has doubled since IPO! 5,000+ agency partners to help efficiently scale distribution Ambitious Outlook 🎯  Announced a $160B TAM with <1% current penetration - theoretically, if their math is right, they're just getting started! Operating margin expansion from 12% to 15-17% by 2028 Vision for 20%+ long-term margins through AI efficiency Overall, Klaviyo's transformation from email marketing platform to autonomous CRM is compelling - especially as B2C brands increasingly need unified, AI-powered customer engagement across all touchpoints. Klaviyo has the data, so maybe they can pull it off! Ironically, Klaviyo's S-1 recap was the first LinkedIn post I wrote back in August of 2025, so this one is full circle!

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