Every other airline measured itself against other airlines. Southwest went after people who drove. As Herb Kelleher put it in Nuts!: “We’re not competing with other airlines, we’re competing with ground transportation.” If your rival is the car, your fare has to beat a road trip. Southwest didn’t raise fares at all from 1972 to 1978. After deregulation, it entered overpriced routes at a third to half the going fare. Sacramento to Ontario fell from $440 round trip to $118. Fares fell so reliably wherever it landed that the US government named it the Southwest Effect. By 1995 it was saving money for 37% of all domestic passengers.

Deadlines don’t measure how long work takes. They shape it. In a 2019 memo, Alexandr Wang, co-founder of Scale AI, pointed out that marathon finishing times bunch up just under round numbers like 3:30 and 4:00. People reliably finish just under whatever bar they’re given. He called it the Limbo Effect. His conclusion: a realistic estimate makes work slower on average, an optimistic one makes it faster, and the best option is no deadline at all. Just urgency. It became a Scale AI credo: “Up the tempo.”

Hyperscalers with the shortest gap between two back-to-back rounds.🤯 1. Corgi Raised $160M at a $1.3B valuation on May 6, 2026. 22 days later, it raised again: $106M at a $2.6B valuation on May 28, 2026. 2. Etched Raised $300M at a $10.3B valuation on Jul 23, 2026. 26 days later, it raised again: $700M at a $21B valuation on Aug 18, 2026. 3. Instinct Raised $250M at a $2.5B valuation on Aug 26, 2026. 33 days later, it raised again: $1B at a $10B valuation on Sep 28, 2026. 4. OpenEvidence Raised $200M at a $6B valuation on Oct 20, 2025. 93 days later, it raised again: $250M at a $12B valuation on Jan 21, 2026. 5. Harvey Raised $300M at a $3B valuation on Feb 12, 2025. 131 days later, it raised again: $300M at a $5B valuation on Jun 23, 2025. 6. Lovable Raised $200M at a $1.8B valuation on Jul 17, 2025. 154 days later, it raised again: $330M at a $6.6B valuation on Dec 18, 2025. 7. Cursor Raised $900M at a $9.9B valuation on Jun 5, 2025. 161 days later, it raised again: $2.3B at a $29.3B valuation on Nov 13, 2025. 8. Cognition Raised an undisclosed amount at a ~$4B valuation on Mar 18, 2025. 174 days later, it raised again: $400M at a $10.2B valuation on Sep 8, 2025. 9. Safe Superintelligence Raised $1B at a $5B valuation on Sep 4, 2024. 186 days later, it raised again: $2B at a $32B valuation on Mar 9, 2025. 10. Mercor Raised $100M at a $2B valuation on Feb 20, 2025. 249 days later, it raised again: $350M at a $10B valuation on Oct 27, 2025.

You can just do things!

Thank you guys! Only 30 left to make it a hundred!🚀

Watch this 42-minute interview of Decart CEO Dean Leitersdorf where he takes you into his story and what it means to build new consumer experiences on the internet : youtube.com/watch?v=nTrRmr2J…

Sam Zell sold one company for (reportedly) $39 billion. He also spent four days as a practicing lawyer before he quit. Everyone remembers him as the "Grave Dancer" - the man who got rich buying real estate nobody else wanted. Fewer people know he ran the identical play on radio stations, a cough medicine, and a fleet of secondhand railcars. I dug into his memoir and independent reporting to find the story underneath the nickname. Let's dive in! 🧵👇

Resistance is the signal you are still moving.

Dr. Julie Gurner has coached top founders, executives, and athletes in some of the most competitive arenas on earth. She is compared to Wendy Rhoades of "Billions" by The Wall Street Journal, and named a "Game Changer" by IBM. She says: "When you're obsessed with something, you feel pulled. You feel compelled. That's energy-giving. You see it in scientists working toward a breakthrough for decades, or athletes training for the Olympics, showing up every day because they want to, not because they have to. No one had to push Michael Jordan to practice." "At the highest level, discipline becomes the exception, not the rule. If you're constantly relying on discipline, that's often how burnout happens."

FedEx moves ~17 million shipments a day. Employs 500,000+ people. Reaches 220+ countries. Pulls in roughly $95 billion a year! Its founder, Fred Smith, wasn't even a logistics guy, he was a Marine! Born in 1944 in Marks, Mississippi. After attending school at Yale, he did two tours in Vietnam as a rifle platoon leader and a forward air controller, and came home with a Silver Star, a Bronze Star, and two Purple Hearts.

The best builders I've noticed all think this way: the money is a scoreboard, not the goal.