How Granola Grows📝 , 5 Books to Actually Ship AI in 2025📚, Soham Parekh🧑‍💻

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Jul 05, 2025

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In-Depth Insights 🔍

Everyone in tech has a take on Soham Parekh 🧑‍💻
Dubbed the Anna Delvey of Silicon Valley, Soham’s overemployment saga has founders torn between “grindset goals” and straight-up fraud. X is in full meltdown: memes, thinkpieces, and pitch decks with his name redacted. [Tech Crunch]
Reinvention ≠ Optional 🔄
Jake Saper with a wake-up slap for pre-LLM founders: adapt or fade. Reinvention is the new retention, and denial is the fastest route to irrelevance.
5 Books to Actually Ship AI in 2025 📚
Paul Iusztin drops a no-fluff syllabus for AI builders who care about real-world deployment, not LinkedIn threads. Prompt engineering to product-market fit. [Paul Iusztin]

The Great Differentiation 🎭
Packy McCormick breaks down why human is the new premium. In an era of AI sludge, high-effort authenticity is the ultimate flex. [Not Boring by Packy McCormick]
The $1.4B Brand That Made Water a Personality 🧃
Liquid Death didn’t sell hydration. It sold rebellion. Why We Buy dissects how canned water became a billion-dollar brand through pure memetic judo. [CK Archive]
How Granola Grows 📝
Adam Fishman reveals how Granola is scaling fast with AI notes, dead-simple UX, and zero hype. No flash. Just real traction, week after week. [Adam Fishman]
6 Prompts to Unclog Your Marketing Brain 🧠
Kieran Flanagan distills world-class marketing wisdom into dead-simple prompts from legends like Feynman, Bezos, Musk, and more - just copy, tweak, and deploy. [Kieran Flanagan]

Social Media Gems 💎

Sam Altman doesn’t sugarcoat it 💡
A blunt truth every founder needs to hear - share your idea, get feedback, and stop hiding behind secrecy.

Google’s early numbers were ridiculous 💥
Ben Gilbert reminds us: Google hit $185M pretax income just four years after launch. Wild. Most startups are still picking fonts at that stage.

Bill Gates didn’t even listen to music 🎧
Michael Moritz drops a gem: Gates ran on pure focus. No headphones. No playlists. Just code, coffee, and tunnel vision.

AI isn’t killing SaaS moats - it’s fortifying them 🏰
Sequoia’s Konstantine Buhler says the real winners? Enterprise giants with trust, training, and C-suite access. AI is just adding horsepower.

10 founder tools that actually help ⚡
A toolkit founders actually use - from pitch deck templates to AI copilots and investor lists. No fluff. Just leverage.

New Funds 💰

Arāya Ventures dropped a $26.3M debut fund to back up to 60 pre-seed and seed startups shaping fintech, health, commerce, and the future of work.
Catalio Capital Management secured $400M+ for Fund IV, doubling down on cutting-edge biomedical breakthroughs.
AN Venture Partners landed $200M for its first fund, bridging U.S.–Japan biotech innovation at scale.
Alliance VC hit a €40M first close for its Nordic AI fund - eyes set on €100M to fuel the region’s deep tech scene.
Halogen Ventures closed Fund III at $30M to back women-led startups reinventing family, childcare, and everyday life.
Iron Key Capital rolled out a Web3-native investment club, tapping Nikolas Casagrande to chart the DeFi course.
Chang Robotics Fund quietly deployed capital into five robotics plays - think automation, sustainability, and health.
Recognize Partners closed a massive $1.7B Fund II to reshape tech services - AI in, legacy out.

That’s a wrap for this week.

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