Startup Links of 2025
A collection of links from 2025. Advice for founders on investor updates, launching, and AI tools to experiment with.
Hi, and welcome to Teli Digest’s second list!
This is the start of a new series where we will regularly publish curated, high-signal lists you can use for research, sourcing, inspiration, outreach, and discovery. If there is a list you want to see, or feedback on what would make these more useful, reach us anytime at info@telilabs.com.
Below is a curated list of links I have collected over the course of the year that I find relevant and helpful for startup founders. I originally saved these in my Apple Notes app over the course of the year and wanted to share them here in case they are useful!
For Founders:
Write monthly investor updates. Start sending investor memos well before you are raising. Regular updates create a clear record of progress, build trust with future investors, and force discipline around milestones, KPIs, and communication. When fundraising begins, you are no longer telling a story from memory. You are showing one that already exists. Many VCs have echoed this sentiment on X throughout the year.
The Ultimate Guide for Starting a Lean, AI-native startup in 2025 by Henry Shi and Deedy Das. This is a personal favorite and a gold mine. The go step-by-step, covering incorporation, finance & taxes, tech stack, etc.
Best-in-class tools every early-stage startup should be using. A solid operating stack across finance (banking, payroll, expenses, taxes), fundraising (CRM, deck, cap table), design and brand (UI, landing pages), ops (docs, comms, recruiting, automation, compliance), marketing and sales (enrichment, social, signals, content), and product (coding, database, analytics, support). Here is a list from another founder with slightly different recommendations.
Unify’s Austin Hughes on using repeatable LinkedIn content themes to drive inbound. Unify shared the 25 post formats they cycle through that helped LinkedIn generate over a quarter of their inbound pipeline.
Make investors pitch you before you pitch them (and the questions to ask them). Strong founders treat fundraising as a two-way evaluation and ask VCs direct questions about value-add, process, decision-making, and post-check support. Qualifying investors early helps you avoid dead-end processes and choose partners who actually earn a spot on your cap table.
Use AI to surface the hard questions you avoid. One founder shared how an AI-generated post-meeting summary includes a “tough questions” section that highlights gaps, missed points, and weak assumptions. It is uncomfortable, but treating AI as an honest mirror can accelerate learning, decision-making, and leadership growth.
Plan for QSBS long before your exit. A founder who sold his company for $95M missed out on more than $10M in after-tax proceeds simply because he did not qualify for QSBS. Filing an 83(b), starting the five-year clock early, and involving a tax advisor before signing an LOI can make an eight-figure difference at exit.
YC’s core founder resources. This is a compact list of YC-backed guides that cover the full early-stage journey, from generating ideas and finding a co-founder to building an MVP, landing first customers, pitching investors, and raising a seed round. It is a strong starting library for founders learning YC’s playbook or preparing to apply.
A top VC reviewed 3,000 pitch decks. The best 4 (with the most investor attention) had on thing in common. They emphasized distribution. In today’s commoditized SaaS landscape, winning depends on how you reach users at scale.
Fundraising and founder resources. This is a curated set of high-signal links covering pitch decks that raised capital, investor lists, SAFE dilution math, financial models, cold outreach templates, accelerators, and conference lists. It is a practical shortcut for founders who want to avoid reinventing the wheel while fundraising or scaling.
44 early stage investors you can contact today. List of pre-seed and seed VCs who are open to inbound without warm introductions, along with their focus areas and check sizes.
General:
Andrew Yeung’s personal AI toolkit for everyday work. This is a broad list of AI tools mapped to specific tasks like scheduling, research, meetings, writing, design, presentations, and app building.
Use AI tools across your entire workflow. The a16z consumer team put together a broad AI toolkit that spans research, meetings, content creation, product building, and distribution.
Ways to Stand Out When You Apply for a Startup. Ben Lang’s thoughts on how to go above and beyond to land a role at top startups.
RippleMatch’s CEO on the rise of the AI generalist. Why early-stage companies should rethink entry-level hiring to prioritize adaptable, AI-fluent generalists who can deliver senior-level impact across roles like analyst, marketer, engineer, and BDR (often at a fraction of the cost).
Trick questions are the norm in interviews for AE and sales positions. In this post, a Sequoia-backed founder tells the story of how a founding AE candidate anticipated an undefined pricing question by building a full pricing spreadsheet in advance, proving they could think ahead, handle uncertainty, and operate like an owner before a playbook existed.