This week’s Founder Finds includes:
✂️ How to scale a SaaS
📉 A declining business
🕸️ 10 SEO Claude automations
💼 A career alignment framework
📝 Agent instructions for new models
➡️ And more…
🪶 REMEMBER THIS:
Solve a daily problem, not a yearly one.
🤓 FAV FINDS
Tools, tweets and more from Trends Pro Members
🕸️ 10 SEO Claude Automations shared by Hitesh Kar
10 link building tactics to automate with AI
📝 Rethinking Skills and Prompts for GPT-6 Astra shared by Gabriel
A post on simplifying instructions as models become more capable
📉 My Business is Dying shared by Elia Zane
A founder’s post on a SaaS business in decline
🏆 TRENDS PRO MEMBER WINS
🏎️ Dru Riley published Force Yourself to Go Faster – Then Pay for It, on what speed actually costs
🚀 Elie Steinbock launched hi.new on Product Hunt
💡 Hitesh Kar is organizing an innovation meetup in Berlin
🔄 Knight built a markdown converter
🔮 PREDICTION OF THE WEEK
Another big AI lab will follow OpenAI and shut off the video generator developers build on.
Software companies rent video generation by the second and wire the finished clips into their products. OpenAI closed its consumer video app on April 26, 2026, then dated the removal of the version developers build on to September 24, 2026 with no replacement named.
That order fits a service that costs more than it earns. Cheaper models from Kling and MiniMax already undercut the frontier labs on the same job. When the next lab exits, every business built on its model has to rewrite that part of its product.
From Trends PRO #0179, Programmatic Video. See the players selling video by the second.
📘 READ THIS
Why Did a High-Paying Remote Job Still Trigger Tears at Log-Off?
After 9 years in the same field, you might be ready to quit and start over. This workbook exercise can show you the problem isn’t the work. It’s where and how you’re doing it.
- Score all 12 pleasure points at work. Rate each 0-2 and rank your top 6.
- Redesign format and clients around top pleasures instead of changing fields.
- Treat jobs as pleasure mixes. The role can sound fine, but the daily work may bring no joy.
🛠️ TOOLS OF THE WEEK
🎞️ Multi — Grow on YouTube on autopilot
🧿 HeadsUp.bot — Stay ahead of competitors
💵 StockDrifts — Visual stock research that builds conviction fast
☁️ OPPORTUNITY OF THE WEEK
Build target customer profiles from a founder’s best sales calls.
Generic outbound sales tools fail because they draft cold messages without real customer context, generating robotic emails that trigger spam filters. Extracting exact buying triggers and objection patterns from a founder’s last ten recorded customer sales calls fixes the input at the root.
Convert those insights into a structured customer profile file that feeds directly into sales software via API. Charge $500 per profile build for early-stage startups preparing to launch outbound campaigns, then upsell quarterly context updates as the product evolves.
From Trends PRO #0178, AI Sales Agents. See how teams structure buyer signals.
🎧 LISTEN TO
How Did Searcheye Cut From 50 People to 7 and Grow Faster?
You can grow distribution fast and still break your SaaS at 3x volume if ops capacity lags behind demand.
- Validate PMF 3 times: supply, demand, and the matching layer between them.
- Map your 3x collapse point before scaling distribution. Systems break when volume jumps 3x or 10x.
- Require deposits in discovery. Prospects who won’t commit give wishful feedback instead of buyer signal.
📈 REPORT FLASHBACK
Virtual influencers, called when the models were still cartoons.
In June 2023 we said fashion and beauty brands would sell with virtual models, because a model who is drawn rather than booked is faster and cheaper to work with. Our examples were computer-drawn characters with their own Instagram followings.
Brands did adopt synthetic models. None of the faces they used had a following of its own. H&M signed about 30 of its own human models in March 2025 and made AI replicas of them for its marketing. In July 2025 Vogue ran a Guess advertisement built with an AI-generated model.
We were right that brands would put a synthetic face in the ad. We were wrong about whose face it would be.
That was Trends PRO #0114, Virtual Influencers. See which virtual models brands hired in 2023.
🔧 TRY THIS
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