Hey y’all - Every founder knows this scene: a team of bright, ambitious people hunched over messy Excel sheets, trying to make sense of equity splits, payroll schedules, or operational flows. It’s not elegance - it’s survival.

Excel isn’t loved. It’s tolerated. It’s duct tape for workflows that desperately need clarity. And here lies the paradox: the more you see spreadsheets being stretched beyond their design, the louder the market is shouting at you. These aren’t just cells and formulas - they’re silent screams for purpose-built tools.

History proves it. Airtable grew because people forced spreadsheets into project trackers. Notion exploded because people hacked Excel for documentation. Figma replaced design workflows glued together by PowerPoint. Each “spreadsheet hack” revealed unmet demand.

So, when you walk into a startup office and find founders wrestling with ESOP formulas or finance teams running payroll macros, don’t dismiss it as “just Excel.” That pain is gold. Solve it cleanly, and you don’t just create convenience - you create the next SaaS category.

Here’s today at a glance:

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🔗 Mohit’s Picks

My favourite finds of the week 

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• How A Startup's AI Is Speeding Up Justice In 3,000 Indian Courts | Indi Today [Link]

• A "boring" path to millions: [Link]

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• I'm currently in NY and the startup energy here is comparable to SF! [Link]

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• If you are a startup founder and hate marketing, this is how you can get users organically: [Link]

• UK startup is building 'Sunbird', a fusion rocket that could reach 329,000 mph, cutting Mars travel time to just 30 days [Link]

💡Opportunity: “Simple Cap Table & ESOP Manager for Small Startups”

Equity is the most valuable currency in early-stage startups. Yet, most founders manage it with messy spreadsheets - tracking who owns what, calculating dilution scenarios, and managing ESOP pools manually. The result? Confusion, mistrust, and often costly legal mistakes.

Opportunity: a lightweight, plug-and-play cap table and ESOP manager designed for small startups in Asia. Think “Carta Lite” - but local, affordable, and dead simple to use.

What it should do:

• Provide a clean dashboard to track founder and investor shares in real-time.

• Auto-generate legally compliant agreements for equity or ESOP grants.

• Offer a dilution simulator so founders can model how funding rounds impact ownership.

• Enable one-tap exports for lawyers, CAs, or compliance filings.

The monetization path is clear: subscription pricing per user or per cap table, with premium add-ons like extended ESOP analytics or legal filing assistance.

Why now? Angel investing is booming in India and Southeast Asia. Thousands of startups raise their first rounds without the tools bigger companies take for granted. This creates an underserved segment - founders who can’t justify paying for heavy-duty global tools but desperately need clarity.

The winner here won’t just save headaches. They’ll build trust. And trust, in equity management, is priceless.

🧠 Framework: “R.I.S.K.” for Founder Decisions

Startup life is full of big, uncertain decisions. Do you raise another round? Do you pivot your product? Do you hire aggressively or stay lean?

The R.I.S.K. framework helps founders simplify these calls:

• Returns → What’s the upside if this works? Estimate not just revenue but momentum - partnerships, press, or talent magnetism.

• Irreversibility → Can you undo this choice if it fails? A bad hire can be corrected. Giving away 40% equity at seed? Not so much.

• Speed → How quickly can you test this decision? If you can run an experiment in a week instead of committing for a year, it’s worth trying.

• Knowledge → Even if it fails, will it generate insights that de-risk future moves? Sometimes, a failed feature teaches more about customers than months of research.

The rule of thumb: if 3 out of these 4 are strong, take the leap. If not, step back and reassess.

Founders don’t need perfect foresight. They need a structured way to manage uncertainty. R.I.S.K. makes the invisible weight of “what if” into something tangible - and actionable.

🛠️ Tool: Cron - The Modern Calendar for Founders

Time is a founder’s scarcest resource, yet most still wrestle with clunky calendars. Enter Cron - the sleek, modern calendar reimagined for builders.

It blends seamlessly with Google Calendar but adds productivity-focused layers:

• Time-zone intelligence for global teams.

• Focus-time blocking that auto-syncs with Slack.

• Natural language scheduling (“Lunch with Raj next Friday at 1”) that actually works.

For early-stage founders juggling pitches, customer calls, and product sprints, Cron isn’t just a calendar - it’s a time-design tool. Because building a company isn’t about filling slots. It’s about protecting deep work and aligning your team’s energy around what truly matters.

📈 Trend: “No-Code ERP for Niche Industries”

ERP software has long been dominated by giants like SAP and Oracle. Powerful? Yes. Practical for small businesses in niche industries? Absolutely not.

Boutique manufacturers, wedding planners, micro-logistics operators - they don’t need 500 features. They need 5, built well. That’s why No-Code ERP for niche industries is an emerging goldmine.

Imagine a wedding planning agency setting up their own ERP dashboard in hours:

• Vendor payments tracked automatically.

• Guest logistics managed with one click.

• Inventory (flowers, lights, décor) updated in real-time.

Or a 20-truck logistics fleet using a no-code ERP to monitor drivers, routes, and fuel costs without hiring a tech team.

This isn’t about generic solutions. It’s about vertical SaaS - highly tailored systems that are affordable, modular, and customizable by the businesses themselves.

Payment gateways, API integrations, and AI-powered workflows now make it possible to deploy what used to cost millions - for a monthly subscription.

The result? A new wave of SaaS unicorns built not on size, but on specificity.

💬 Quote: Patrick Collison (Stripe)

The genius of great founders isn’t that they invent problems. It’s that they notice the friction others ignore. Stripe didn’t create online payments - it made them usable. Canva didn’t invent design - it made design accessible.

Look closely, and you’ll find that every spreadsheet hack, every workaround, every “this is just how we do it” excuse hides an opportunity. The market whispers before it shouts.