Marten Mickos
@martenmickos.bsky.social
CEO in the service of AI startup CEOs. Former CEO of HackerOne, Eucalyptus Systems, MySQL.
What time of year should your fundraise for your startups? The Seasons of Fundraising by Omri Drory of NFX x.com/NFX/status/2...
x.com
PMF is not stable anymore, especially for b2b products. www.linkedin.com/pulse/always...
Always Wartime Now
Or: the 2010s were the glory days, and you didn’t even know it. In the good old days of the pre-COVID era, you could have a good idea for a software product and ride it for a decade.
linkedin.com
Students of Aalto University, students of the world, don't miss the season's first Founder Talk with Vinted's co-founder Milda Mitkuté.
Don't measure the amount of AI tool usage but the amount of time saved. www.meetsol.com/blog/people-...
People are the Generative Force in an Organization — Sol
Ask most leaders how their AI investment is going, and you’ll get numbers: adoption rates, hours logged in the platform, seats filled.
meetsol.com
AI may make intelligence abundant. It will not make attention automatic. economicsofai.substack.com/p/when-intel...
When Intelligence Is Abundant, Attention Is What We Need
How AGI can help us care more for each other
economicsofai.substack.com
The Java Story - finally an official documentary! Must see both for those who were around at the time and those who weren't. Thank you, James Gosling, Kim Polese and everyone else. www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqGS...
The Java Story | The Official Documentary
YouTube video by CultRepo
youtube.com
Happiness in Finland isn’t about feeling giddy. It’s about the absence of worry. www.seattletimes.com/opinion/dont...
What can Seattle learn from Helsinki? | Op-Ed
Seattle, where trust in city government has taken hard knocks over a decade of visible struggle, cannot afford many more broken promises.
seattletimes.com
People who don't take risks generally make about two big mistakes a year. People who do take risks generally make about two big mistakes a year. - Peter Drucker
How to know what kind of software to build, through Deductive Discovery www.deductivediscovery.com/p/why-produc...
Why Product Discovery Keeps Failing For Complex B2B SaaS
Product discovery treats three different activities as one. For complex B2B software, that confusion leads to expensive trial and error labelled as “best practice.”
deductivediscovery.com
"We propose a philosophy based on individual empowerment as the source of prosperity," says Mark Zuckerberg. Sounds good, but - remind me again - what philosophy has been guiding Facebook for the last ten years? about.fb.com/news/2026/08...
The Future is for Everyone
A letter from Mark Zuckerberg on the path to a positive AI future.
about.fb.com
A new mentorship program by Women in Revenue: womeninrevenue.org/mentorship/
Thrive - Mentorship | Women in Revenue
Mentorship Program Women in Revenue’s Mentorship Program connects women to share guidance, expertise, and support that fuels personal and professional growth. Join us Share your experiences, gain new...
womeninrevenue.org
China produces a third of the world's electricity - by far more than any other country. Per capita, 16 countries produce more.
AI factors are likely responsible for roughly one-third of the recent economic growth in the US, according to Michael Pearce, an economist at Oxford Economics.
Start at the age of 18 and make half a million dollars hunting vulns. Also learn what university studies or MBAs can't teach you. www.linkedin.com/pulse/road-t...
The Road Not Taken: What 10 Years and $500,000 in Bug Bounties Taught Me
At age 28, after more than ~10 years and earning ~$500k USD across HackerOne, Bugcrowd and other platforms through bug bounties, it was time to share some thoughts. Below are my absolute raw thoughts ...
linkedin.com
Simple: When you remediate a vulnerability it stops being one. The trick is how to get from finding to fixing - fast. www.hackerone.com/blog/fixing-...
Fixing the Fix Gap: Introducing H1 Remediation | HackerOne
Validated findings shouldn't stall in a backlog. H1 Remediation delivers source code-informed fix plans directly to your engineering team, automatically.
hackerone.com
San Francisco remains the most beautiful and consequential city on the planet, and tech reshaped SF in ways that have caused real harm. Both things are true at once. www.christofwittig.com/post/8234024...
San Francisco, On the Edge, Still Mine
I just finished Jonathan Weber's City on the Edge, his history of the last few decades of San Francisco. It's a good book, and an unsettling one, because I've lived more than two-thirds of that...
christofwittig.com
Sales is changing: 1. Run the business in real time 2. Make every seller an advisor for innovation 3. Redesign revenue workflows 4. Turn customer signal into company advantage www.linkedin.com/pulse/sales-...
Sales as we know it is over. That’s a good thing.
Sales isn’t going away. The way we’ve been running it is.
linkedin.com
Sprint Coordinator for Aalto Founder School. This role is for someone with high agency, strong execution skills, and ambition to grow. www.aalto.fi/en/open-posi...
Founder Sprint Coordinator | Aalto University
aalto.fi
Four amazing mathematicians under 40 stand out in harmonic analysis, o-minimality, symplectic geometry, and partial differential equations. www.mathunion.org/imu-awards/f...
Fields Medals 2026 | International Mathematical Union (IMU)
For his work in partial differential equations, including the rigorous derivation of the Boltzmann equation from hard-sphere dynamics for rarefied gases, the derivation of wave kinetic equations from nonlinear dispersive systems, and probabilistic approaches to nonlinear Schrodinger dynamics.
mathunion.org
Cold calling is dead, but the phone is alive salesandmarketing.com/cold-calling...
Cold Calling Is Dead, But the Phone Is Not
You have to earn the right to continue a conversation. You do not deserve five minutes because somebody happened to answer the phone. You earn the first 30 seconds, then you earn the next part of the ...
salesandmarketing.com
Excellent blog posts on software pricing for AI solutions drsalonen.com
Dr. Petri I. Salonen — Where AI Meets Business Strategy
Pricing strategist, author, and educator writing on AI monetization, software pricing, and the business of technology.
drsalonen.com
Founders, initially you own 100%. When you are ready for a liquidity event, you own 10%. Bootstrapping would've kept you at 100%. So go for VC funding only if it allows you to produce more than 10x the bootstrapped business.
The Norwegian case for mediocracy: What happened when an aspiring American tiger mom came face to face with Norway’s ‘good enough’ model. (Behind paywall) www.ft.com/content/0fe0...
The Norwegian case for mediocracy
What happened when an aspiring American tiger mom came face to face with Norway’s ‘good enough’ model
ft.com
Help for Nordic startups going to America nordusgroup.com
Nordus Group — Helping Nordic Companies Enter and Scale in the US
Nordus Group provides strategic advisory for Nordic companies expanding into the United States. Founded by Henrik Johansson, a Swedish-born entrepreneur with three decades of US market experience.
nordusgroup.com