Claude's paid subscriptions have more than doubled this year. New users hit record numbers between January and February. Previous users came back in record numbers too.

A few years ago, getting a VC check was the ultimate shortcut. The fastest way to scale. The signal that you'd "made it." But with AI is a little bit different.

Global VC funding declined 30% in Q1 2024. One of the lowest quarters since 2018. And bootstrapped startups are quietly catching up. Recent data shows bootstrapped businesses are growing as fast as VC-backed startups, while spending only about one-quarter as much on customer acquisition.

Lovable hit $400M ARR with 146 employees. That's $2.7M revenue per employee. Midjourney goes even further. $500M revenue. ~110 employees. $0 raised from investors. That's over $4.5M per employee. Bootstrapped. For context: most SaaS companies celebrate $200k-$300k per employee as a strong benchmark.

If 146 people can generate $400M, what does the math look like at 10?

Today, Clay is becoming Mesh.

It's more than a name change. It's a commitment to a much broader vision.

As the world shifts, relationships have become both harder to maintain and more precious than ever. For the first time, we can actually map, understand, and activate networks at scale  dynamically, intelligently, and in real time.

In a mesh, nothing is truly isolated and nothing valuable is ever lost. That idea sits at the center of everything we're building. Because the future of relationships isn't about managing contacts. It's about understanding the shape of your entire network  and knowing how to move through it, grow it, and shape it.

You'll start to see Mesh roll out across our product, brand, and experiences starting today and over the coming weeks.

As Techcrunch mentioned... OpenAI will start testing targeted ads in ChatGPT for free, and $8/month Go users in the U.S., while higher-tier subscriptions remain ad-free.

Ads will appear at the bottom of conversations, can be dismissed, and won t influence ChatGPT s answers or involve selling user data. The move aims to generate revenue while keeping free access, and may also encourage some users to upgrade to paid tiers.

In about 17 days (I hope I m counting correctly), I ll be re-launching the mobile app, and now I m wondering how much the Product Hunt community will try it out.

I spend 100% of my time on a desktop on this platform.

But the majority of the population is mobile-only.

At the beginning, my reason was very simple: I needed a job and I genuinely liked the product.

I graduated with a Marketing degree, but I never felt like I belonged in agencies or similar environments. It just wasn t for me. At the same time, I didn t have much experience in tech either. So I took a leap of faith and applied for a Customer Support role, almost blindly.

The early days were tough. I had no technical background, no real understanding of how apps were built, and everything felt overwhelming. But the product itself became my motivation. I started from the most basic things: learning simple technical terms, understanding how an app is structured, and slowly exploring how everything works behind the scenes.

According to @Supabase's State of Startups 2025, founders follow newsletters like TLDR. 

ICYMI Product Hunt isn t just a launch platform. It s also a collective of newsletters. 

Hey folks,

We ve just launched on Product Hunt, it s been an exciting day!

I'm curious: what are your best tips for keeping the hype alive after the launch day?

Also, any advice on how to better gather and act on feedback from the PH community?