MENLO TIMES

By Ayush Yadav, Founder, AY Technologies. This is an Op-Ed on Operators' Stack, Menlo Times. There has probably never been a better time to build software. What once required weeks of engineering can increasingly be prototyped in days, sometimes hours. AI can generate code, debug problems, create interfaces, explain unfamiliar technologies, and help small teams experiment with ideas that previously required significant time and money. As someone building software products for

By Julia Maslennikova, founder & CEO of 25/8 PR, an international agency for startups & tech companies. This is an Op-Ed on Operators' Stack, Menlo Times. A startup can create an excellent product and successfully build its media presence, yet still go unnoticed when a potential customer asks an AI for information about it. I see this as a real business problem, since people are increasingly using ChatGPT and other LLMs to search companies, compare products, and decide who t

By Philipp Herrmann, Co-founder of BRYCK and Managing Director of BRYCK Startup Alliance. This is an Op-Ed on Operators' Stack, Menlo Times. Europe has never lacked the raw material for DeepTech. It has world-class universities, deep engineering benches, and a research output that rivals the world's best. What it has lacked is the machinery to turn scientific breakthroughs into companies that can compete on a global stage. That gap between scientific excellence and commercial

By Sven Siering - Managing Director of vent.io, the Digital and Innovation Unit of Deutsche Leasing Group, which unites corporate venture capital and digital product engineering. Most corporate startups fail. Not because the market was wrong. Not because the team was weak. They fail because nobody built the right operating model. And without that, all the capital, customers, and brand name in the world will not save you. I know this because I have been building one for five y

By Dmitri Laush, CEO and Co-Founder of Perfect.Live, a modern alternative to traditional concierge services, serving high-net-worth individuals and premier corporate partners across 127 countries. For the past few years, I’ve been developing and promoting AI agents for use with high-net-worth clients. The case for automation is solid: it reduces costs, speeds up routine tasks, and expands the capabilities of a small team. But the more I work with these systems, the clearer I

By Kevin Lausten, CEO, Morpheus Space - A leading innovator and manufacturer of advanced electric propulsion systems for in-space mobility. Electric propulsion is shifting satellites from fixed assets to mobile infrastructure. As orbital congestion rises, maneuverability is becoming a core driver of mission value. Access to Space Is Improving but Orbital Mobility Remains Constrained The “New Space” era has fundamentally changed launch economics. The cost per kilogram to orbit

By Helena Rebane, CEO of AddSearch For years, companies built websites for a browsing-based path to conversion. The assumption was simple: attract visitors, help them explore, guide them toward the right information, and move them gradually toward action. But that logic belongs to an earlier web. At AddSearch, what we increasingly see is that visitors arrive with far less patience and far more context, often shaped by AI tools before they ever reach the site. They are not loo

By Andra Bagdonaitė, General Partner at FIRSTPICK Most early-stage investment decisions are made with almost no data. There's no revenue to analyze. No market share to defend. No proven team history at the specific problem they're now attacking. And yet capital gets deployed, at speed, in volume, based on frameworks built for a world that increasingly no longer exists. The question every serious early-stage investor should be asking right now: what is actually driving convict

(A Guest Post by Marius Jurgilas, CEO of Axiology) Fixed income is the quiet giant of capital markets. With more than $140 trillion outstanding globally, it dwarfs listed equities and funds, governments, banks, and corporates. And yet the machinery that moves it has not meaningfully changed in a generation. The whole bond lifecycle (issuance, custody, trading, settlement) still runs on siloed systems stitched together by intermediaries, message queues, and overnight batch pro

This is a guest post by Daniel Liechtenstein, Co-Founder & CEO @ Hypercore. Private credit has grown into a $2+ trillion asset class. The capital is there. The deals are there. What hasn't kept pace is how firms actually run their operations once the money is deployed. That gap is becoming harder to ignore. The Hidden Operational Problem. Most private credit firms run loan servicing through a combination of spreadsheets, legacy systems, and manual workflows. Payment waterfall