Welcome to the first edition of Townhall, the newsletter for founders & tech employees from the creators of Frame, the all-in-one collaboration OS.

Today we cover a crucial Supreme Court case, the true cost of SaaS fragmentation, and the key to a successful launch 🤝 

Hot In Founders World

Wellness 🏥: Apple has made major progress on its watch's super-secret, no-prick blood glucose tracking that will warn people if they are pre-diabetic. It’d be the latest health improvement for the watch that has been literally saving lives, but it’s by no means guaranteed to happen. Many have tried to create a noninvasive blood glucose tracking system, and all have failed. Let’s see if Apple finally cracks the code.

Regulatory🧑‍⚖️: The future of the internet hangs in the balance this week as the Supreme Court hears arguments for Gonzalez v. Google. The reason Gonzalez has captured the attention of Big Tech is because of Section 230, a little-known law that protects internet companies' rights to moderate their platforms as they see fit. In other words, you can’t sue TikTok if you see something you don’t like on your FYP. This is an especially worrisome development for AI chatbots. Because of their unpredictability, they would be legal nightmares if Section 230 was gutted. Thus, it is possible that the AI search engine boom is killed before it can really take off. CNN has more on the story here.

Management 🏢: The much-maligned Meta is gearing up for another round of layoffs, the latest in a string that has seen thousands cut from the social media and Metaverse pioneer’s ranks. It’s all part of Zuckerberg’s “year of efficiency” plan, which promised to cut Meta’s expenses so that they can weather both the broader tech downturn and the massive short-term losses from its Metaverse division. Considering that 2023 is projected to be a tough economic year, layoffs seem to be a difficult but prudent decision for many companies. Meta’s stock is up 38% YTD, so it appears that Zuck might be on to something here with his focus on “efficiency”

What’s New At Frame

Hello Poland - On March 1st, we’re officially opening our Warsaw office! The Polish tech ecosystem has seen tremendous growth in startups and talent over the last 10 years - so we’re super excited to be here.

Did you know? CEE (Central and Eastern European) startups are among the most capital efficient in Europe and grew the most of any area in the world from 2017-22 (more on this here).

Our beautiful photoshopped office (and no, it’s not the Empire State building in the background. It’s Palac Kultury)

Thinking We Baked

Today, we live in a hyper-fragmented digital work environment. 150+ SaaS used in parallel - your personal tools, your work tools. Multiple labels, tags, user interfaces, user management systems, folders systems, etc etc.

Frankly, it’s a nightmare both logistically and financially.

In our first article, we explore the true cost of the fragmentation of SaaS and discuss how a 𝐦𝐢𝐧𝐢𝐦𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐬𝐭 and 𝐢𝐧𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐨𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐚𝐛𝐥𝐞 OS like Frame provides the ultimate collaborative experience.

Read it on both Substack and Medium!

Thinking We Loved

💰 Want to learn how to fundraise? Brett Adcock has you covered.

⚡️ Why is speed fundamental for startups? This classic Paul Graham piece will enlighten you.

🎒 The key to a successful launch? Lots of preparation.

The Tool Box

📱 We just started using Buffer to manage our social media accounts, and so far, it’s been everything we could ask for.

📧 If you’re a founder looking for informative but fun breakdowns of the latest news in tech, you need to subscribe to Homescreen.

🔥 LinkedIn carousels are all the rage these days. Here’s a free carousel generator.

Hustler’s Quote Of The Week

Customer Spotlight

“ The productivity stack for startups is overly fragmented with multiple cool tools we use every day (like Notion, Miro, etc) not really talking to each other and unbundled from main data objects we use in business (i.e. client/lead objects for sales/marketing stack, employee objects, project objects, etc.).

Frame will change it, building an all-in-one collaborative OS for startups, which will be natively integrated with great functional tools we already use every day, i.e. Rippling, Personio, symmetrical.ai, HiBob for HR/Payroll, Pipedrive, Salesforce, HubSpot for Sales, etc.

Cool to see the compound startup philosophy championed by Parker Conrad being deployed in the productivity SaaS domain.”

Piotr Smolen, CEO at Symmetrical

|