Christopher Sopher

Substack's narrative dilution stems from its venture-backed pursuit of scale. As startups chase jaw-dropping valuations, they often compromise their core product narratives. Substack had an impressive promise: an 'Empire of One.' Yet, as it strives to be a centralized social network, it risks alienating the very creators who once thrived on its platform. This dilution manifests in real departures—writers leaving not due to failure, but because Substack no longer accommodates their success, demonstrating the cost of unexamined scale.

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please share, applications close Wed! CALL FOR STARTUPS BUILDING IN BEHAVIORAL/MENTAL HEALTH AND/OR ADDICTION! https://lnkd.in/enE-s2zF Wave's upcoming HealthTech cohort, launching in October, is a special one, focused specifically on Seed/Series A companies focused on solving the mental health crisis, including addiction. If you're a founder building in the space, or know one, please take the time to learn more below: https://lnkd.in/enE-s2zF Besides the sub-vertical focus, this year's program (wrapping in Jan 2027 at the Behavioral Health and Addiction Summit taking place in Nashville on 1/21/27) is unique in being a dual-city program, leveraging the tremendous healthcare and technology communities in Florida as well as Nashville, along with unique mentors, advisors, and investors focused on helping founders grow their companies and grow quickly. The Tampa Bay Wave has been passionate about solving problems in the space for as long as I've been a part of the organization, with companies supported including Finni Health (YC W23), LunaJoy Health, Canopie, Goldfinch Health, NeuroFlow and more (led by incredible founders including Christopher Molaro, Anne Wanlund, Sipra Laddha, MD, Shama Rathi, MD, Brand Newland, John Greenwood, Bukhtar Khan, and more). To date, our 120+ HealthTech companies have raised nearly $600M, created over 2,100 jobs, and more. We have grown our organization, recently recognized as the #3 program in the United States, by supporting incredible founders solving real problems, and I would welcome any and all introductions and applications, so please share at your convenience! Applications close THIS WEDNESDAY

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There’s a growing misconception in the market that because the SBIR program is not currently active, federal innovation funding is “on hold.” That assumption is not just wrong, it’s risky. Here’s the reality: Participating agencies have already allocated their FY2026 SBIR set‑aside funds as part of their enacted funding bills. Those dollars are real, appropriated, and must be obligated by September 30, 2026 - only to small businesses. Agencies are not waiting idly. DOE is a clear signal of what’s happening across government. Through recent appropriations language, DOE has been given expanded flexibility to manage SBIR, STTR, and Technology Commercialization Fund (TCF) dollars within its R&D accounts. In plain terms: DOE can reprogram and deploy innovation funds, even while formal SBIR authorization remains stalled, so that critical R&D doesn’t sit on the sidelines. This is not a loophole. It’s a pressure valve. And DOE is not alone. NIH, DoD, and others are moving on parallel tracks. NIH has already shifted volume into Parent R01/R21 mechanisms and highlighted topics tied to its $48.7B FY26 budget. DoD is activating and expanding alternative pathways with substantial small‑business participation, including: ■ AFRL IDIQs ■ Army CSOs ■ DARPA office‑wide opportunities ■ Program‑specific BAAs and prototype vehicles These mechanisms can absorb SBIR‑like dollars, hit the same technical and commercialization milestones, and, critically,  allow agencies to meet their fiscal obligation deadlines. Here’s the key timing point many companies are missing: To obligate FY26 funds by September 30, agencies must open submission windows now, over the next 1–2 months, to allow time for: ■Proposal submission ■Technical and programmatic review ■Negotiation ■Contracting That process does not start in August. It must start now. Which means the window is opening, whether companies are ready or not. For small businesses, the takeaway is simple: Waiting for SBIR reauthorization as a single trigger is no longer a strategy. It’s a bottleneck. The agencies are moving. The money is allocated. The clock is running. At Eagle Point Funding, this is exactly where we operate best - helping companies position early, choose the right mechanisms, and move fast while others are still waiting for headlines. SBIRs will return. But FY26 funding is already in motion. The companies that win this year won’t be the ones who waited. #SBIR #dualusetech #GovCon

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Here's a fundraising metric most teams never track: Dollars Per Hour. How much money does one hour of fundraising work actually produce? Busy doesn't always mean effective. Some teams work nonstop and barely move revenue. Others work strategically and scale quickly. High-leverage teams: → Focus on top donors → Stack campaigns intentionally → Design the year in advance → Protect relationship time Low-leverage teams: → Chase every opportunity → Overproduce events → Underinvest in donor relationships → Burn out staff along the way 😞 How might you 10x your dollars per hour, fundraise less, and raise more? Do you know your team's Dollars Per Hour?

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Donor copy gets stuck on a blank page. Grant work gets stuck across approved facts, funder rules, reviewers, and deadlines. A nonprofit development director choosing between two AI tools cannot resolve those bottlenecks with a $21 price comparison. Fundwriter.ai's $29 Basic plan includes 20,000 generated words and more than 30 named writing jobs. It is built for the fundraiser moving from a donor appeal to a segmented version, a thank-you, a subject line, and an event follow-up. That saves setup. It does not create a funder search process, a shared source library, a funder-requirements checklist, or a live grant pipeline. Grantable starts at $50 because the draft sits inside a larger grants operation. Its documented workflow stores mission language, program descriptions, past proposals, and funder notes; turns requirements into a checklist; and tracks applications through list, board, calendar, and reporting views. So the extra $21 is not a prose upgrade. It pays for memory and coordination around the prose. There are two pricing traps. A qualifying 501(c)(3) with an annual operating budget under $500,000 can get the $50 Starter plan for $25 a month for 12 months. That makes it $4 cheaper than the $29 writing plan in year one, but it still does not turn a grants workspace into a donor-correspondence system. The other trap runs in the opposite direction. A 20,000-word allowance is measurable. The grants platform publishes a 50-message daily cap on Starter, but not its absolute monthly AI capacity. A 50-message day does not prove the month will cover the workload. For a mixed department, both subscriptions cost $79 a month at list price, or $54 during the discounted first year. That only makes sense when donor writing and grant operations are two recurring queues. A second subscription should remove a second bottleneck, not duplicate generation. If the hard part is finding words, buy the writing assistant. If the hard part is finding the approved fact, matching it to a funder requirement, and carrying it through review, buy the grants system.