How Founder Notes is put together

Writing here is open to founders eChai has asked in. A founder posts from the box at the head of the column, under their own name and with a picture if they want one, up to 3 notes a day. Their name opens their profile on eChai, and they can change a note after it is up.

When a founder on eChai has posted something somewhere else, such as LinkedIn, we can file it here under their name. The entry says where it was first posted and links to the original.

An answer a founder gave to one of eChai's Founder Conversations questions can be filed the same way, and it names the question it answered.

We also curate posts by people who are not on eChai. The entry opens with where it was posted, such as Curated from X, which links to the post. The name over the words is theirs, and it is not a link, since they have no profile here.

An article is cited rather than reposted. The entry leads with the publication and the piece's headline, which opens it. The passage quoted from it runs to at most 600 characters, cut at the end of a sentence where there is one and marked where it stops, and a picture taken from the piece says which publication it came from.

Where we have written a line of context, it sits above the quoted words, apart from them.

Some curated entries are gathered on a page of their own: Built with Astra, Wrong Gone AI, Deciding with Jev, Global Fintech Fest 2026, OpenAI DevDay 2026, and The Navier-Stokes Week. In the column, a collection reads either as one entry carrying the newest thing added to it, or entry by entry.

An entry reads in one section at most: AI, Fundraising & VC, Fintech, D2C & consumer, SaaS & B2B, Sales & marketing, Hiring & teams, What founders use, Ecosystem, Health, Deeptech, and Climate. An entry in a collection reads in its collection's section unless the desk files it in another, and an entry nobody has filed reads in no section.

Photographs from eChai gatherings. Each gathering has one entry, which comes back to the top as more of its photographs go up.

Founder Dates, a founder asking the network for help getting good at one thing.

eChai's own news: an account of something that happened at a company, with the editor named and the company's own announcement first among the sources. A fact put right after it is filed is printed under the account as a dated correction, and an item about a partner brand says so.

Rankings written from eChai's polls. A poll can be written up once 25 founders' answers count. Each founder is counted once in the total however many answers they named, and once under each answer they named. An answer counts when the founder registered for a gathering that has since been held, or had an account before the poll was asked. A vote for the founder's own company or brand is left out, and so is a vote from a company account, and an answer such as Other has no row of its own. The figures are taken on the day the story is filed and printed with that date and the dates the answers came in. The poll keeps moving, and the story links to it. No one who voted is named on a ranking.

eChai works with a small number of brands each year as their growth partner, on the terms set out on the Partner Brands page. A founder of a partner brand carries a blue tick beside their name in the column and on their profile. A green tick marks someone who hosts eChai gatherings.

Founder Notes is edited by Jatin Chaudhary. To point out a mistake, or to ask for a post of yours to be taken down, write to Jatin at [email protected].