Field Notes

Operators writing it down.

Essays from the Moonlabs operating tables. AI-native building, commercial leverage, fundraising, what is actually working on the ground. No hot takes, no link-bait. Just the things we wish someone had handed us two years ago.

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Featured Selection 26 Feb 2026 · 8 min read

Why we say no

We turn down roughly nine in ten applications. Most accelerators would call that a problem. We think it is the most important number we report. Here is the actual breakdown.

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Selection · 19 Nov 2025

What we look for in a co-founder pair

Co-founder pairs that fail mostly fail in predictable ways. The strong ones share a small set of properties that separate them durably from the weak ones. Here is the list.

James Freestone 7 min

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