You are reading this because the Field Notes roundup published today covers the structural shift underway in surgical robotics. That kind of analysis helps you understand what is happening in your market. But understanding the market is only part of the job. The other part is building the business itself — and that is a different problem entirely.
Making money. Building systems. Getting to where you want to go. Those are the problems The Build exists to help you think through.
"The Best Newsletter for Making Money, Building Systems, & Getting to Where You Want to Go."
The Build is a monthly newsletter written by Dave Saunders. It covers the fundamentals that determine whether a founder succeeds or stalls — regardless of industry, stage, or how well-defined the market is. The issues that show up in surgical robotics companies are the same issues that show up in every serious founder's work: capital allocation, team building, decision quality, and execution under pressure.
What separates The Build from everything else in your inbox is that it does not arrive in your inbox.
Why Analog
There is no shortage of newsletters. Most of them arrive digitally, accumulate, and get skimmed or deleted. The Build is printed and physically mailed once a month. That is a deliberate choice, not an affectation.
A physical newsletter has literal tangibility. It is something you can hold, annotate, and keep. Issues of The Build are the kind of thing you can put on a shelf and return to — not something that disappears into a folder or gets lost in a thread.
The format also changes how you read. A physical object creates a different kind of attention than a screen does. When you sit down with The Build, you are reading it — not scanning it between Slack notifications.
What The Build Covers
Each issue addresses the three things the masthead promises. Not in a formulaic, one-section-per-topic way — but woven together, because in practice they are not separate problems.
Making Money
Revenue, pricing, capital, and the financial decisions that determine whether a company survives long enough to become something. Written for founders who are building real businesses, not chasing vanity metrics.
Building Systems
Operations, teams, processes, and the infrastructure that lets a company scale without falling apart. How to build something that does not depend entirely on the founder being in the room.
Getting to Where You Want to Go
Strategy, execution, and the hard decisions that determine what kind of company you are actually building — and whether you will still want to run it in five years.
Who Reads The Build
Founders and entrepreneurs who are serious about their work. People who are done with content that is optimized for virality and want something written by someone who has actually built companies, navigated regulatory systems, raised capital, and run teams.
Dave Saunders co-founded Galen Robotics and took it from a licensed Johns Hopkins technology to FDA De Novo clearance. He has served as a fractional CTO, CPO, and CMO for surgical robotics and interventional device companies at the growth stage. The Build is where he writes about what he has learned about building — not from the sidelines, but from inside the work.
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The Build
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Making money, building systems, and getting to where you want to go. Written by Dave Saunders. Printed and mailed once a month. Start your 30-day trial for $14.95, then $79/month. Cancel any time.
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