The Build is a monthly newsletter for founders and entrepreneurs. It is about making money, building systems, and getting to where you want to go. It is not a medtech newsletter and it is not a daily inbox blast. It is a physical issue, printed and mailed to you once a month, written for anyone running a real company who is tired of advice that sounds good and changes nothing.
Why it comes in the mail
The format is the point. The Build arrives as a printed issue you can hold, mark up, and keep on the desk instead of one more thing buried in an inbox you already cannot keep up with. Reading on paper is a different kind of attention than skimming a screen between notifications. An issue you can annotate and return to does work that a deleted email never gets the chance to do. Once a month, one thing worth sitting with, away from the feed.
What is inside an issue
Each issue leads with a story from the real work of building companies and then turns it into something you can use. It is direct, first person, and honest about the parts most business writing skips. A few examples from recent issues:
Issue No. 1
The CEO Who Called Me an Embarrassment
The difference between performing commitment and producing results. A CEO once called me an embarrassment for leaving to pick up my kids, while never once questioning my output. That is startup theater, and the issue lays out how to spot it in your own week, including the contrast between Pets.com and Mailchimp: one looked impressive in 1999, only one still exists.
Issue No. 2
The Growth Numbers
The numbers that actually tell you whether your company survives, and why most founders are watching the wrong dashboard. Early-stage founders obsess over vanity metrics that make good screenshots. Growth-stage founders track the basics and ignore unit economics. The issue is about building the habit of looking at the numbers that matter before the bank account makes the decision for you.
Issues also carry a quotes page, a reader question, and a short opinion piece. The throughline is the same as everything else I write. Build the business, not the performance of one.
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Dave Saunders is the founder of Base Reality Group and a Fractional CPO for hard-tech founders. He was a founder and operator at Galen Robotics, where the surgical-robotics platform earned FDA De Novo authorization in 2023, and he managed a 35-patent portfolio licensed from Johns Hopkins. He publishes The Build and wrote Founders Who Finish. More about Dave →