Welcome back, Founders & Operators. This week: Crossing 1,500+ members, How to Navigate Policy as a Founder, and upcoming NYC events.
Thank you for 1,500+ members in this community - we‘re grateful and excited to cross this milestone with all of you.
We hope to continue to meet and exceed your expectations in the coming weeks!
UPCOMING NYC EVENTS
Open Models Meetup · Thursday 6-9PM · Chelsea · OpenRouter
Come Meet OpenRouter and celebrate their exit to Stripe at this Open Models NYC Developer Event.
Founders Breakfast Club · Tuesday 8-11 AM · West Village
Coffee, croissants, matcha, and co-working at an iconic café on Bleecker Street, and an opportunity to meet our friends from Mercury. Limited spots.
Rooftop Social · Thursday · 6:30-8:30 PM · Lower East Side
Join fellow founders and operators for rooftop drinks and conversations on GTM, AI-Native Services, and more. Curated group, limited capacity.
As a founder, your goal is to move fast and execute. That is why regulation and policy will usually be an afterthought.
But there are exceptions - startups operating in highly regulated industries, like health care or financial services, will always need at least some awareness of licensing and regulations. And then there are particular moments in the life of a startup, like launching a new product or entering a new market, when regulation will be part of the conversation.
Where do you go for guidance? Assume you have no General Counsel or legal expert on your team (yet). There are two go-to paths. First, LLMs: They are the fast and cheap self-serve option. However what they will tell you will not be particularly robust, and it will still take multiple hours of your own time to get to an assessment. Second, legal counsel: They are high friction, slow and expensive. But they will give you full and extensive coverage.
That gap is part of why I built RegLayer, building on my experience across Coinbase, government, and frontier tech policy research at Harvard and Wharton. RegLayer gives founders a practical third option: an instant, system-generated brief for a specific product or market decision, with the option to upgrade to an expert-authored report that is ready within 1-2 business days. It costs more than asking ChatGPT, but considerably less than commissioning a full legal brief. It is more robust and precise than the former, and way faster than the latter.
RegLayer also provides a regulatory intelligence workspace for monitoring upcoming policy developments that will impact your business, and more. As part of their recent launch, RegLayer is offering F&O members 65% off their first order (Code FANDO), and open to taking on design partners for custom builds - reach out here.
If you have an interest - or pain point - in AI policy, our team recently launched the AI Policy Radar as an open-source public resource. Take a look here. Alongside it, we published a State of AI Policy Report covering the latest data and trends in the space.
Want to be featured, get involved, or just say hi? Shoot us a note. [email protected]
We’re looking for Community Fellows and Fall Internship/Co-Op candidates to help build the next stage of NYC Founders & Operators. Learn more, apply, or share the opportunity with someone who might be a fit here.
See you soon,
Stephan & Your F&O Team