ADSN

Daniel and James debate where the next durable technology businesses will come from, starting with their enterprise thesis for Anthropic and Meta's combination of AI products and distribution. A public exchange over a vibe-coded beehiiv alternative becomes a discussion about what customers actually pay for: dependable email delivery, continued development, and a team that stays focused after the first demo.

They also discuss Thrad's reported $1 million monetization fund for consumer AI apps and challenge Netflix's approach to building its advertising business. Tech Trades introduces Chloe and Mary's Ladies Who Launch, followed by a speculative Kevel exit over-under around a $1 billion line. Primary Posts closes with a marketplace for attending strangers' weddings and a Shopify milestone that prompts a conversation about more people starting businesses.

Thank you to our sponsors:

• AdQuick – Making OOH advertising as easy to plan, buy, and measure as digital. http://adquick.com
• http://Thrad.ai — Building the advertising infrastructure for AI. http://thrad.ai
• beehiiv — The all-in-one platform for newsletters, websites, and every tool you need to grow and earn. http://beehiiv.com
• The Farm — Fraction commercial legal with an in-house approach to outside counsel. http://thefarmllp.com

STAY CONNECTEDJames on Twitter & LinkedIn – /jamesborowDaniel on LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok – /danieldruger
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Daniel and James welcome back Ari Paparo, author of Yield and host of Marketecture, to debate where advertising and commerce go next. Ari shares his impressions of Amazon's combined retail-media and DSP buying experience, explains why purchase signals can be more useful than broad search histories, and makes the case for Walmart's advertising ambitions. As an early Vibe investor and board member, he discusses how retail data, television distribution, and tools for advertisers outside Walmart's stores could work together.

The conversation gets sharper when Ari challenges James's enthusiasm for consumer agents: after two weeks and roughly 10 projects, is Muse delivering lasting value or just entertaining experiments? They explore whether agents undermine retail media by skipping browsing, where sponsored recommendations belong, and why affiliate fees could become a major battleground. Daniel adds a retailer's concern about agents failing to build coordinated multi-item carts. Ari closes with his account of the Google ad-tech remedies discussion and his ambition to write more explanatory business books.

Thank you to our sponsors:

• AdQuick – Making OOH advertising as easy to plan, buy, and measure as digital. http://adquick.com
• http://Thrad.ai — Building the advertising infrastructure for AI. http://thrad.ai
• beehiiv — The all-in-one platform for newsletters, websites, and every tool you need to grow and earn. http://beehiiv.com
• The Farm — Fraction commercial legal with an in-house approach to outside counsel. http://thefarmllp.com

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Daniel on LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok – /danieldruger

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Pinterest and Crexi Executives Chloe Wix and Mary Bloom introduce Ladies Who Launch, a new ADSN conversation about the products, careers, and friendships people build along the way. They revisit their early Snapchat days, how a connection through Mary's future husband became a working relationship, and why moving their meetings outside helped them solve problems. Their “run-on-ones” along Venice Beach became both a brainstorming ritual and the foundation of a friendship that still serves as a trusted sounding board for career decisions.

In their first “Kill, Launch, or Iterate” segment, they weigh Spectacles, flavored Philadelphia cream cheese, and unlimited PTO. Chloe explains why a defined vacation allowance helped her take more time off, while Mary argues that unclear expectations make unlimited leave harder to navigate. Alongside stories about wearables and wedding footage, they return to a practical theme: strong relationships and clear agreements help turn good ideas into action.

Thank you to our sponsors:

• AdQuick – Making OOH advertising as easy to plan, buy, and measure as digital. http://adquick.com
• http://Thrad.ai — Building the advertising infrastructure for AI. http://thrad.ai
• beehiiv — The all-in-one platform for newsletters, websites, and every tool you need to grow and earn. http://beehiiv.com
• The Farm — Fraction commercial legal with an in-house approach to outside counsel. http://thefarmllp.com

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Daniel and James start with a student selling ad space on her wall to pay tuition, then take the idea of “everything is an ad network” straight to James's hat and Daniel's family-photo background. They discuss an X Money appeal that reportedly raised more than $10,000 toward a Cybertruck and debate a cited figure showing only 2.2% of US households paying for AI. Daniel sees a promising starting point; James sees a consumer market that will largely be funded by ads and commerce.

The conversation moves into reported visual ad tests in ChatGPT, why advertising can be relevant to the person without matching the surrounding content, and whether AI generation wait time creates a new placement opportunity. They also debate TikTok's off-platform expansion and argue that Apple could build an advertising business connected to payments. The episode closes with a discussion of food-industry concentration, a speculative Tech Trades segment, James's account of a Dallas conference, and Primary Posts about collaboration and a stadium singing Blink-182 to Tom DeLonge.

Thank you to our sponsors:

• AdQuick – Making OOH advertising as easy to plan, buy, and measure as digital. http://adquick.com
• http://Thrad.ai — Building the advertising infrastructure for AI. http://thrad.ai
• beehiiv — The all-in-one platform for newsletters, websites, and every tool you need to grow and earn. http://beehiiv.com
• The Farm — Fraction commercial legal with an in-house approach to outside counsel. http://thefarmllp.com

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"Volume negates luck." That is one of the many Jay-"isms" we get into on this episode of No Permission.

Jay Yang is the author of You Can Just Do Things and the upcoming Work With The Best. He's on a mission to show people they can create their own opportunities through permissionless action (No Permission!!!). And it's not just his mission, it's also how he lives his life.

Jay cold emailed Tyler Denk at Beehiiv at 16 and landed an internship while still in high school. At 17, he spent 50 hours building a pitch deck for Noah Hagan and became his head of content. At 18, he built a six-figure ghostwriting agency. At 19, he dropped out of college, joined Alex Hormozi's ⁠acquisition.com⁠, helped set a Guinness World Record for their book launch, and published his own bestseller, You Can Just Do Things. Now at 20, he has 500,000 followers across platforms, a newsletter with 50,000 subscribers, 55,000+ tweets, and a second book dropping September 30, 2026.

Links from the episode:

• ⁠Amazon: You Can Just Do Things (Book)⁠
• ⁠Amazon: Work With The Best (Book)⁠
• ⁠https://jayyanginspires.com/⁠
• ⁠Jay's YouTube⁠

🤝 Partner with No Permission: ⁠daniel@nopermissionpodcast.com⁠

🎤 Your host:

Daniel Druger – 3x exited founder / operator, Fortune 50 product exec, ex-Snapchat, startup investor. 15+ years working as a founder and with founders.

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This week on the ADSN Rundown, Daniel Druger and James Borow examine how artificial intelligence is moving from software into hardware, commerce and public infrastructure. They break down Meta’s Apple-like hardware moment, Google and SpaceX testing TPUs in orbit, and the future of advertising when agents shop on a consumer’s behalf. They also explore X’s phone-number strategy, Amazon’s new Ads Agent and why James believes the next operating-system war will be Meta and Muse against Grok, Tesla and Starlink.

Daniel and James also cover McDonald’s billion-dollar media ambitions, DoorDash’s surprising enterprise adoption of CLI and MCP ordering, major personnel moves at Instinct and Astro Digital, and the launch of http://America.gov as an AI front door to the federal government. They close by making the case for bringing fun and wonder back to technology, then examine how Ken Griffin’s $2 billion higher-education investment became a major win for Miami and a painful loss for Chicago.

Thank you to our sponsors:

• AdQuick – Making OOH advertising as easy to plan, buy, and measure as digital. http://adquick.com
• http://Thrad.ai — Building the advertising infrastructure for AI. http://thrad.ai
• beehiiv — The all-in-one platform for newsletters, websites, and every tool you need to grow and earn. http://beehiiv.com
• The Farm — Fraction commercial legal with an in-house approach to outside counsel. http://thefarmllp.com

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James on Twitter & LinkedIn – /jamesborow

Daniel on LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok – /danieldruger

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Rob Leathern, CEO and founder of Infohawk and the creator of the Facebook Ad Library, joins Daniel and James to break down the rapidly escalating world of AI-powered scams and online fraud. Rob explains how scammers are now vibe-coding their own analytics dashboards, producing 60-minute deepfake celebrity endorsement videos, and scraping public data to send hyper-targeted phishing messages. He shares why online fraud, estimated at nearly half a trillion dollars annually, is almost certainly underreported, and why the pullback in trust and safety teams at major platforms has made the problem worse. Rob walks through how Infohawk is using AI to fight back, why protection needs to come from both the client side (on-device models) and the server side (B2B tools), and why the internet is going to fundamentally change around verification and identity in the next two to three years.

The conversation also covers the regulatory landscape, including proposed US scam liability legislation modeled after UK and Australian frameworks, why platforms need to open up ad transparency without giving bad actors an oracle, and Rob's argument that education and red teaming should come before any vendor purchase for companies worried about social engineering attacks. Daniel and James note that Rob is one of the few people who has worked on these problems from inside both Facebook and Google and is now building the tools to solve them from the outside.

Thank you to our sponsors:

• AdQuick – Making OOH advertising as easy to plan, buy, and measure as digital. http://adquick.com
• http://Thrad.ai — Building the advertising infrastructure for AI. http://thrad.ai
• beehiiv — The all-in-one platform for newsletters, websites, and every tool you need to grow and earn. http://beehiiv.com
• The Farm — Fraction commercial legal with an in-house approach to outside counsel. http://thefarmllp.com

STAY CONNECTED

James on Twitter & LinkedIn – /jamesborow

Daniel on LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok – /danieldruger

Subscribe & leave a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review on Spotify & Apple Podcasts.

This week on the ADSN Rundown, Daniel Druger and James Borow unpack Meta’s decision to open Muse to developers and why connectors from Shopify, Stripe, Expedia, Instacart and others could turn it into a new consumer platform. They explore a potential open-web coalition between Meta, Shopify and Stripe, debate whether Meta will eventually acquire Shopify, and explain why the combination of social distribution, commerce data and advertising could reshape how people discover and buy products.

Daniel and James also cover Alex Heath’s move into investing, Peter Sellis’s 90-minute product masterclass, Ramp’s Broadway musical, the widening US-China divide around AI and robotics, and the $42 million Horowitz and Andreessen Academy. They close with tech trades at Pinterest and Crexi, Toby Lütke’s approach to high-stakes decisions, and Nikita Bier’s argument that probabilistic AI products will favor builders who are not constrained by decades of deterministic software thinking.

Thank you to our sponsors:

• AdQuick – Making OOH advertising as easy to plan, buy, and measure as digital. http://adquick.com
• http://Thrad.ai — Building the advertising infrastructure for AI. http://thrad.ai
• beehiiv — The all-in-one platform for newsletters, websites, and every tool you need to grow and earn. http://beehiiv.com
• The Farm — Fraction commercial legal with an in-house approach to outside counsel. http://thefarmllp.com

STAY CONNECTED

James on Twitter & LinkedIn – /jamesborow

Daniel on LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok – /danieldruger

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Jason Levin, founder and CEO of Meme Lord, joins Daniel and James to break down how he turned internet humor into a legitimate B2B SaaS business. Jason explains his concept of "humor arbitrage," the idea that the boringer your company, the more you stand to gain from being funny, and how that thesis has landed Meme Lord enterprise clients with ACVs of $60-80K across HR, legal, and tech.

He walks through how the company helps brands launch secondary accounts to take creative risk off their main channels, why his contracts explicitly ban NSFW and political content (think Seinfeld, not shock value), and how niche virality crushes mass virality every time. Jason also gets candid about feeling like he's "cheating on marketing" with vibe coding, why he thinks the world is only going to get stupider (and why that's bullish for his business), and his journey from wanting YouTube fame to being happiest in a CRM and a notebook.

Thank you to our sponsors:

• AdQuick – Making OOH advertising as easy to plan, buy, and measure as digital. http://adquick.com
• http://Thrad.ai — Building the advertising infrastructure for AI. http://thrad.ai
• beehiiv — The all-in-one platform for newsletters, websites, and every tool you need to grow and earn. http://beehiiv.com
• The Farm — Fraction commercial legal with an in-house approach to outside counsel. http://thefarmllp.com

STAY CONNECTED

James on Twitter & LinkedIn – /jamesborow

Daniel on LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok – /danieldruger

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"Everything AI related that has ever been innovated on has been through the lens of something completely digital. The challenge for the physical AI world is how do you actually experience things in real life."

In this episode, Daniel and James sit down with Zach Greenberger, CEO of Nexar and former chief business officer at Lyft, to dig into the real-world data layer that's accelerating autonomous vehicles and physical AI. Nexar has built a network of 450,000 connected dashcam vehicles that cross every street in Manhattan four times a day, log 310 million miles per month, and have captured 75 million accidents over the past decade. Two months of Nexar's driving data exceeds what every autonomous vehicle company combined has ever driven — and Zach argues this edge case data is exactly what AV companies need now that simulation alone has reached its limit.

The conversation goes beyond cars. Nexar recently launched a collision prediction model called BADASS (Beyond ADAS) that works on drones, planes, tanks, delivery robots, and industrial equipment, proving that automotive data is an incredible proxy for understanding real-world physics. Zach breaks down the difference between real-world and real-time data, why the smart city pitch is finally achievable without massive infrastructure investment, and how Nexar's recent merger with Nauto gives them 98% US coverage. He also draws a careful line on data privacy, explaining why consumer-chosen dashcams create a fundamentally different trust model than stationary surveillance cameras, and predicts delivery robots, autonomous security guards, and commercial drones will proliferate within 12 to 24 months.

Thank you to our sponsors:

• AdQuick – Making OOH advertising as easy to plan, buy, and measure as digital. http://adquick.com
• http://Thrad.ai — Building the advertising infrastructure for AI. http://thrad.ai
• beehiiv — The all-in-one platform for newsletters, websites, and every tool you need to grow and earn. http://beehiiv.com
• The Farm — Fraction commercial legal with an in-house approach to outside counsel. http://thefarmllp.com

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James on Twitter & LinkedIn – /jamesborow

Daniel on LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok – /danieldruger

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This week on the ADSN Rundown, James and Daniel go from Eric Seufert's optimistic vision for an ad-supported prosperous society to Travis Kelce getting a warm welcome into the world of ads.

James makes the case for agentic insurance and for bringing Bitmoji back as a personalization layer for agents, Meta’s aggressive Muse launch, Mark Lou’s $100,000 body-ad takeover, and a former Anthropic researcher’s warning about AI risk.

Then here our newest segment: Over/Under and the usual Primary Posts. Enjoy this week's episode!

Thank you to our sponsors:

• AdQuick – Making OOH advertising as easy to plan, buy, and measure as digital. http://adquick.com
• http://Thrad.ai — Building the advertising infrastructure for AI. http://thrad.ai
• beehiiv — The all-in-one platform for newsletters, websites, and every tool you need to grow and earn. http://beehiiv.com
• The Farm — Fraction commercial legal with an in-house approach to outside counsel. http://thefarmllp.com

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Before you start this episode, please give us a subscribe & leave a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review on Spotify & YouTube. This helps the podcast grow and makes James very happy.

"The founders that we invest in, the last thing that they want is our money. They want us."

Every big tech company has an alumni investing group, and until this summer Snap was the exception. On this episode of 30 Minutes, Daniel and James sit down with Max Rivera, founder of Ghost Angels, the Snap alumni fund that officially launched in June. Max walks through why he built it: a company that never topped 5,000 employees now has alumni running teams across big tech, the AI labs, and the hyperscalers, plus a bench of founders and investors that includes people like Brian Kim and Jacob Andreou. The fund is deliberately angel-sized, writing $25K to $50K checks that slot into the strategic part of a cap table even in oversubscribed rounds, and it stays focused on social, media, and ad tech where a group of 20 Snap operators is actually useful to a founder. Max shares the first five portfolio companies, including Intangible (a16z speedrun), Ev Williams' new contacts app, YC-backed Lightberry, Snap alumni-founded Auto, and Gen Z location app Corner.

The back half gets into how Max actually runs this while holding a full-time job at Microsoft AI. He started angel investing five years ago with what he called "tuition capital," backing about 20 startups purely to learn venture by doing, and he now runs Ghost Angels as what he jokingly calls a vibe-coded fund, with AI handling deal flow ingestion, a custom CRM, LP dashboards, diligence research, and even legal review of SAFEs. He makes the case for being public about side hustles, why operators make better cap table members than career investors, and where Ghost Angels could go next, from a 100-member group to a syndicate for non-Snap believers. Listeners will come away with a practical playbook for starting an alumni fund and a clear picture of why the Snap diaspora is one of the most underrated networks in tech.

Thank you to our sponsors:

• AdQuick – Making OOH advertising as easy to plan, buy, and measure as digital. adquick.com
• Thrad.ai — Building the advertising infrastructure for AI. thrad.ai
• beehiiv — The all-in-one platform for newsletters, websites, and every tool you need to grow and earn. beehiiv.com
• The Farm — Fraction commercial legal with an in-house approach to outside counsel. thefarmllp.com

STAY CONNECTEDJames on Twitter & LinkedIn – /jamesborowDaniel on LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok – /danieldruger
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Eric Seufert, the mind behind Mobile Dev Memo, released a 4-part series called The Prosperous Society. In it, Eric lays out a deeply optimistic case for AI's impact on the economy: as AI-enabled tools reduce the friction around both production and distribution, the binding constraint flips from production to distribution, and the digital advertising economy becomes accessible to businesses that were previously locked out entirely. He argues this leads to a collapse of the Pareto Principle, where products no longer need massive audiences to be viable, and consumers get matched with the exact products that fit their tastes — a state he calls "commerce at the limit."

The conversation takes a sharp turn into why Eric is deeply skeptical of agentic commerce. His argument is simple: shopping is self-expression, and delegating purchases to an agent strips consumers of agency. He also points out the incentive structures don't work — Amazon and Walmart will never let third-party agents intermediate their platforms, and the data backs it up. Walmart's Sparky drives 40% more items per transaction, Amazon's Rufus hit $12 billion in incremental sales, and chat ads across platforms like ChatGPT are already past a billion in revenue. Eric also flags what he calls the coming "balkanization" of AI use cases, where platforms like Meta pull up the drawbridge around enterprise verticals like media buying with dedicated AI business agents.

Thank you to our sponsors:

• AdQuick – Making OOH advertising as easy to plan, buy, and measure as digital. http://adquick.com
• http://Thrad.ai — Building the advertising infrastructure for AI. http://thrad.ai
• beehiiv — The all-in-one platform for newsletters, websites, and every tool you need to grow and earn. http://beehiiv.com
• The Farm — Fraction commercial legal with an in-house approach to outside counsel. http://thefarmllp.com

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James on Twitter & LinkedIn – /jamesborow

Daniel on LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok – /danieldruger

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This week's ADSN Rundown covers a packed slate, starting with True Classic running QVC-style live video directly on its homepage and whether that model or agentic commerce has a better shot at reshaping e-com. Daniel and James dig into Nikita Bier's take on shipping fast at X, where press releases were written 20 minutes before launch, and why overthinking go-to-market is a trap. They break down reporting that Chinese institutions are building AI models of American voters to test political messaging, the implications for open-source models, and what it means for platforms like TikTok. Olivia Moore's data on agent token consumption makes the case that API-first product strategy is no longer a debate. The guys also cover Instagram's new in-comments site preloading, the 1840s origins of the word "slop" and its AI parallel, Josh Wolf one-shotting a full motion graphic video with Claude Code, and a humanoid robot running 100 meters faster than Usain Bolt at China's robot games.

On the business side, Rohan Dar points out that Anthropic's rumored $2 trillion IPO would be four times larger than every San Francisco IPO in history combined. A new "Tech Trades" segment tracks major talent moves: Jeremy Voss and Alex Osborne joining Airbnb from Snap/Tinder, Eric Toda becoming CMO at Air, and Luke Kallis landing at Agbo, the gaming company co-founded by the creator of Fortnite and the Russo Brothers. Primary posts this week highlight Jeff Morris Jr. cold-texting Lance Armstrong for a bike ride and Ed O'Neill's masterclass in playing the long game when negotiating for Modern Family.

Thank you to our sponsors:

• AdQuick – Making OOH advertising as easy to plan, buy, and measure as digital. adquick.com
• Thrad.ai — Building the advertising infrastructure for AI. thrad.ai
• beehiiv — The all-in-one platform for newsletters, websites, and every tool you need to grow and earn. beehiiv.com
• The Farm — Fraction commercial legal with an in-house approach to outside counsel. thefarmllp.com

STAY CONNECTEDJames on Twitter & LinkedIn – /jamesborowDaniel on LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok – /danieldruger
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"The health paradigm has totally changed. It's never going back to where you're just going to go see your doctor in the physical office and get treated. That's never going to happen again."

Dr. Neil Paulvin, a board-certified physician with over 20 years of experience in integrative medicine joins 30 Minutes to cut through the BS when it comes to peptides and DIY health. Dr. Paulvin has been prescribing peptides since 2017 and breaks down the six major categories, from anti-inflammatory and muscle building to the vanity stacks covering weight loss, hair, and skin. He explains why BPC-157, the most hyped peptide on social media, still lacks proper human studies because no one can patent it or justify the $5-10 million needed for clinical trials, and why marketing names like "Wolverine Stack" and "Glow" are made-up terms from unregulated sellers, not real medical protocols.

The conversation covers where the industry is headed: big pharma is expected to control 75-80% of the peptide market within 3-5 years by patenting slightly modified versions of existing peptides. Dr. Paulvin also walks through retatrutide (GLP-3), which he calls the "home run of all home runs" but warns comes with significantly stronger side effects. He makes the case that peptides do work at the right dosing for the right patient, but stresses that Manhattan bodegas selling them at the front counter is a sign the industry has "jumped the shark," and that none of this replaces the fundamentals of sleep, exercise, diet, and stress management.

Thank you to our sponsors:

• AdQuick – Making OOH advertising as easy to plan, buy, and measure as digital. adquick.com
• Thrad.ai — Building the advertising infrastructure for AI. thrad.ai
• beehiiv — The all-in-one platform for newsletters, websites, and every tool you need to grow and earn. beehiiv.com
• The Farm — Fraction commercial legal with an in-house approach to outside counsel. thefarmllp.com

STAY CONNECTEDJames on Twitter & LinkedIn – /jamesborowDaniel on LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok – /danieldruger

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Daniel and James open with a run of ad-tech news that keeps circling one idea: everything is becoming an ads business, and agents won't change that. Starting from Antonio García Martínez's viral post, they make the case that the visible ad is just the tip of the iceberg — the targeting, attribution, and budgeting underneath is the real machine, and AI agents will simply inherit it. From there they hit Spotify testing a skip button that conveniently only skips publisher-sold podcast inventory, YouTube quietly redefining a "view" as an impression after years of setting the industry standard, and Apple's new unified campaign-management API, which James reads as step one toward an Apple Pay–powered audience network rather than a full DSP.

The back half gets into the scramble for supply and the widening AI gap. Pinterest is buying its way out of being supply-poor with TV Scientific and a Zillow data deal that brings 34 audience segments back into play, while Andreessen and Ramp data shows the median company spending about $12 per employee each month on AI versus $7,500 at the top 1% — maybe the biggest adoption gap tech has seen. They also dig into a WPP rebate lawsuit that exposes how agencies really make their money, celebrate Snap-alumni startup Higgsfield's $400M raise at a $5.4B valuation, and close with primary posts on LeBron trading distribution dreams for a subscribe button, Gen Z moving 52% of their investing into sports betting, and James's theory that high interest rates are quietly making movies good again.

Thank you to our sponsors:- AdQuick – Making OOH advertising as easy to plan, buy, and measure as digital. adquick.com- Thrad.ai — Building the advertising infrastructure for AI. thrad.ai- beehiiv — The all-in-one platform for newsletters, websites, and every tool you need to grow and earn. beehiiv.com- The Farm — Fraction commercial legal with an in-house approach to outside counsel. thefarmllp.comSTAY CONNECTEDJames on Twitter & LinkedIn – /jamesborowDaniel on LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok – /danieldrugerSubscribe & leave a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review on Spotify & Apple Podcasts.

Daniel and JB are back for the ADSN rundown and this week's theme is clear: the creator economy just became the main economy. They kick off with Orin John showing that creators can now link Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube to Google Search Console — the first real step in creators becoming the new publishers. Then they break down YouTube doubling its monetization requirements and X relaunching its creator program, both cracking down on faceless AI channels. The message from every platform is the same: original content from verified creators wins, everything else is getting squeezed out.

From there, Ari Seifer raises the white flag on the open web (it's dead, the walled gardens won), SpaceX's Starlink subscription flywheel reveals a $30B free cash flow path that should make every social network rethink its business model, and Satya Nadella says LinkedIn is merging four job titles into one — though LinkedIn employees in the comments aren't so sure. JB rebuilds his Situation Game with Claude and reports vibe coding has gotten dramatically better in just two months. They close with Primary Posts: Corgi's internal "Yapper Leaderboard" for team posting, and John Palmer's take that the most underrated hire right now is the "senior idea guy" — because with AI making execution easy, knowing what to build is the real bottleneck.

Thank you to our sponsors:

AdQuick – Making OOH advertising as easy to plan, buy, and measure as digital. http://adquick.com/

http://thrad.ai/ — Building the advertising infrastructure for AI. http://thrad.ai/

beehiiv — The all-in-one platform for newsletters, websites, and every tool you need to grow and earn. http://beehiiv.com

The Farm — Fraction commercial legal with an in-house approach to outside counsel. http://thefarmllp.com

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James on Twitter & LinkedIn – /jamesborow

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Episode One of an ADSN Original: 30 Minutes kicks off welcoming Harry Campbell, founder of Driverless Digest and one of the leading global experts on autonomous vehicles and mobility. He joins hosts James Borow and Daniel Druger to break down the state of the self-driving industry. Harry unpacks the Waymo vs. Tesla debate, explaining why Waymo has a massive safety and operational lead, but how Tesla's fleet scale could flip the script if they crack full autonomy. He walks through how LiDAR costs have plummeted upending Tesla's original camera-only thesis, and why Uber is facing an existential investor crisis as its Waymo partnership deteriorates and its stock underperforms.

The conversation digs into regulation and the human cost of disruption, from taxi medallion collapses to the 110K Uber and Lyft drivers in New York City facing an uncertain future. Harry also breaks down the drone delivery boom in Texas, why near-zero delivery costs could create unlimited TAM, and what excites him most over the next 3-5 years as more AV companies enter the game. Whether you're a consumer, investor, or just someone who's been curious about getting into a Waymo, this is the episode to understand where autonomous vehicles actually stand today.

Connect with Harry at:

• https://therideshareguy.com/
• https://www.thedriverlessdigest.com/

Thank you to our sponsors:

• AdQuick – Making OOH advertising as easy to plan, buy, and measure as digital. adquick.com
• Thrad.ai — Building the advertising infrastructure for AI. thrad.ai
• beehiiv — The all-in-one platform for newsletters, websites, and every tool you need to grow and earn. beehiiv.com
• The Farm — Fraction commercial legal with an in-house approach to outside counsel. thefarmllp.com

STAY CONNECTED
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Rundown is back and this week is all about backlash. Backlash against AI slop, against automating parenting, and against putting ads in your $60K BMW. They kick off with LinkedIn testing a "Sounds Like AI Slop" button, Snapchat banning AI from Spotlight, and YouTube nuking 130,000 channels overnight. Then Sam Altman gets roasted for suggesting ChatGPT generate podcasts for his kids (just talk to your children, Sam), and OpenAI catches heat for hosting an influencer retreat. The through-line: the honeymoon phase with AI is over and consumers are pushing back hard.

On the business side, Arnold Schwarzenegger's Pump Club app goes viral with a genius retention play — he pays your membership if you actually work out. BMW's Spider-Man display takeover shows exactly how not to monetize a premium brand. Orchid HQ proves controversial launch videos still cut through noise. And Mike Christo's 12-year-old son helped one-shot a full video game with Opus V — one prompt, 31,000 lines of code, making the case that OpenAI should be building a gaming platform. They close with Primary Posts: Daniel Burke's take on why the next billion-dollar companies won't come from people who've done it before, and Akash Gupta breaking down how The Odyssey cleared Oppenheimer's entire domestic run in 13 days on $0 of licensed IP.

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This is a featured episode of the NEW No Permission Podcast hosted by Daniel. Subscribe at No Permission Podcast (https://open.spotify.com/show/033nNxrnG1SI4HRqq1RUeL)

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"People crave intimacy in the sense of companionship and friendship rather than romance."

Carter Munk, founder and CEO of Pinned Social is on a mission to solve loneliness. This is his story as a 3x founder, never asking for permission to build.

How many 3x, sub-30 year old founders do you know? Introducing Carter Munk who founded Moe's Coffee in the US – an Australian coffee brand now in 50+ locations across Canada — while still in school. Later co-founding Circa, a dating app that raised nearly $2 million, before leaving to build Pinned, a new kind of social app designed to solve the loneliness problem his generation faces despite even though they are the most digitally connected in history.

The thesis behind Pinned: people don't see their friends because they don't know how to coordinate, not because they don't want to. He walks through how he validated the idea by interviewing 250 people, self-funded the early days, launched to a 12,000-person waitlist, and hit 5,000. He also gets real about outsourcing mistakes at Circa, why he has no backup plan, and the advice he'd give anyone thinking about starting something.

🤝 Partner with No Permission: daniel@nopermissionpodcast.com

🎤 Your host:

Daniel Druger – 3x exited founder / operator, product exec at Comcast, ex-Snapchat, startup investor. 15+ years working as a founder and with founders

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