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FOUNDER MARKETING SKILLS

ScaleBrick's Founder Marketing Skills offers four key marketing skills for founders: social search audit, growth strategy, keyword research, and competitor audit. It supports a wide range of agents without requiring accounts or API keys, and has driven significant growth for companies like a YC-backed healthcare app and AIFlyer.

REASONS BLOCKS

Catch failures mid-run, cut tokens, and compound intelligence across every agent you deploy.

SURETHING.IO

Run and coordinate AI agents that execute tasks and report results with shared context.

THE BRAVE NEW WORLD OF AI MARKETS

It is naive to assume that the Total Addressable Market (TAM) for artificial intelligence will simply equal the current size of the global human labor market. This post proposes a new framework for sizing AI markets based on the classic economic equation of Price multiplied by Quantity (TAM = Human Labor TAM × Price Compression Factor × Volume Expansion Factor).

DIRECTION OVER SPEED

For most of software's history, you could fake productivity by shipping a lot. AI broke that cover. Prototypes are cheap, specs write themselves, and shipping looks the same whether you're building the right thing or the wrong one. Smaller teams of four or five, with the PM closer to the work, especially on AI features where "is this good" can't be answered by a metric. The model can build the thing for you. It still can't tell you why anyone should care.

SHIPPED ISN'T SOLVED

A customer asked for a feature on a call. The team built it, shipped it fast, and moved on. Nobody really used it. Speed only helps if you understand the problem before you start building. Look at your last five shipped features and count how many customers were still using each one a month later.

BECOME A CURATOR FOR TLDR FOUNDERS (3 HRS/WEEK)

TLDR is looking for someone who has founded a VC-backed startup to help write TLDR Founders for hundreds of thousands of subscribers. Our curators have been invited to major tech events, scouted for Tier 1 VCs, and get early access to unreleased TLDR products. Learn more [18].

STOP ASKING YOUR DATA QUESTIONS

The things you most need to know are usually the things nobody thought to ask about.

PUBLIC MARKETS HAVEN'T FIGURED OUT HOW TO BAKE IN AI PRODUCTIVITY GAINS

AI market gains currently favor vendors like Nvidia, while broader productivity benefits remain underpriced.

LOCKED, STOCKED, AND LOSING BUDGET: AI VENDOR LOCK-IN BITES BACK

We're headed to a token-based pricing structure and the end of fixed-price tiers.

CLIPPING IS A SHOO-IN MEDIA TREND OF THE YEAR

Clipping is where long-form video is broken into short 30-60 second segments for distribution on social platforms. It's driving massive reach, with some podcasts and creators gaining far more influence through clips than through their original full-length content. A growing ecosystem of paid “clippers” now distributes and amplifies these snippets, sometimes earning significant income based on performance. While it started as a way to promote longer content, clipping is increasingly becoming the main product itself.

HOW CEOS VIEW CMOS

A survey of 150 US CEOs found that the CEO-CMO relationship is stronger than ever, but performance expectations are outpacing delivery. 60% of CEOs now classify marketing as a cost center, nearly double last year's 35%, and top CMO ratings declined from the previous 2 years. The core tension is that CEOs want revenue impact and financial accountability while many CMOs still report in marketing terms rather than business outcomes. CMOs also face a unique pressure point around AI, being held 4x more accountable for AI ROI than any other C-suite executive.

SEO & AI TIP: OPTIMIZING FOR FREE VS. PAID CHATGPT

Free and paid ChatGPT operate as different systems, so your brand can appear with conflicting answers depending on the user tier. In one test, the free version ignored real search results and fabricated a 90 to 91 degree forecast, while the paid version used a structured data tool to return an accurate 68 degree result. This creates a targeting problem since B2B buyers often use paid tools while consumers rely on free ones, meaning your effective AI presence depends on your audience mix. Audit both tiers by running identical prompts and comparing outputs to map the true exposure surface. Measurement needs to align with the tier your ICP uses, or reporting will reflect a version of reality your customers never see.

HOW ONE RETAILER USED AI TO TURN ‘OUT-OF-STOCK' INTO IN-STORE TRAFFIC

The Salvation Army ran a retail campaign that advertised recently sold, one-of-a-kind thrift items rather than available stock, using scarcity and FOMO to drive store visits. Gemini evaluated thousands of product photos across the nationwide inventory while image generator Nano Banana transformed basic stock images into editorial-quality creative. The hyperlocal campaign targeted specific ZIP codes near stores through Google's Demand Gen, serving custom imagery across YouTube, Discover, Gmail, and the Display Network. In its first 30 days, the campaign achieved an $11 cost per store visit, outperforming the industry benchmark by 138%, with over 58% of clicks leading to in-store searches.

METRICOOL: THE SOCIAL MEDIA SCHOOL

Metricool's Social Media School is a free, self-paced online course with 6 modules that teach end-to-end social media management. It covers platform fundamentals, content strategy, and advanced topics like AI and influencer marketing. The focus is on practical, job-ready skills, including how to build a full social media strategy using real workflows and tools like Metricool.

CONTENT MARKETING IN A POST-SEO WORLD (WEBINAR)

Amanda Natividad and Matt Lerner are breaking down “zero-click content” and why it matters on April 30. The session will cover how to create content that builds awareness without relying on traffic, how to measure success, and what founders should prioritize right now.

DUDE PERFECT WANTS TO GRADUATE BEYOND BEING A "CREATOR COMPANY"

Dude Perfect is positioning itself as a media company rather than a creator business, with its CEO noting that partnerships now resemble sports sponsorships and long-term brand affiliations rather than one-off sponsored posts. More than half of the company's content is now consumed on TV screens through YouTube, and 80% of viewing happens with kids and parents together, making it one of the few digital properties that reliably reaches family units. The company is expanding beyond its original five performers by launching new channels and developing owned IP and formats.

LOOKING FOR THE “I” ON THE INTERNET

“Frictionmaxxing” is the trend of reintroducing intentional inconvenience into an overly smooth digital life. It pushes back on a frictionless internet where saving, scrolling, and consuming happen automatically. The concept highlights the impulse to collect online fragments, from memes to videos to aesthetic references, most of which are never revisited. This accumulation turns users into informal archivists shaped by algorithms and overload, raising questions about identity in a system built on saving without return.

HOW AMAZON USES LLMS TO RECOMMEND PRODUCTS

Amazon's COSMO system tackles a fundamental limitation in product search by teaching recommendation engines why people buy things, not just what they buy. The team fed millions of purchase behavior pairs into large language models, then built a multi-stage pipeline to filter out the roughly 65%-91% of outputs that were circular, generic, or trivially obvious. A smaller instruction-tuned model called COSMO-LM now generates fresh commonsense knowledge on the fly at a fraction of the original inference cost. A/B tests showed a 0.7% lift in product sales and 8% increase in navigation engagement on just 10% of US traffic. Amazon projects billions in potential revenue if extended across all traffic.

THE CONFUSION MATRIX IN A/B TESTING

Focus on power and validation for A/B tests, rather than significance alone, to maximize true results and minimize false ones.

THE ANATOMY OF AN ELITE HOMEPAGE HERO

11 reasons why tl;dv's homepage hero hits all the right notes.

VAGUE PROMPT VS. CREATIVE DIRECTION

A side-by-side comparison of how creative direction produces stronger AI visuals than generic prompts.

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OPENAI IS MAKING ITS OWN PHONE TO COMPETE WITH THE IPHONE

OpenAI plans to launch its first phone in 2028. The company is working with MediaTek and Qualcomm to develop smartphone processors. Mass production is expected to start in 2028. Specifications and suppliers are expected to be finalized by late 2026 or Q1 2027. The phone will likely heavily utilize AI agents, making it work and feel very different from current smartphones.

APPLE PLANNING TO LAUNCH TWO NEW 'ULTRA' PRODUCTS IN THE NEXT YEAR

Apple plans to release the iPhone Ultra and the MacBook Ultra in the next year. The iPhone Ultra will be a foldable iPhone that will likely be released alongside the iPhone 17 Pro, despite not being part of the iPhone 18 lineup. The MacBook Ultra will feature an OLED panel and a touch screen. Its release may be pushed back by several months due to memory supply chain shortages. An AirPods Ultra could also be on the way.

META PLATFORMS ENTERS SOLAR-POWER PACT

Meta has agreed to purchase up to a gigawatt of solar power from Overview Energy, a startup that aims to deploy satellites capable of providing power to customers on Earth. Overview is working toward an in-space demonstration in 2028. It will target commercial service two years after that. The company is currently developing the satellites along with the production lines to manufacture them.

THE WORLD'S MOST COMPLEX MACHINE

Advanced semiconductors are the most important technology in the world. However, everyone who hopes to manufacture semiconductors is dependent on ASML, a relatively obscure Dutch company. ASML makes the only machines in the world capable of stenciling the transistors onto a chip with the precision necessary to fit billions on a 30-centimeter wafer. This article tells the story of how ASML overtook its competition to become the sole supplier of these machines.

the set up tax or the correction loops. Join live on May 6 (FREE)

to see how.

TESLA FILES TO DELIVER ELON MUSK'S $56 BILLION PAY PACKAGE – ENDING THE SAGA

Tesla has filed an S-8 registration statement with the SEC to register 303,960,630 shares of common stock for CEO Elon Musk under his 2018 pay package. The award was contingent on Tesla hitting 12 escalating market cap and operational milestones. It granted Musk options to buy 304 million shares (split-adjusted) at $23.34 per share. Musk must remain CEO or a product development executive at Tesla through to at least 2028 for the shares to vest, and he's required to hold them for five years.

SYMPHONY

Symphony allows teams to manage work instead of supervising coding agents. It turns project work into isolated, autonomous implementation runs. The agents complete tasks and provide Proof-of-Work, allowing engineers to work at a higher level. Symphony works best in codebases that have adopted harness engineering.

AGENT MEMORY PATTERNS

This article discusses how to add memory to agents. The three most common types of mutable memory are Files, Memory Blocks, and Skills. Files are for data and knowledge, Memory Blocks are a flat key-value store, and Skills are indexed files that contain data or instructions that are only needed in certain circumstances. Editable memory makes agents extremely powerful.

OPENAI AND MICROSOFT REACH DEAL TO GIVE STARTUP NEW FREEDOM

OpenAI and Microsoft have forged a new deal that gives OpenAI the freedom to partner with anyone, caps the revenue OpenAI must share with Microsoft through 2030, and removes a clause that allowed OpenAI to limit Microsoft's access to its future technology when systems reach the AGI threshold. The relationship between the two companies was strained last year in part because of the control Microsoft had over OpenAI's intellectual property and exclusivity agreements. The revised deal offers greater predictability for the companies.

OPENAI MISSES KEY REVENUE, USER TARGETS IN HIGH-STAKES SPRINT TOWARD IPO

OpenAI's Chief Financial Officer is worried the company might not be able to pay for future computing contracts if revenue doesn't grow fast enough.

CHINA BLOCKS META'S $2 BILLION TAKEOVER OF AI STARTUP MANUS

China's state planner has told Meta to unwind its $2 billion acquisition of Manus as the sale did not comply with laws and regulations concerning export controls, technology import and exports, and overseas investment.

PRODUCTS DO LABS (AND LABS DO PRODUCTS)

Product companies can do faster, less formal, more product-driven experimentation and research, while labs build products that push and inspire companies to build better, more curated services for consumers.

BECOME A CURATOR FOR TLDR AI (3-5 HRS/WEEK)

TLDR is looking for an engineer/researcher at a major AI lab or startup to help write for 1M+ subscribers. Our curators have been invited to Google I/O and OpenAI DevDay, scouted for Tier 1 VCs, and get early access to unreleased TLDR products. Learn more [24].

THE TASK IS NOT THE JOB

The argument that AI will remove the need for entry-level white-collar workers confuses task automation with the extinction of jobs.

MICROSOFT CLAWS AWAY 'THE CLAUSE' AS OPENAI CLAWS BACK SOME INDEPENDENCE

Microsoft and OpenAI have announced an amended agreement to simplify their partnership and the way they work together.

MICROSOFT FINALLY AGREES WINDOWS 11 HAS PROBLEMS, AND K2 IS ITS PLAN TO FIX THEM, CLAIMS REPORT

The Windows K2 plan involves a marathon of updates introduced over time to fix problems in Windows.

THE MOAT OR THE COMMONS

Open weight models are commoditizing the capability that the American capital-financed AI monopoly was supposed to protect.

OPENAI MISSES KEY REVENUE, USER TARGETS IN HIGH-STAKES SPRINT TOWARD IPO

OpenAI missed its own targets for new users and revenue, raising concern among company leaders about whether it will be able to support its massive spending on data centers. The company's Chief Financial Officer has said that she is worried that OpenAI may not be able to pay for future computing contracts if revenue doesn't grow fast enough. Board directors have been questioning CEO Sam Altman's efforts to secure even more computing power despite the business slowdown. Company executives are now seeking to control costs and instill more discipline in the business.

OPENAI SMARTPHONE RUMORS

Analyst Ming-Chi Kuo reported that OpenAI explored building a smartphone with partners like MediaTek and Qualcomm, potentially replacing app-centric interfaces with AI agents and hybrid on-device/cloud models.

CHINA BLOCKS META MANUS ACQUISITION

China halted Meta's $2B acquisition of agentic AI startup Manus, ordering the deal unwound amid regulatory scrutiny, complicating Meta's push into AI agents and cross-border expansion.

MICROSOFT OPENAI PARTNERSHIP UPDATE

OpenAI and Microsoft revised their agreement to increase flexibility, including non-exclusive IP licensing, multi-cloud support for OpenAI products, and capped revenue-sharing terms through 2030.