It feels pretty obvious at this point that someone’s going to make billions building a social app that’s just for friends, no AI slop, no brainrot, calm design, chronological feed and no concept of followers.

BREAKING : Google is rolling out a NotebookLM integration for Gemini, where users will be able to attach notebooks as a context to their conversations. Grendizer, combine!

If you have applied @ycombinator you should also consider these equity-free grants too 1. @GoogleStartups : $100k in credits 2. @vercel : $3,600 in credits 3. @aforevc Grants $1,000 4. @joinedgecity grants : $5k-40K 5. @emergent_vc : upto 100k 6. @thielfellowship : upto 200K

the streaming wars, explained

linktree is a billion-dollar company????? a billion???????? dollars??????????????? for literally... links. in. a. tree.

curious....what's actually stopping @Lovable from getting lovable .com > $200 million ARR startup btw

I love Substack. Always have. Their team is great. But a silent change could force me off the platform if it stays. They broke email. My paid subscribers cannot read today's paid newsletter on mobile without downloading the Substack app. @SubstackInc: roll this back. Now.

Disney has signed a deal with OpenAI & invested $1 billion into the company Sora will now be able to AI generate videos based on animated, masked & creature characters from Disney, Marvel, Pixar & Star Wars Curated selections of AI generated videos will be released on Disney+

the story of nikita bier (@nikitabier)

We're releasing more upgrades to Claude Code CLI: - Async subagents - Instant compact - Customer session names - Usage stats

This doesn't work because a "product launch" isn't what it was 10 years ago anymore Back then you'd launch on Product Hunt and you'd get thousands or tens of thousands of users overnight and journalists would pick it up after A lot has changed since then Firstly, nobody cares anymore, there's too many products and things launching and unless your product is completely groundbreaking and new, a launch won't get much attention anymore Secondly, these days you essentially should be launching every day non-stop: you try get attention from potential new users, posting new features you build based on user requests, tapping into trends you see and then jumping on them You even see it with AI companies now, they just add the new version like Grok 4.1 or ChatGPT 5.1 without a big presentation. Just roll it out and improve the product for users So yes launching is dead I think

Everyone thinks this is about Netflix getting HBO and Harry Potter. Netflix is eliminating their last remaining competitive threat. Warner Bros. Discovery is the only scaled content factory left that remains independent. They produce 30+ scripted series annually for external buyers, run the second-largest streaming service by content spend, and control DC, Harry Potter, HBO, and CNN. Paramount buying WBD creates a combined entity with Paramount+, Pluto, and HBO Max that suddenly has scale to compete with Netflix. Comcast buying WBD merges NBC Universal with Warner Bros and creates a true Disney competitor with theme parks, theatrical distribution, and streaming vertically integrated. Netflix acquiring WBD removes the last piece that could be assembled into a Netflix killer. Look at the bidding structure. Paramount offered $27/share for all of WBD. Comcast proposed an NBCU merger. Netflix offered $30/share for just the studio and streaming assets, leaving declining linear cable networks behind. They’re paying a premium to acquire only the parts that matter while avoiding $15B in legacy debt. The regulatory dynamics favor Netflix in ways nobody is pricing. DOJ blocks horizontal mergers between direct competitors. Paramount buying WBD merges two major studios. Comcast buying WBD combines two theatrical distributors. Those are clean horizontal mergers DOJ blocks automatically. Netflix is buying vertically from streaming into production. The regulatory concern centers on Netflix controlling Warner Bros content then restricting competitor access. Netflix solves this by committing to license WBD content to other platforms for 5-7 years post-merger. The concession costs nothing in year one, buys approval, then commitments expire and Netflix owns the IP outright. The second-order effect nobody is discussing: if Netflix closes this deal, Disney becomes the only other streamer with comparable owned IP. Everyone else—Paramount+, Peacock, Apple TV+—becomes subscale overnight. You either own a century of franchise IP or you’re licensing from Netflix and Disney at whatever price they set. Warner Bros Discovery carrying $40B in debt makes them un-mergeable with anyone except Netflix. Paramount already carries $14B in debt. Comcast would inherit massive liabilities. Netflix has $6B net debt on a $380B market cap. They’re the only bidder with a balance sheet strong enough to absorb WBD’s problems. The 5% stock drop reveals Wall Street pricing execution risk over regulatory risk. Investors believe Netflix can get DOJ approval. They’re questioning whether Netflix can integrate theatrical distribution and operate legacy studio infrastructure they’ve avoided for 15 years. Netflix locked themselves into either owning a debt-laden legacy studio or writing a $5B check for nothing. The only question is whether Netflix just paid $20B to prevent someone else from building a Netflix competitor, or whether they paid $5B to watch Paramount do exactly that.

JUST IN: Kalshi co-founder Luana Lopes Lara becomes the youngest self-made female billionaire in history, surpassing Taylor Swift and Lucy Guo.

Launched http://searchable.com 12 days ago. 4,800 signups, hundreds of paying users, and $40K MRR. Today we’re announcing a $4M pre-seed led by Freestyle Capital. AI Search is real, and we’re building the infrastructure for it. If you want to come work with us in London, shoot me a message.

Which Ecosystem will you Choose?

When software was a fixed tool, seat-based pricing made sense. You bought chairs at a table. Everyone paid the same whether they logged in once a week or built their entire workflow around it. The misalignment was tolerable because the capability was static. But AI products aren’t tools anymore. They’re capabilities that scale with model intelligence. The gap between Claude Sonnet 3.x and 4.x shows why flat pricing becomes a trap: a user extracting 100x more value pays the same as someone checking in occasionally. Here’s the deeper tension: $20/seat becomes your cost ceiling. Every model upgrade has to fit inside that box. You either compress the intelligence you provide or don’t upgrade at all. It’s a scarcity framework baked into the business model. Usage-based pricing trades predictability for possibility. Customers think before they act. Finance teams lose their clean spreadsheets. But it’s the only model that lets you give customers the best intelligence available without worrying whether your margins can support it. An abundance mindset instead of artificial constraints. This isn’t about one pricing model winning. It’s about flexibility that traditional software never required. Different customers value different things. Some want predictable costs, others want maximum capability. AI companies need pricing architectures that can serve both without forcing an either-or choice. Anthropic, Cursor, and a few others nailed the hybrid: seat-based pricing for predictability and simplicity, with usage-based pricing layered on top for power users who want access to the absolute best models. The top students in the class get to push harder without breaking the whole structure. Most knowledge work companies will resist this for a few years. The cognitive load is real. The change management is hard. But as AI becomes the actual work instead of a feature, pricing has to follow capability. Outcomes matter more than seats. The best companies will shift from software as a tool to intelligence as a service.

Breaking News: SpaceX offered to buy shares from employees in a deal that would value it at around $800 billion as it prepares to go public.

Stripe offered to acquire us for $1.2 billion when we had $2M in revenue. Today, we've raised $330M at an $8B valuation and reached $1B ARR. We could've died three times during this journey. This is the story I've never told anyone before:

Today we hit $100M ARR at @clay. It took us six years to go from $0-1m, then two years to go from $1-100m. I’m going to walk you through the 6 biggest GTM bets that got us here. $100M ARR may be the headline, but I’m most proud of how we accomplished it: we’ve never churned an enterprise customer, have >200% enterprise NRR, every dollar we invest grows 15x (a ratio that has tripled in recent years), and we’ve created a culture of creativity and belonging (with a perfect Glassdoor score to match). Note: -We are a product-driven company. Without that foundation and a unique POV on the market, none of this would work. -Our GTM approach is authentic to us. This isn't a plug-and-play framework. Greatness comes from doing what only you can do. Here are the big bets that worked for us: 1. Building a self-serve motion through reverse demos We originally had a product that nobody could use. It took us 8 calls to sell a $200/mo product! Reverse demos were key to bringing that to zero. Customers would share their screen, and we’d use Zoom annotations to solve their problem in 30mins. They accomplished something real, learned how to use Clay, and we got so much UI feedback that we immediately applied to the product. 2. An irrational investment in brand Most B2B startups treat brand as a post-PMF investment. We flipped that. We bought Clay(.)com and hired a claymation artist before we had revenue. Our Head of Brand was employee #18. These choices felt irrational but they’re authentic to us and reflect our identity. Now it’s a moat. 3. Switching to usage-based pricing We were the first GTM company to offer usage-based pricing. Our customers were shocked we didn't charge per seat and our investors thought we were leaving money on the table. But we're a product built for efficiency. Usage-based pricing helped us target more technical users and enabled our land-and-expand motion. 4. Building an agency motion to generate UGC on LinkedIn Cold email agencies were our first customers. They posted about Clay organically to position themselves as experts and attract clients. We pounced on this and enabled them. This sparked a self-perpetuating cycle: new people discover Clay through that content, join, create their own, and earn recognition too. 5. Unconventional hiring 50% of our GTM and G&A teams are doing their job for the first time. This is how we bring creativity into our company and think differently. We’ve hired farmers, physicists, archaeologists, magicians in new roles. We look for product passion, customer empathy and technical curiosity, then teach the mechanics. 6. We created a new career path & economy: GTM Engineering There are now thousands of open GTME jobs and hundreds of agencies built around it. Many first-time entrepreneurs have already built 7-figure businesses on top of Clay. Our community, with clubs in more than 70 cities, is our force multiplier, and tells us more about impact than any metric ever could. - All of these bets show we’re not racing anyone. We spent six years figuring out what and how we wanted to build. In an era of overnight successes and growth at all costs, it turns out that taking time to build something authentic can create a business with bigger impact & more growth than you'd think. Our creativity remains our greatest alpha. That will continue to show up in how we do our work, who we hire, and in our boldest bets coming up next year.

You can now delegate tasks to Claude Code directly from Slack. Simply tag @.Claude in a channel or thread. Coding tasks will automatically be routed to Claude Code and start up a new session on the web.