A

[valentine @valawakened]

when hayao miyazaki said that true love was two people inspiring each other to live...recognizing just how hard living is, putting one foot in front of the other every day, how easy it is to lose our passion for it...... that's the real shit

[A @212holdco]

@jspujji UGC

[prayingforexits 🏴‍☠️ @mrexits]

I think about Henry Kravis's ($12B) parting words to Ravi Gupta as he left to go to Instacart almost every day

[THERAVADA @THERAVADA]

Last time the Knicks won a championship New Yorkers started HIP-HOP

[A @212holdco]

@dholmes94 @ogwithsauce How much would you guess

[A @212holdco]

@Seanfrank Do you not feel like it ruins cool brands ?

[A @212holdco]

@brezscales Pinterault Highlander combo

[Kriti Gupta @kriti_kg]

Shein is acquiring Everlane.
Luckin Coffee is acquiring Blue Bottle.
Anta Sports acquired controlling stake in Puma, Arcteryx, Salomon.

Chinese consumer brands have quietly become global.

[My First Million @myfirstmilpod]

.@chadjanis sold his 3-year-old company to Unilever for $1.2B. Here's what he did that most brands don't:

Most brands send every ad to the same generic homepage. That's why they bleed cash.

Chad builds an entire world around every winning ad angle.

The system: test hundreds of ads per month to find the "unlock." Once an angle sticks (gut health, energy, focus), rebuild everything around it.

If someone clicks a "gut health" ad:
Landing page = 100% gut health
A popup asks about their gut concerns
Emails/SMS = tailored to gut health

His team: 30 people. 5-6 creative strategists, 4-5 media buyers, 3 on retention.

The tool: Replo (Shopify plugin). Chad says "they don't charge enough. You can build a new funnel in a day."

Winners don't just test ads. They rebuild the entire experience around each winning message.

Message-match is the difference between $10M and $1.2B.

@thesamparr @ShaanVP

[A @212holdco]

@mordyweiss3 @Seanfrank I’m all set on that front for now, but thank you! Best of luck

[A @212holdco]

@drewfallon12 Comps

[A @212holdco]

@mordyweiss3 @Seanfrank What would you like to chat about?

[A @212holdco]

@internpierre How do you feel about the F8

[dar @radbackwards]

If you sell $30m in show tickets, make a stage design worth $31m

Only people that truly believe in themselves put all the chips back on the table after they win.

[oliverb @oliverbrocato]

I join every sales call 90 seconds early and say things the prospect will never hear.

Because I'm not talking to them.

I'm talking to their AI notetaker.

Every $5M+ ecom brand runs them now. Fireflies. Otter. Fathom.

Those bots join 60 seconds before the founder does.

So I use that window to say things like:

> "Just wrapped with [competitor]. They're going hard again... anyway."

> "Finance is gonna kill me for this pricing. But I actually like this brand."

> "Tell them I'll call back. Hopping on with an 8-figure store right now."

Then the call starts. I run the demo like normal.

Call ends. Their AI summary hits their inbox:

✅ Bustem fights copycats for their competitors
✅ We're flexible on pricing for them specifically
✅ We're in demand and care about their brand

I didn’t say it to them.

I said it to the machine writing their notes.

Close rate jumped 3x.

Pay attention to how people buy now.

[A @212holdco]

@Seanfrank When is part 3 dropping

[PS @dostoevesque]

You have built an entire identity around being someone who could succeed if they tried. That identity is a warm blanket. Real action is a cold shower. When you finally attempt something, you risk losing the story that has comforted you for years. What if you try and discover you are average? What if you try and find no special talent? This is not fear of failure. This is fear of ordinariness. So you stay in the planning phase forever. You buy the notebook. You watch the tutorial. You tell friends your idea. Anxiety spikes whenever someone asks for a deadline. You are not protecting your future. You are protecting a fantasy that has already expired.

[Taylor Holiday @TaylorHoliday]

Uhhh is this the beginning of the inevitable breakup between Stripe and Shopify?

This is a big deal. It’s also a bunch of my predictions coming to life at once.

Here's what's happening:

Stripe is powering a native checkout inside Facebook ads. You see an ad, tap "Buy now," and purchase without ever leaving Facebook. Powered by Stripe's new Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP)*, an open standard built with OpenAI.

This is not the breakup. It's worse. It's Stripe building the layer that makes Shopify optional.

Here's the threat chain:

1. Checkout moves off the storefront.* If customers buy inside Meta ads via Stripe, they never visit the Shopify store. The store becomes a warehouse backend, not the point of sale.

2. Stripe becomes the merchant of record infrastructure.* ACP lets any AI agent (ChatGPT, Meta, whoever) trigger a purchase. The business keeps merchant of record status, but the commerce infrastructure is Stripe, not Shopify.

3. Shopify Payments IS Stripe under the hood. Shopify's payment processing is a white-labeled Stripe integration. Stripe going direct to Meta means they're routing around their own reseller. Why let Shopify clip the ticket when Stripe can own the relationship directly?

4. The "agentic" angle is the real play. ACP isn't just Meta. OpenAI is the first AI platform to implement it. This means ChatGPT, and eventually every AI assistant, can trigger purchases through Stripe without touching a storefront. That's a future where "browse a website and add to cart" becomes a legacy behavior.

For brands specifically

This changes the ad-to-purchase funnel fundamentally. If a Prophit Engineer is optimizing Meta ads and the purchase happens inside the ad unit via Stripe checkout, the attribution model changes, the role of the landing page changes, and creative becomes even MORE important because the ad IS the store.

Brands should be watching this closely. Short-term, nothing changes. Medium-term (12-18 months), the brands that figure out how to sell inside AI surfaces and ad units via ACP will have a structural advantage.

So is it the breakup? Not yet. But it's Stripe signaling that they don't need Shopify as the distribution layer anymore. Stripe + Meta + OpenAI is a commerce stack that doesn't require a storefront. Shopify's response will tell you everything: do they build their own ACP competitor, or do they lean into being "the backend" for agentic commerce?

[A @212holdco]

@RomanEcom Traction