Madison Fiore | DTC operator

🚀 Run a DTC agency spending $100M/yr on ads 🔥 Build and invest in consumer brands 🤝 I'm also a dad 👨🏻 I don't sell courses.

[Madison Fiore | DTC operator @madison_fiore]

Has to be https://t.co/pMpsh6rsZs

[Eli Weiss @eliweisss]

Who are your fav DTC growth marketing agencies??

[Madison Fiore | DTC operator @madison_fiore]

2026

[Madison Fiore | DTC operator @madison_fiore]

We quietly grew a beverage brand from launch to $100M in the last 3 years while your favorite agency worked with 1,000 clients and churned 875.

When we built AGS, we built it for quality NOT quantity. Our clients are with us for an average of 2 years+.

We are ahead of our time, ahead of the curve, on same-day updates with Meta, and leveraging AI x machine learning faster every day.

I woke up pissed off today because a beverage brand I REALLY wanted to work with went with the big-name agency instead of us.

They'll be back, they always come back.

The big shops are built for THEM, we are built for the brand.

Have a great weekend 🤝 🤝

[Madison Fiore | DTC operator @madison_fiore]

I could be wrong but…

2026 might end up being one of the greatest moments ever to have money in the market. > AI IPOs feel generational... > Meta feels underpriced to me. > Entire new categories are being created in real time. (Quantum comuputing, AI, Space, etc)

At the same time… It might also become one of the hardest periods to actually “earn” a living wage.

The relationship between labor income and asset appreciation has become deeply asymmetrical. Feels like we’re entering a world where labor struggles, capital thrives, and leverage wins

Buy American stocks

[Madison Fiore | DTC operator @madison_fiore]

8,000???!!!!

[Madison Fiore | DTC operator @madison_fiore]

Is it correlation or causation that I got into the best shape of my life while wearing an Apple Watch every day?

Tracked everything.

Then I bought myself a watch I’d always wanted, stopped wearing the Apple Watch, and slowly lost a ton of momentum over the few months.

Made me realize the watch wasn’t making me fit.
It was making me aware.

Now I’m a @WHOOP guy.

But feels like Apple is missing a huge opportunity for a fitness tracker that ISN’T a watch so people can wear real watches while staying in the Apple ecosystem.

[Madison Fiore | DTC operator @madison_fiore]

The last 2 years were brutal for a lot of consumer founders.

Q1 just proved the game is still very much on:

• 71 deals
• $50B+ in transactions
• Multiple $1B+ exits

Money is moving again.

[Madison Fiore | DTC operator @madison_fiore]

If your ads stopped working this year, read this.

https://t.co/2FNF11ywTB

[Madison Fiore | DTC operator @madison_fiore]

Copilots improve labor, autopilots replace it, and AI is pushing companies from selling software to selling the work itself. https://t.co/63VLzrRP9O @JulienBek

[Madison Fiore | DTC operator @madison_fiore]

AI is killing some companies… and giving others a rebrand.

$BIRD just went from wool sneakers to "AI"???

Selling the shoe business, renaming, raising $50M to buy compute.

if your business stops working… just pick a new one.

[Madison Fiore | DTC operator @madison_fiore]

For me, Vacation was one of the best new brands from a branding perspective of the last 10 years.

[Drew Fallon @drewfallon12]

VACATION GETS INVESTMENT FROM VMG PARTNERS

Vacation, the nostalgia-branded sunscreen company co-founded by Lach Hall in 2021, has closed a minority investment from VMG Partners. While terms were not disclosed, spitballing that the check was between $30M and $60M for a 20% to 40% stake.

The transaction follows the brand recently hiring investment bank Raymond James to explore a minority stake deal.

Existing backers are True Beauty Ventures and Silas Capital (which led the original $6M Series A).

VMG's beauty track record is strong: they backed Drunk Elephant (sold to Shiseido for $845M in 2019), K18 (sold to Unilever in 2023), and Kosas (still in portfolio, was reportedly exploring a sale as of early 2024).

VMG closed a $1 billion Fund VI in May 2025, so they have fresh capital to deploy.

Vacation generates approximately 5M weekly organic social media views, driven by its nostalgic takes on branding and marketing. According to WWD, they recorded $60M to $75M in 2025 net sales.

[Madison Fiore | DTC operator @madison_fiore]

I’m rooting for every one of you.

Life is not a zero-sum game. More people can win than ever before.

AI is not replacing us. It’s making the best operators significantly better.

You will be compensated based on the value you provide. So go provide more value.

I’m extremely bullish on marketing over the next 6 months.

The gap between average and great is about to widen.

Stay ahead of the curve.

That’s the job now.

[Madison Fiore | DTC operator @madison_fiore]

Welcome to the show

[Will Fry @BuySellSMB]

SMB is a fucking grind.

Nice to hear one of the best operators of all time acknowledge that.

[Madison Fiore | DTC operator @madison_fiore]

https://t.co/SkGJcgXU6q

[Sean Frank @Seanfrank]

Are there any brands where you open EVERY email?

[Madison Fiore | DTC operator @madison_fiore]

The SEE MORE trick on X is so frustrating

[Madison Fiore | DTC operator @madison_fiore]

Only thing I miss about California is PST timed sporting events.

Waiting all day for sports hurts

[Madison Fiore | DTC operator @madison_fiore]

They don’t tell you the worst part of having kids is getting sick every other month

[Madison Fiore | DTC operator @madison_fiore]

One year from now will look extremely different

[Taylor Haren @THArrowOfApollo]

We were Clay's largest user at one point in time, hitting their platform 17.3 million times per week. Last month we replaced them entirely with a $200/mo Claude Code subscription.

I can't write code. Neither can James, my VP of Growth who built the replacement.

Here's the full story.

Clay is a GREAT product and I TRULY think most people should use it. But we hit their ceiling.

50,000 row limit per table.

12.5 million row cap per workspace.

Tables that take days to actually delete.

Clicking "run all" thousands of times and waiting days for things to clear out.

So

When you're processing millions of leads, all the above become the bottleneck of your entire business.

James had never touched Claude Code before. Three weeks after learning it, he built our entire core system.

With Clay, processing 1 million leads took 27 hours.

And it would error out often enough that we would always have to plan on hitting the “run all rows” button again on 20+ clay tables. IYKYK

but

Our new system waterfall enriches 1 million leads in 5 seconds. 272,000 leads PER SECOND.

AND On top of the core engine, we vibe coded a Google Maps scraper that pulls leads zip code by zip code across all 32,000 US zip codes.

AND An AI lead finder that hits 95% contact match rates where Apollo gives you about 30%.

AND Ad library scrapers for Google and LinkedIn.

AND An AI campaign analysis system.

AND An auto-refill system so clients never run out of leads mid-campaign.

One we started building with Claude, we just couldn’t stop

Now we have the data ready for clients sending 5 million emails a month within 1 week of signing the contract.

I put together the full system blueprint -- every tool, the tech stack, a Clay vs custom comparison, and a 6-step playbook for building your own. Plus a video walkthrough where I show you the live system and how each tool actually works.

Retweet or Reply CODE below and I'll DM it to you.

[Madison Fiore | DTC operator @madison_fiore]

How dumb is AI going to to make us

[Madison Fiore | DTC operator @madison_fiore]

Don't flinch.

Just know that @Seanfrank is LONG on EVERYTHING.

I love his last post:

""I’m LONG everything.

- America will fix its problems
- no war with China
- wars in Europe and the Middle East end
- we will solve housing
- we will solve addiction
- we will fix social security and the debt problem
- California will wake up and get out of its own way
- we will legalize building again
- billionaires will build great public projects

No doomerism.
The world will get richer, safer, and more peaceful.

More people will get medicine and money and buy cool shit.

I’m long everything.""