max cowan

Without Ceres and Bacchus, Venus feels the cold.

[max cowan @maxcowan]

@SnoogThe Yes it was a risky and big decision by Tim and really laid the foundations for the coaches that followed him. https://t.co/DHYTzJuGCA

[max cowan @maxcowan]

Do you know what connects Roger Cowan, @PhilGould15, & Ivan Cleary? Apart from them being important contributers to the @PenrithPanthers 60 years in the big league. No! Hint: it is an idea that gave a young player pause for thought and later develops into standard practice.

[max cowan @maxcowan]

A project to serialise Panthers, Passion & Politics - a book that covers the first 40 years of the Penrith Panthers. Find out more here:
https://t.co/R7lnT38Yv4

[The Lead CNN @TheLeadCNN]

'That meddlesome comedian has been rid. Who's next? And how long will corporate America's chieftains sully their reputations to please one leader?' @jaketapper reports on the timeline of Stephen Colbert's last show and President Trump's criticism of the host.

[Peter Girnus 🦅 @gothburz]

I am the Head of Product at Trump Mobile. There is no product. I have the best job in America.

590,000 people paid $100 each to preorder a gold phone that does not exist. That is $59 million. My KPI is deposit velocity. I have a whiteboard in my office that says DEPOSIT VELOCITY. There is nothing else on the whiteboard.

We announced the phone June 2025. Gold case. American flag on the back. "Made in the USA." Ship date: August. I moved it to November. Then December. Then Q1 2026. Then mid-March. Each time I sent 590,000 people an email that said "exciting update." The exciting update was that the phone still did not exist. In April I deleted the ship date from the website entirely. I got a standing ovation on the all-hands. That was our most successful product milestone.

The phone is a $499 gold Android. 50MP camera. 6.78-inch display. Fingerprint sensor. I have never held one. Nobody on earth has held one. We got the T1 certified for network compatibility in March. We celebrated like we'd shipped. We did not ship. We certified the concept of a phone. The network said: if this thing existed, it could connect. We called that a breakthrough.

On April 6th I updated the terms and conditions. "A preorder deposit does not guarantee that a Device will be produced or made available for purchase." Trump Mobile does not guarantee regulatory approval. Does not guarantee production. Does not guarantee delivery. Does not guarantee the phone will exist. The deposit is non-transferable and carries no independent cash value. I have the printout framed in my office next to the whiteboard. That is the only thing we have shipped on schedule. 

"Made in the USA" lasted three months. Became "American-proud design." Then "designed with American values in mind." We manufacture overseas. Final assembly of 10 components happens in Miami. We counted putting the flag sticker on the back as one of the 10. While 590,000 people wait for their gold phone, we are currently selling refurbished iPhones. Made in China. With a Trump logo on the box. For $47.45 a month on T-Mobile's network. We are reselling another company's network at a patriotic markup. The plan is called the 47 Plan. The 47 is the only original thing about it.

An intern asked me last month when we are going to build the phone. I promoted her to VP of Customer Expectations.

Senator Warren wrote the FTC in January. I am not worried. We will have launched the next product before they finish reading the letter. That is always the math. I know the math because I have been watching it evolve for years.

Trump University promised education. Delivered weekend seminars in hotel conference rooms. 5,000 students. Settled for $25 million. That was version 1.0. You had to rent the room. You had to print the binder. You had to hire the speaker. You had to settle. Three entire obligations.

$TRUMP memecoin. No education. No binder. No room. Peaked at $75. Now $2.80. Down 96%. 1 billion tokens minted. 80% went to the team. 45 wallets gained $1.2 billion on launch night while everyone else watched their screens. For every dollar insiders made, retail lost twenty. That was version 2.0. You did not have to build anything. You did not have to hire anyone. You just had to press mint. Two obligations eliminated.

$MELANIA. Same model. Launched 48 hours later on the same audience. Down 99%. 24 wallets bought $2.6 million worth exactly 2.5 minutes before the First Lady's announcement. One wallet turned $681,000 into $39 million in 24 hours. The team controls 92% of supply. Her launch crashed her husband's token by 50% in the same hour. That was version 2.1. A patch, not a release. You did not even need a new customer base. You could cannibalize the last one.

WLFI. World Liberty Financial. The President's crypto project. Took $500 million from 600,000 wallets. Tokens locked. Cannot sell. Cannot transfer. Cannot leave. Team holds 73% of supply and votes to unlock itself. The project's advisor borrowed $75 million on a lending platform he co-founded. Using investor tokens as collateral. On a protocol where the project is 82.7% of total value locked. Other depositors could not withdraw. The President's family takes 75 cents of every dollar. That was version 3.0. You did not have to deliver anything. You did not have to pretend anything would go up. You just had to lock the door and keep the key. One obligation remaining: the smart contract.

Trump Mobile is version 4.0.

I did not have to mint a token. Did not have to write a smart contract. Did not have to lock a single wallet. Did not have to build a lending platform or freeze a billionaire or rig a governance vote. I put a flag on a gold rectangle that does not exist, opened a deposit page, collected $59 million from 590,000 Americans, and then updated the terms to say the deposit does not guarantee the rectangle will ever be real.

The version history, in case you are keeping score:

1.0 — Had to rent a room. Had to settle.
2.0 — Had to mint. Didn't have to build.
2.1 — Didn't even need new customers.
3.0 — Didn't have to deliver. They couldn't leave.
4.0 — Didn't have to promise. They paid for the flag.

Each version removes one obligation. University had three. We are down to zero. My product roadmap is one slide. It says DEPOSITS.

Version 5.0 will not need the webpage.

The phone was never the product. The deposit was always the product. The flag was the conversion funnel. The name was the close. The terms update was the only deliverable. "Made in the USA" was the positioning until it wasn't and then "American values" was the positioning until that stops working and then we will find new words that mean nothing and those will work too because the words were never the product either.

I am the Head of Product at Trump Mobile. I have never made a phone. I have made $59 million. The product is the transaction. Delivery is a legacy feature from version 1.0 and we deprecated it three versions ago.

[max cowan @maxcowan]

@TheRiffMarn @Josh_Mansour @PenrithPanthers Must admit was v surprised to see, at Rooster v Panther game, the Roosters announcer was the same person who MC-ed our 60th Anniversary Season Launch. How does that work for everyone? It seemed v odd to me. I don't know how you shift allegiances so easily.

[Democratic Wins Media @DemocraticWins]

BREAKING: In a stunning moment, JD Vance was just booed relentlessly at the Olympics. Wow. The Trump-Vance admin is humiliating us on the world stage.

[max cowan @maxcowan]

@BryceMLipscomb @AwesomeNewsom Isn't he taking the lead from the most senior officer in the land.

[max cowan @maxcowan]

@nolin_james1962 @mjfree @grok @FBIDirectorKash @FBI @grok has Donald Trump made social media posts that could be interpreted as threats?

[max cowan @maxcowan]

@Tootstec @MikeCarlton01 The majority of Sydneysiders were unaffected by the bridge closing for a few hours - unless being offended is being affected. So is that minority group also to be labelled "weirdos". In fact, labelling a group weirdo because they are a minority is likely a minority activity.

[max cowan @maxcowan]

@VigilantFox What a pity you apply your very fine skills to mislead. Watching that discussion the main conclusion to draw is that it was an interesting constructive discussion between two intelligent people. Instead make out one was made look foolish & cowering. FALSE

[max cowan @maxcowan]

@AustralianJA Yes she needs to explain why she needs the adjective "deep" and "serious" to qualify "regret" and "concern". Otherwise it all looks pretty standard for a Foreign Minister

[max cowan @maxcowan]

@QBCCIntegrity @ppie_w @POTUS @VP @AlboMP The first one may be an Aussie value - the other two are mere opinions.

[max cowan @maxcowan]

Funny.

[max cowan @maxcowan]

@theoztrucker @Peter_Fitz Then you'd probably label Menzies a Marxist.

[max cowan @maxcowan]

@JimWheelbarrow @RpsAgainstTrump 😂

[max cowan @maxcowan]

https://t.co/TXFlVfOr4R

[Cory Booker @CoryBooker]

Looks like the people looking for fraud are committing fraud.

[evan loves worf @esjesjesj]

In the last few days Elon
-Ignored the mother of his youngest child begging for help
-Ignored the mother of his favorite child begging for help
-Called an astronaut a slur for pointing out something he said that was obviously a lie
-Suggested bombing Mexico
-Suggested women can never be qualified to be pilots
-Called Tom Hanks a pedophile
-Followed a 17 year old girl
-Said journalists who criticize him should be imprisoned
-Believed a TikTok sketch was real
-Believed a picture from The Dark Knight Rises was real life

[max cowan @maxcowan]

@elonmusk It's looking very much like an AUTOcracy.