ADSN

Pinterest and Crexi Executives Chloe Wix and Mary Bloom introduce Ladies Who Launch, a new ADSN conversation about the products, careers, and friendships people build along the way. They revisit their early Snapchat days, how a connection through Mary's future husband became a working relationship, and why moving their meetings outside helped them solve problems. Their “run-on-ones” along Venice Beach became both a brainstorming ritual and the foundation of a friendship that still serves as a trusted sounding board for career decisions.In their first “Kill, Launch, or Iterate” segment, they weigh Spectacles, flavored Philadelphia cream cheese, and unlimited PTO. Chloe explains why a defined vacation allowance helped her take more time off, while Mary argues that unclear expectations make unlimited leave harder to navigate. Alongside stories about wearables and wedding footage, they return to a practical theme: strong relationships and clear agreements help turn good ideas into action.Thank you to our sponsors:AdQuick – Making OOH advertising as easy to plan, buy, and measure as digital. adquick.comThrad.ai — Building the advertising infrastructure for AI. thrad.aibeehiiv — The all-in-one platform for newsletters, websites, and every tool you need to grow and earn. beehiiv.comThe Farm — Fraction commercial legal with an in-house approach to outside counsel. thefarmllp.comSubscribe & leave a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review on Spotify & Apple Podcasts.

Daniel and James start with a student selling ad space on her wall to pay tuition, then take the idea of “everything is an ad network” straight to James's hat and Daniel's family-photo background. They discuss an X Money appeal that reportedly raised more than $10,000 toward a Cybertruck and debate a cited figure showing only 2.2% of US households paying for AI. Daniel sees a promising starting point; James sees a consumer market that will largely be funded by ads and commerce.The conversation moves into reported visual ad tests in ChatGPT, why advertising can be relevant to the person without matching the surrounding content, and whether AI generation wait time creates a new placement opportunity. They also debate TikTok's off-platform expansion and argue that Apple could build an advertising business connected to payments. The episode closes with a discussion of food-industry concentration, a speculative Tech Trades segment, James's account of a Dallas conference, and Primary Posts about collaboration and a stadium singing Blink-182 to Tom DeLonge.Thank you to our sponsors:AdQuick – Making OOH advertising as easy to plan, buy, and measure as digital. adquick.comThrad.ai — Building the advertising infrastructure for AI. thrad.aibeehiiv — The all-in-one platform for newsletters, websites, and every tool you need to grow and earn. beehiiv.comThe Farm — Fraction commercial legal with an in-house approach to outside counsel. thefarmllp.comSTAY CONNECTEDJames on Twitter & LinkedIn – /jamesborowDaniel on LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok – /danieldrugerSubscribe & leave a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review on Spotify & Apple Podcasts.

"Volume negates luck." That is one of the many Jay-"isms" we get into on this episode of No Permission. Jay Yang is the author of You Can Just Do Things and the upcoming Work With The Best. He's on a mission to show people they can create their own opportunities through permissionless action (No Permission!!!). And it's not just his mission, it's also how he lives his life. Jay cold emailed Tyler Denk at Beehiiv at 16 and landed an internship while still in high school. At 17, he spent 50 hours building a pitch deck for Noah Hagan and became his head of content. At 18, he built a six-figure ghostwriting agency. At 19, he dropped out of college, joined Alex Hormozi's ⁠acquisition.com⁠, helped set a Guinness World Record for their book launch, and published his own bestseller, You Can Just Do Things. Now at 20, he has 500,000 followers across platforms, a newsletter with 50,000 subscribers, 55,000+ tweets, and a second book dropping September 30, 2026.Links from the episode:⁠Amazon: You Can Just Do Things (Book)⁠⁠Amazon: Work With The Best (Book)⁠⁠https://jayyanginspires.com/⁠⁠Jay's YouTube⁠🤝 Partner with No Permission: ⁠[email protected]⁠🎤 Your host:Daniel Druger – 3x exited founder / operator, Fortune 50 product exec, ex-Snapchat, startup investor. 15+ years working as a founder and with founders.📫 STAY CONNECTEDInstagram: /danieldrugerTikTok: /danieldrugerLinkedIn: /danieldrugerNewsletter: ⁠theadsn.com⁠👉 Hit Subscribe & tap the 🔔, then leave a ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ review on Spotify & Apple Podcasts. This only takes seconds and helps more people discover No Permission and the this generation of great builders.

This week on the ADSN Rundown, Daniel Druger and James Borow examine how artificial intelligence is moving from software into hardware, commerce and public infrastructure. They break down Meta’s Apple-like hardware moment, Google and SpaceX testing TPUs in orbit, and the future of advertising when agents shop on a consumer’s behalf. They also explore X’s phone-number strategy, Amazon’s new Ads Agent and why James believes the next operating-system war will be Meta and Muse against Grok, Tesla and Starlink.Daniel and James also cover McDonald’s billion-dollar media ambitions, DoorDash’s surprising enterprise adoption of CLI and MCP ordering, major personnel moves at Instinct and Astro Digital, and the launch of America.gov as an AI front door to the federal government. They close by making the case for bringing fun and wonder back to technology, then examine how Ken Griffin’s $2 billion higher-education investment became a major win for Miami and a painful loss for Chicago.Thank you to our sponsors:AdQuick – Making OOH advertising as easy to plan, buy, and measure as digital. adquick.comThrad.ai — Building the advertising infrastructure for AI. thrad.aibeehiiv — The all-in-one platform for newsletters, websites, and every tool you need to grow and earn. beehiiv.comThe Farm — Fraction commercial legal with an in-house approach to outside counsel. thefarmllp.comSTAY CONNECTEDJames on Twitter & LinkedIn – /jamesborowDaniel on LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok – /danieldrugerSubscribe & leave a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review on Spotify & Apple Podcasts.

Rob Leathern, CEO and founder of Infohawk and the creator of the Facebook Ad Library, joins Daniel and James to break down the rapidly escalating world of AI-powered scams and online fraud. Rob explains how scammers are now vibe-coding their own analytics dashboards, producing 60-minute deepfake celebrity endorsement videos, and scraping public data to send hyper-targeted phishing messages. He shares why online fraud, estimated at nearly half a trillion dollars annually, is almost certainly underreported, and why the pullback in trust and safety teams at major platforms has made the problem worse. Rob walks through how Infohawk is using AI to fight back, why protection needs to come from both the client side (on-device models) and the server side (B2B tools), and why the internet is going to fundamentally change around verification and identity in the next two to three years.The conversation also covers the regulatory landscape, including proposed US scam liability legislation modeled after UK and Australian frameworks, why platforms need to open up ad transparency without giving bad actors an oracle, and Rob's argument that education and red teaming should come before any vendor purchase for companies worried about social engineering attacks. Daniel and James note that Rob is one of the few people who has worked on these problems from inside both Facebook and Google and is now building the tools to solve them from the outside.Thank you to our sponsors:AdQuick – Making OOH advertising as easy to plan, buy, and measure as digital. adquick.comThrad.ai — Building the advertising infrastructure for AI. thrad.aibeehiiv — The all-in-one platform for newsletters, websites, and every tool you need to grow and earn. beehiiv.comThe Farm — Fraction commercial legal with an in-house approach to outside counsel. thefarmllp.comSTAY CONNECTEDJames on Twitter & LinkedIn – /jamesborowDaniel on LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok – /danieldrugerSubscribe & leave a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review on Spotify & Apple Podcasts.

This week on the ADSN Rundown, Daniel Druger and James Borow unpack Meta’s decision to open Muse to developers and why connectors from Shopify, Stripe, Expedia, Instacart and others could turn it into a new consumer platform. They explore a potential open-web coalition between Meta, Shopify and Stripe, debate whether Meta will eventually acquire Shopify, and explain why the combination of social distribution, commerce data and advertising could reshape how people discover and buy products.Daniel and James also cover Alex Heath’s move into investing, Peter Sellis’s 90-minute product masterclass, Ramp’s Broadway musical, the widening US-China divide around AI and robotics, and the $42 million Horowitz and Andreessen Academy. They close with tech trades at Pinterest and Crexi, Toby Lütke’s approach to high-stakes decisions, and Nikita Bier’s argument that probabilistic AI products will favor builders who are not constrained by decades of deterministic software thinking.Thank you to our sponsors:AdQuick – Making OOH advertising as easy to plan, buy, and measure as digital. adquick.comThrad.ai — Building the advertising infrastructure for AI. thrad.aibeehiiv — The all-in-one platform for newsletters, websites, and every tool you need to grow and earn. beehiiv.comThe Farm — Fraction commercial legal with an in-house approach to outside counsel. thefarmllp.comSTAY CONNECTEDJames on Twitter & LinkedIn – /jamesborowDaniel on LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok – /danieldrugerSubscribe & leave a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review on Spotify & Apple Podcasts.

Jason Levin, founder and CEO of Meme Lord, joins Daniel and James to break down how he turned internet humor into a legitimate B2B SaaS business. Jason explains his concept of "humor arbitrage," the idea that the boringer your company, the more you stand to gain from being funny, and how that thesis has landed Meme Lord enterprise clients with ACVs of $60-80K across HR, legal, and tech. He walks through how the company helps brands launch secondary accounts to take creative risk off their main channels, why his contracts explicitly ban NSFW and political content (think Seinfeld, not shock value), and how niche virality crushes mass virality every time. Jason also gets candid about feeling like he's "cheating on marketing" with vibe coding, why he thinks the world is only going to get stupider (and why that's bullish for his business), and his journey from wanting YouTube fame to being happiest in a CRM and a notebook.Thank you to our sponsors:AdQuick – Making OOH advertising as easy to plan, buy, and measure as digital. adquick.comThrad.ai — Building the advertising infrastructure for AI. thrad.aibeehiiv — The all-in-one platform for newsletters, websites, and every tool you need to grow and earn. beehiiv.comThe Farm — Fraction commercial legal with an in-house approach to outside counsel. thefarmllp.comSTAY CONNECTEDJames on Twitter & LinkedIn – /jamesborowDaniel on LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok – /danieldrugerSubscribe & leave a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review on Spotify & Apple Podcasts.

"Everything AI related that has ever been innovated on has been through the lens of something completely digital. The challenge for the physical AI world is how do you actually experience things in real life."In this episode, Daniel and James sit down with Zach Greenberger, CEO of Nexar and former chief business officer at Lyft, to dig into the real-world data layer that's accelerating autonomous vehicles and physical AI. Nexar has built a network of 450,000 connected dashcam vehicles that cross every street in Manhattan four times a day, log 310 million miles per month, and have captured 75 million accidents over the past decade. Two months of Nexar's driving data exceeds what every autonomous vehicle company combined has ever driven — and Zach argues this edge case data is exactly what AV companies need now that simulation alone has reached its limit.The conversation goes beyond cars. Nexar recently launched a collision prediction model called BADASS (Beyond ADAS) that works on drones, planes, tanks, delivery robots, and industrial equipment, proving that automotive data is an incredible proxy for understanding real-world physics. Zach breaks down the difference between real-world and real-time data, why the smart city pitch is finally achievable without massive infrastructure investment, and how Nexar's recent merger with Nauto gives them 98% US coverage. He also draws a careful line on data privacy, explaining why consumer-chosen dashcams create a fundamentally different trust model than stationary surveillance cameras, and predicts delivery robots, autonomous security guards, and commercial drones will proliferate within 12 to 24 months.Thank you to our sponsors:AdQuick – Making OOH advertising as easy to plan, buy, and measure as digital. adquick.comThrad.ai — Building the advertising infrastructure for AI. thrad.aibeehiiv — The all-in-one platform for newsletters, websites, and every tool you need to grow and earn. beehiiv.comThe Farm — Fraction commercial legal with an in-house approach to outside counsel. thefarmllp.comSTAY CONNECTEDJames on Twitter & LinkedIn – /jamesborowDaniel on LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok – /danieldrugerSubscribe & leave a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review on Spotify & Apple Podcasts.

This week on the ADSN Rundown, James and Daniel go from Eric Seufert's optimistic vision for an ad-supported prosperous society to Travis Kelce getting a warm welcome into the world of ads.James makes the case for agentic insurance and for bringing Bitmoji back as a personalization layer for agents, Meta’s aggressive Muse launch, Mark Lou’s $100,000 body-ad takeover, and a former Anthropic researcher’s warning about AI risk. Then here our newest segment: Over/Under and the usual Primary Posts. Enjoy this week's episode!Thank you to our sponsors:AdQuick – Making OOH advertising as easy to plan, buy, and measure as digital. adquick.comThrad.ai — Building the advertising infrastructure for AI. thrad.aibeehiiv — The all-in-one platform for newsletters, websites, and every tool you need to grow and earn. beehiiv.comThe Farm — Fraction commercial legal with an in-house approach to outside counsel. thefarmllp.comSTAY CONNECTEDJames on Twitter & LinkedIn – /jamesborowDaniel on LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok – /danieldrugerSubscribe & leave a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review on Spotify & Apple Podcasts.

Max Rivera, a Microsoft AI executive and founder of Snap alumni fund Ghost Angels, discusses the power of operator-led investing. He explores Snap’s startup network, strategic angel checks in social, media, and ad tech, and the fund’s first bets. He also shares how AI automates deal flow, diligence, legal review, and fund operations while he balances investing with a full-time role.