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BIG IDEAS BY NEW ECONOMIES

Ollie Forsyth

Welcome to BIG IDEAS by NEW ECONOMIES - a show where we learn how the most iconic founders have turned crucible moments into global companies.

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  • 21 episodes
  • Updated Yesterday

Episodes21

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  • Yesterday · 57 min

    Thumbtack

    Subscribe to stay ahead of technology trends. Never miss future editions. Marco Zappacosta, co-founder and CEO of Thumbtack, joins NEW ECONOMIES to explain why Google search volume has reaccelerated to an all-time high post-ChatGPT, why the customers now converting through AI chat are more qualified and further into their decision than any channel Thumbtack has seen before, and why marketplaces for hiring humans, unlike commodity marketplaces such as Uber or food delivery, are mediated by certainty and confidence rather than speed and price. About Thumbtack Thumbtack is a technology company helping millions of people confidently care for and improve their homes. Every day in every county of the U.S., people turn to Thumbtack to complete small fixes, routine maintenance, and major improvements. With over 12 million 5-star projects and counting, they help homeowners and home professionals accomplish more. Watch Now: Marco Zappacosta - co-founder of Thumbtack We also cover why word of mouth, not a competitor, is Thumbtack’s biggest threat, capturing 80% of home-services demand through calls to neighbors and posts in group chats, and how LLMs are finally solving a personalization problem Thumbtack couldn’t crack in 20 years, replacing one generic question set per category with fully bespoke, project-specific questioning, using Marco’s own Murphy bed installation as the test case. We get into why almost no startup has survived in a marketplace category with close to a trillion dollars of spend, and what half the Thumbtack product team is now rebuilding around AI. We close on the interface shift Marco almost missed, voice, not text, the board seat he still wants to fill, and where he expects human-capital marketplaces to go over the next 20 years. This was a fascinating episode! Available everywhere you listen to podcasts. Watch or listen now across YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and X Download the transcript 👇 Timestamps (0:00) Meet Marco Zappacosta(1:57) Thumbtack Turns Nearly 20(3:00) Why Marketplaces Are Challenging(6:30) Thumbtack's First 12 Months(8:57) How Thumbtack Uses AI Today(17:34) The Ideal Customer Profile(19:18) How Homeownership Is Changing(24:09) Why Experts Have High Expectations(26:55) Building Trust With Users in Today's Environment(29:03) Experts Communicating Offline(30:54) Tensions With Marketplaces(33:12) Integrating AI Into Thumbtack's Complex Stack(38:42) Where and How to Place Bets(42:04) The Next Big Opportunity(44:29) How Marco Runs Thumbtack(51:02) What Is Still Yet to Be Achieved?(52:14) Rapid Fire Our notes from this conversation 1. AI customers convert better than search customers ever did. Post-ChatGPT, Google search volume for Thumbtack-relevant categories has reaccelerated to its highest point ever, but the more telling shift is on the AI side: users arriving via ChatGPT or Claude are more qualified, more motivated, and further into the decision than a typical search customer. Volume is still low, but Marco is treating it as the leading indicator for how discovery gets rebuilt. 2. Word of mouth, not a competitor, is Thumbtack’s real adversary. 80% of home-services demand still flows through a call to a neighbor or a post in a group chat. Marco sees the AI moment as the first real chance to intercept that demand before it disappears into an informal network Thumbtack can’t see or monetize. 3. Hiring a human is not a commodity purchase. Marketplaces like Uber and food delivery compete on speed and price because the average basket is under $50. Home services average around $1,000 per purchase with real consequences for getting it wrong, so the decision is mediated by certainty and peace of mind, not convenience. 4. Marketplaces are brutal to bootstrap — and that difficulty is the moat. Despite near-trillion-dollar category spend, almost no home-services startup has survived alongside incumbents like Angi and Yelp. The same friction that kills most entrants is what protects the few that break through to compounding scale. 5. LLMs are solving a 20-year personalization problem overnight. Thumbtack historically applied one generic question set per project category, fine for common jobs, useless for anything niche. Marco’s own Murphy bed installation became the test case: an LLM asked the right follow-up questions instantly, something no static form could match at that level of specificity. 6. Half the product team is now rebuilding around AI. Marco describes the integration as touching everything, core matching, the customer and pro experience, pricing, refunds, monetization. It’s a ground-up rebuild, not a feature bolted on top. 7. Voice is the interface shift he almost missed. Asked what he’s changed his mind on in the past year, Marco points to voice as input and output, not because it’s novel, but because it removes typing entirely for how his kids and Thumbtack’s pros interact with technology. He doesn’t think it kills the keyboard, but expects it to sit alongside it as a default mode. The board seat he still wants to fill: a technologist. His current board covers CFO, CEO, and COO backgrounds, but he’s missing a product-obsessed technologist, someone in the mold of Snap’s Evan Spiegel, to pressure-test where AI takes the product next. Links Follow Ollie on X - https://x.com/ollieforsyth. Follow Marco on X - https://x.com/mlz. Visit Thumbtack - http://thumbtack.com. Partnership: Harmonic is the go-to startup database - https://harmonic.ai. Partnership: Hostinger is as a go-to tool for builders. Subscribers receive 10% off here - https://hostinger.com/neweconomies. Previous episodes include See all previous episode here 👉 If you enjoyed this episode, help sustain our work by clicking ❤️ and 🔄 at the top of this post. Get full access to NEW ECONOMIES at www.neweconomies.co/subscribe

  • July 30 · 41 min

    Wispr Flow

    Subscribe to stay ahead of technology trends. Never miss future editions. Tanay Kothari, founder of Wispr Flow, joins NEW ECONOMIES to unpack why most startups don’t die from bad ideas but from chasing too many good ones, and why matching your number of initiatives to your organizational capacity matters more than simply working longer hours. About Wispr Flow Wispr Flow turns voice into clean text. 4x faster than typing. 85% zero-edit. Speak naturally. Write perfectly. Watch now: Tanay Kothari - Founder of Wispr Flow We also get into the future of voice dictation and whether the keyboard is on its way out; how Wispr built an enterprise sales motion from scratch in less than a year, now accounting for a third of the company's revenue and serving more than half of the Fortune 500; the pricing psychology behind why ChatGPT feels free while Claude feels like a paid product; and why Wispr chose to build its own voice models in-house instead of relying on third-party AI providers. We close on the story behind Wispr’s tuk-tuk campaign in India, how Tanay structures his week acting as chief of staff to the whole company, and a quickfire round covering his dream board pick and a free idea for Wispr Flow for creators by Ollie. Watch or listen now across YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and X Download the transcript 👇 Timestamps (0:00) Meet Tanay Kothari(1:50) Why Tanay Started Wispr(4:12) Building a Rocket Ship with Discipline(8:52) Why Now Is the Moment for Voice Dictation(12:27) Launching Wispr in India(14:51) Why Computing Is Still So Expensive(17:48) Why You Must Listen to Customers(24:00) How Tanay Stays Focused(27:00) Wispr's Internal Product Roadmap(29:15) Ollie Becomes Tanay's Chief of Staff(32:58) How to Keep the Talent Bar High(37:10) Rapid-Fire Round Our notes from this conversation * Most startups don’t fail from bad ideas, they fail from mismatched capacities. Tanay’s reframe: the opposite of distraction isn’t focus, because focus can point at the wrong thing just as easily as the right one. A thousand-person company can be laser-focused and still fail if what it’s focused on doesn’t match what it can actually execute. His fix is mechanical, match your number of initiatives to your organizational capacity, because a task that took five people to build takes ten or twenty to maintain. * Enterprise wasn’t bolted on. It was built from zero in under a year. Wispr went from a pure consumer motion to a third of total revenue coming from B2B, with 15,000 companies and more than half the Fortune 500 as customers including: Microsoft, Nvidia, Notion, Clay, and Klarna. Companies like Slack and Notion took four to eight years to make that same consumer-to-enterprise jump. Tanay’s team compressed it into twelve months by treating it as a different product, not a repackaged one. * ChatGPT feels free. Claude feels paid. That gap is the whole game. This isn’t a throwaway comparison, it’s Tanay’s actual pricing philosophy. Perception of price is one of the most under-used levers founders have, more powerful than the marketing budget behind it. It’s why ChatGPT crossed a billion monthly active users while Anthropic, by his account, remains far behind on volume despite the stronger product. * When nobody had a good enough model, Wispr stopped shopping and started building. The team tried routing through other providers first and found the accuracy ceiling too low for voice specifically. So they built their own frontier voice lab from scratch, 15 people today, headed to 40 by the end of the year. The bet is that harness engineering, squeezing frontier performance out of cheaper models, only gets you so far before you have to own the stack. * The keyboard isn’t dying of old age. It’s being made obsolete by 700 million people who never wanted it. Tanay’s most pointed number: 700 million people worldwide have dyslexia or a speech impediment, and for them typing isn’t friction, it’s the single worst way to interact with technology. Voice isn’t a UX preference for that group, it’s the first real unlock they’ve had. * There’s no fixed job at the top, just whichever fire is biggest that week. Tanay describes his own role as deliberately fluid: one week he’s PMing a launch, the next he’s deep in Figma five days a week, the one after that he’s building out a CRO’s B2B function from scratch. The throughline isn’t a job title, it’s finding “the most important dumpster fire in the company that is not being taken care of” and sitting in it until it’s solved. * Five to ten hours a week with users isn’t research. It’s the entire strategy. Tanay doesn’t outsource customer insight to a feedback form. He sits beside users, watches their day, and treats that time as non-negotiable, not because it’s good practice, but because he thinks no company has ever succeeded without it. The line he keeps coming back to: your single job is to figure out what people want and give it to them, and everything else is downstream of that. Links Follow Ollie on X - https://x.com/ollieforsythFollow Tanay on X - https://x.com/tankotsTry Wispr Flow - https://wisprflow.ai Previous episodes include If you enjoyed this episode, help sustain our work by clicking ❤️ and 🔄 at the top of this post. Get full access to NEW ECONOMIES at www.neweconomies.co/subscribe

  • July 29 · 57 min

    Cameron Adams (Canva)

    Subscribe to stay ahead of technology trends. Never miss future editions. Cameron Adams, co-founder and Chief Product Officer at Canva, joins NEW ECONOMIES to explain why AI gives creators more options than ever but not more chances to send the right message, and why taste becomes the real opportunity once every tool produces passable designs. Watch now: Cameron Adams - Co-Founder at Canva We also get into the contrarian bet behind Canva’s early success - ignoring The Lean Startup playbook to spend six extra months on user testing before launch, plus where AI is actually moving inside the product, from Canva AI 2.0 to magic layers to voice as the next creative interface. We close on the fourteen-year journey of co-founding Canva with Melanie Perkins and Cliff Obrecht, and what Cam thinks creators should be focusing on going forward. Watch or listen now on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and X Download the transcript Timestamps (00:00) Meet Cameron Adams(02:06) Canva Create 2.0(05:13) The Canva Founding Story(07:45) Canva's First 6–12 Months(09:45) Building Fanatical Early Users(11:37) Landing the First Users(15:35) How Canva Stays Relevant(17:03) Canva's Focus on AI(19:50) Taste Is the New Differentiator(21:46) What Design Platforms Do Best Today(25:24) Canva's Most Popular Features(27:04) Inside Canva's Product Roadmap(34:05) What Creators Should Focus On(36:35) What Cam Is Most Excited About(38:25) AI-Generated Content(42:22) Why Music Is the Next Big Trend(46:10) Anyone Can Build Now(49:12) Cam's AI Stack(50:34) Ollie Joins as Cam's Chief of Staff(51:28) Co-Founder Relationships(56:00) What's Next for Canva Our notes from this conversation * AI gives you more options, not more chances. You can now generate ten, twenty, thirty plus versions of anything using these AI tools, but the audience still only lets you send one message, maybe two at most. Cam’s take: the volume of options AI produces doesn’t lower the stakes of choosing correctly, it raises them. Great taste matters more than ever. * The moat isn’t the model, it’s the product workflow around it. One prompt box spitting out one image is table stakes now - anyone can do it. Canva’s edge comes from pulling teams, brand context, and every stage of a project into a single loop, which is why a quarter of a billion people bring their colleagues, friends, and family into the suite of product offerings with them. * Ignoring conventional wisdom was the actual growth hack. Investors were pushing Canva to ship fast per the famous playbook: The Lean Startup by Eric Ries. They spent six extra months on user testing instead, betting that a polished first experience would turn users into fanatical fans. Cam believes that patience became Canva’s early advantage. By delaying launch until the experience felt polished, the team laid the foundations for Canva’s organic growth loop. * Voice is the next interface opportunity. Cam points to Africa as a voice-first market by necessity, places where typing was never the default way people interacted with technology. Whoever wins on voice interfaces wins access to users that keyboard-first products never reached. The death of the keyboard may be looming. * Fully AI-generated content plateaus. AI-assisted creators don’t. AI Micro-dramas out of China are going viral on the strength of human storytelling, not the fact that they’re AI-made. Cam’s bet: pure AI-generated content is a novelty that settles into a niche, while creators who use AI to extend their own taste keep compounding. * Velocity and quality aren’t in tension anymore, they’re the same discipline. Canva mapped every feature shipped over the previous three months and found it had delivered more product output than at any point in the company’s fourteen-year history. Cam’s explanation isn’t “we cut corners” - it’s that better internal tools let designers and engineers prototype more ideas and still nail the one that ships. * Fourteen-year co-founder relationships survive on self-awareness, as well as chemistry. Cam’s answer to what makes Canva’s founding team last isn’t just the shared vision, it’s each person knowing precisely what they’re great at, what they’re not, and staying a well-rounded contributor instead of hiding in one fixed lane. That’s what let three people cover for each other for over a decade without competing for the same territory. Links Follow Ollie on X: https://x.com/ollieforsyth Follow Cameron on X: https://x.com/themaninblue Sign up to Canva: https://www.canva.com Listen to all previous episodes: https://www.neweconomies.co/podcast Subscribe to Cam's newsletter: https://promptedwithcam.substack.com/ Subscribe to Cam's podcast: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLATYfhN6gQz_ynkjnu_d63u1Qp600SlBH Previous episodes include If you enjoyed this episode, help sustain our work by clicking ❤️ and 🔄 at the top of this post. ….. Brought to you by Harmonic - The complete startup database. Get full access to NEW ECONOMIES at www.neweconomies.co/subscribe

  • July 23 · 50 min

    Justine Moore: Andreessen Horowitz

    Subscribe to stay ahead of technology trends. Never miss future editions. Consumers care less about how something was made. Justine Moore is a Partner at Andreessen Horowitz investing across AI and consumer, and one of the earliest backers of ElevenLabs. In this episode, she breaks down why AI microdramas are becoming one of the fastest-growing entertainment formats in the world, why China’s microdrama market has already overtaken its domestic box office, and why the U.S is only now catching up. Watch now: AI Microdramas Are Exploding We also explore why the first wave of AI video creators were attention seekers rather than storytellers, why that’s changing fast as real creatives move into the space, and why Justine thinks the “AI slop” debate misses the point entirely: slop existed long before AI, and the label won’t matter once most content is partially AI-made anyway. We close the episode on why Justine believes agents that work before you ask are the next real unlock in consumer AI. Watch or listen now on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and X Download the transcript Timestamps (0:00) Meet Justine Moore (1:52) Generative Media's Inflection Point (4:23) AI Microdramas Are Exploding (10:02) Why AI Dramas Are New Forms of Entertainment (13:52) How to Create AI Microdramas (17:28) The Adoption of AI Microdramas (22:00) Content Becoming Timely vs. Timeless (25:00) Should Creators Be Disclosing AI Features? (33:45) How to Build AI Generative Media Startups(40:13) Justine's Favorite Agents (41:45) Is Consumer Tech Back? (45:15) Justine's Startup Ideas (46:40) Founders to Watch Our notes from this conversation 1. AI video is finally good enough to stand on its own. Early AI videos attracted attention because they were novel. Today, that's no longer the story. As Justine describes, model quality has improved to the point where AI-generated video can hold a viewer's attention with a coherent storyline. The competitive advantage is shifting from the technology itself to the creativity of the people using it. 2. Cheaper AI production is opening opportunities that global studios will eventually adopt. Microdramas are the clearest signals of what is actually possible. Creators are already using AI to generate backgrounds, visual effects and techniques that were previously handled with CGI. The expectation is that major film studios will follow the same path, not to replace production or talent, but to cut costs on specific parts of production. 3. Ollie started producing a micro drama. This is what is possible! Ollie built a short microdrama around the Nike origin story to stress-test the opportunities directly. The narrative, design and aesthetics came together fast and relatively cheaply. There are still gaps where these platforms can improve, for example: transitions between chapters aren’t natural yet, storytelling in the creator’s tone of voice has a way to go until perfect, and the cost to create these compounds very quickly once you’re iterating and constantly editing. Watch here 4. Consumers care less about how something was made Justine’s instinct is that mass-market audiences aren’t selecting for or against something because it’s AI-made, they’re asking whether it’s good. The people fixated on provenance are concentrated on X and Reddit, which is a different audience than the one actually consuming the content at scale. 5. Timely vs. timeless is a more useful lens than AI vs. human. The human vs. AI comparison is the wrong split. Slop predates AI entirely, it was never a tooling problem, it’s a quality-and-intent problem, which is why “timeless” content (built to hold up regardless of when or how it was made) survives that axis and disposable content doesn’t. During the episode, we also talked about if creators should be disclosing if AI tools were used and if so how. However, Justine thinks labeling is a losing battle: content is heading toward being partially AI-made by default, at which point a label stops signaling anything useful. 6. The hardest part of building here right now is differentiation. Competing with OpenAI or Google at the foundation-model layer has gotten expensive enough that most new entrants shouldn’t attempt it. The real contest is one layer up, at the app and workflow level: the question isn’t whether you can build on top of the models, it’s who you serve and why they stay instead of switching to the next thin wrapper. 7. AI agents will matter more for individual creators than for big companies. Justine’s case is that solo creators and small teams are the most resource-constrained group in the market, so offloading admin and logistics to agents is a bigger unlock for them than for anyone already running a team to handle it. Links Follow Ollie on X - https://x.com/ollieforsyth Follow Justine on X - https://x.com/venturetwins Justine's market map on AI Microdramas: Previous episodes include If you enjoyed this episode, help sustain our work by clicking ❤️ and 🔄 at the top of this post. … Brought to you by Hostinger. Use code NEWECONOMIES for 10% off. Get full access to NEW ECONOMIES at www.neweconomies.co/subscribe

  • July 21 · 56 min

    $1M ARR in 3 Weeks. $150M ARR One Year Later

    Subscribe to stay ahead of technology trends. Never miss future editions. Maor Shlomo, founder of Base44, and Mark Tluszcz, Chairman at Wix, join NEW ECONOMIES to unpack the fastest-moving acquisition story in vibe coding: a solo founder who hit $1M in annualized revenue three weeks after launch, sold Base44 to Wix for $80M within months, and grew the business from roughly $3M to $150M in annualized revenue in the year since the deal closed. Maor walks through the origin story — building a tool for his now-wife’s CRM problem, wanting to give non-technical people a way to build tools rather than just websites — and the operational chaos that followed, including running the platform solo with no monitoring and fielding a security scare in the middle of his brother’s wedding. Mark also explains why Wix, twenty years into believing non-technical people deserve real building tools, saw Base44 not as a bolt-on but as the natural extension of what Wix had been doing since 2006. WATCH NOW: $1M ARR IN 3 WEEKS Throughout the episode, we get into why owning the full stack — front end, back end, and now the model layer — was non-negotiable for both companies, culminating in the release of Base 1, Base44’s own fine-tuned model for building web applications, and why Maor thinks the real bottleneck has already shifted from writing code to making good product decisions: as coding stops being the constraint, taste, distribution, and the judgment to know what’s worth building become the differentiators. We also cover the coming wave of vibe-coded enterprise tools, why “verticalized” models beat horizontal ones for this category, and the emerging idea of Base44 acting less like a coding assistant and more like a co-founder. We close on where Maor and Mark think the next big opportunities sit — re-humanizing technology through live events and the “off planet opportunity” (space) opened up by the SpaceX IPO — and who each of them would want on their board, landing, unexpectedly, on… Watch or listen now on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and X Download the transcript Timestamps (0:00) Meet Maor Shlomo & Mark Tluszcz(2:00) The Origin of Wix(4:07) The Base44 Founding Story(7:30) $1M in Revenue in Just 3 Weeks(9:23) The Craziest Base44 Story(12:08) Why Wix Acquired Base44(20:42) Launching Base44's AI Model(30:07) Why You Should Own the Stack(32:33) How We Update AI Models(34:18) What's Still Missing for AI Builders?(39:36) The State of Vibe Coding(47:40) Tech Predictions from Maor & Mark Our notes from this conversation * Coding stopped being the bottleneck. What to build is. Base44 hit $1M in annualized revenue three weeks after launch, then a couple million within three months — solo, with no funding. Maor’s line: “coding is not the issue anymore. The question is what are you going to build.” That’s the thesis for the next few years, not just the next few months. * Why Base44 and Wix teamed-up Wix approached Base44 because a “crazy guy” running a one-man show kept generating enough noise that people started telling Mark’s team to buy him. Nir Zohar, Wix’s President, sealed the vibe over steak; the real decision came later, with Maor and Avishai Abrahami (CEO and Founder at Wix) at a whiteboard in the middle of the night, mapping three paths: stay bootstrapped, raise a lot of money, or partner with Wix. Maor’s real hesitation wasn’t valuation — it was fear of scaling the “magic” too fast and killing the thing that made it work. Avishai’s answer was structural, not financial: lean on Wix for the boring infrastructure, stay lean and move fast everywhere else. * Owning the front and back end obligates you to own the middleware too. Base44’s release of Base 1 — its own fine-tuned model for building web applications — wasn’t a marketing move, it was the logical endpoint of a stack Wix and Base44 already owned end to end. Mark’s framing: If you own the front end and the back end, you eventually have to own how you deliver the service between them, or you’re dependent on someone else’s pricing and roadmap. * Scale generates the training data that makes owning a model worth it. Two things moved Base44’s model timeline up by a year or more: open-source models reaching frontier-adjacent quality, and Base44’s own traffic generating millions of usable data points. The lesson generalizes — building your own model only makes sense once you have the volume to fine-tune it well, not before. * The next differentiator isn’t code quality — it’s taste. Horizontal coding models are good at many things. Base44’s bet is that a model trained specifically on what makes a good product decision — not just working code — becomes a durable edge as raw code generation becomes commoditized across every vibe coding platform. * Distribution, not creation, is the unsolved problem for builders. Mark’s read on the ecosystem: Plenty of products get built, very few get used, because building well and marketing well are different skills. Base44’s answer is a beta “distribution layer” that uses its own context on each app — B2B or consumer, local or global — to recommend a growth playbook, not just more features. * Vibe coding is quietly eating enterprise software, not just side projects. The skepticism about production-readiness a year ago has given way to real adoption: internal tools, dashboards, and niche SaaS products built by domain experts with zero developers on staff. Maor’s example — a former restaurant manager building an invoicing tool for local restaurants — is the shape of a much larger shift in who gets to start a software business. * Nobody has visibility past about three months, and that’s the honest answer. Maor won’t pretend to forecast a year out — internal roadmaps only run two or three months because the ground moves that fast. What he will say: Frontier-model costs keep compressing, open source keeps closing the gap, and the category itself is widening past web apps into games, slide decks, and design — anywhere code can define an output. * Building in public is now a distribution channel, not a personality quirk. Maor’s early growth came from documenting the numbers, the features, and the struggles publicly every day, not from a marketing budget. His conclusion for founders generally: Storytelling and audience-building are becoming as valuable a skill as the product itself, especially for anyone starting without capital. * A board doesn’t need people like you. It needs people who aren’t. Mark’s operating principle for Wix’s board — deliberately including outsiders like the CEO of Manchester City for a completely different read on marketing and culture — showed up again when asked who they’d add next: both landed on the same instinct, that the highest-leverage addition is someone who understands modern culture and storytelling, not another operator who thinks like they do. Links Follow Ollie on X - https://x.com/ollieforsythFollow Maor on X - https://x.com/MaorShlomoFollow Mark on X - https://x.com/marktluszczVisit Base44 - http://base44.com Visit Wix - http://wix.com Previous episodes include If you enjoyed this episode, help sustain our work by clicking ❤️ and 🔄 at the top of this post. ….. Brought to you by Harmonic Get full access to NEW ECONOMIES at www.neweconomies.co/subscribe

  • July 19 · 1 hr

    Reid Hoffman: LinkedIn

    Subscribe to stay ahead of technology trends. Never miss future editions. Reid Hoffman, co-founder of LinkedIn, joins NEW ECONOMIES to explain why we’re still underutilizing AI, why agent management — not individual contribution — becomes the default mode of work within three years, and why the next decade of company-building rewards taste and judgment over raw skill: once AI can draw, code, and write as well as any specialist, the only thing left to own is the specific, unrepeatable bar for what excellence looks like. We also cover why AI carries a positive perception across Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America while triggering data-center bans and slowdown politics in the US and Europe — and why 91% of non-Chinese AI market cap still sits within 30 miles of Silicon Valley. We get into the founding story behind Manas AI — Reid’s drug-discovery venture, plus whether Silicon Valley is still the best place to start a company. We close on the lessons Reid has learned from Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella and the technology trends Reid is most excited about next. Watch or listen now on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify Download the transcript Timestamps (0:00) Meet Reid Hoffman (1:36) Why Most People Are Under Utilizing AI (5:28) How Should We Be Using AI? (7:17) Why Agent Managers Are Next (8:47) Are We Taking AI Seriously Enough? (11:58) How Is Blitzscaling Different Today? (15:00) Is Silicon Valley Still The Best Region? (16:27) Should Startups Partner with AI Models? (21:37) Personalized AI & Taste (24:28) Is Distribution The New Moat for Startups? (26:19) Does AI Have a Negative PR Problem? (28:48) What Would Reid Coach Governments? (33:20) It’s Not Just Anthropic or OpenAI (36:36) The IPO Gold Rush (38:32) Sam vs Dario Characteristics (42:30) Lessons from Satya Nadella (47:30) Ollie Joins As Reid’s Chief of Staff (49:39) Reid’s Trends (55:27) Fire Round Our notes from this conversation * The next career move isn’t a skill — it’s a headcount. Individual contributors are giving way to agent managers, each overseeing anywhere from a handful to tens of thousands of agents. Reid’s timeline: broad-based adoption within three years, starting with coding and spreading into every “digital closing loop.” * Non-US, non-Europe just inherited the industrial revolution’s rematch. AI carries a negative PR perception in the US and Europe (job-loss anxiety, data-center bans) and a positive one everywhere else — Asia, the Middle East, Latin America, Africa. Reid calls it the reverse revenge of the industrial revolution: the regions that missed the first wave may lead the cognitive one. * Distribution didn’t die — it became the AI amplifier. Moats aren’t dead, but they’ve changed shape. Existing companies with distribution aren’t finished; they’re only finished if they refuse to plug AI into what they already own. Refuse, and “the dinosaur decay has started.” * Wrapper businesses are living on borrowed time. If a competitor can point Claude Code or Codex at your product and rebuild it for the token cost, you were never defensible. The businesses that survive have a theory of the game: network effects, enterprise integration, or data loops the model can’t just absorb as a feature. * Hand skill is depreciating. Taste is the new scarce resource. AI coordination doesn’t need better hand-eye coordination to draw well — so that skill’s value drops. What rises: judgment about what excellence actually looks like, in code, writing, and product. Reid expects taste and context-awareness to matter for decades, not quarters. * The market isn’t consolidating to three companies — it’s expanding to ten or fifteen. Reid’s eight-year-old antitrust argument held: from five-to-seven heading toward ten-to-fifteen frontier and adjacent players, not three. That’s good for entrepreneurs — more potential acquirers, more room to build something valuable without having to out-build OpenAI or Anthropic. * Blitzscaling didn’t disappear — it moved from headcount to compute. The old version was maximum organizational scale under uncertainty. The new version: build something in two weeks, throw it away, rebuild — at higher velocity and higher risk — while a much smaller human team manages a much larger agent workforce. * Trust gets built by value, not by messaging. Reid’s answer to AI skepticism isn’t a better narrative — it’s a free medical assistant, a lease-reading legal agent, a tutor on every phone. “It isn’t by a story of words... how you get trust is by seeing value.” Links Follow Ollie on X - https://x.com/ollieforsyth Follow Reid on X - https://x.com/reidhoffman Subscribe to Reid’s Podcast, Masters of Scale - https://mastersofscale.com/ Discover Reid’s other projects: https://beacons.ai/reidhoffman Reid’s Books - Blitzscaling & Superagency Related previous episodes If you enjoyed this episode, help sustain our work by clicking ❤️ and 🔄 at the top of this post. Get full access to NEW ECONOMIES at www.neweconomies.co/subscribe

  • July 16 · 44 min

    Mark Manson

    Subscribe to stay ahead of technology trends. Never miss future editions. Mark Manson is someone you've probably heard of before. He's the author of The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck, which has sold more than 20 million copies worldwide. In this episode, he shares some incredible advice on life, what it takes to become a successful creator, why creators should think more like founders, and what he's building next - including his self-help app, Purpose. Throughout the episode, we also explore why he believes AI content and human content are splitting into two permanent tracks, why non-fiction book sales are down 20–30% and what an “AI-proof” book would actually need to look like, and why Mark thinks the next decade of media rewards trust and credibility over cleverness — because the moment ChatGPT can write as well as he can, the only thing left to own is the specific, unrepeatable mix of experience that makes his voice his. If that’s not enough, we go deep on the founding story behind Purpose, his new AI life-advice app built to do what ChatGPT can’t — actually challenge you instead of just agreeing with you — plus why traditional publishing has banned AI outright while his own two-person research team now outproduces the four-person team he had two years ago, and much more. Timestamps (0:00) Meet Mark Manson (2:20) The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck(9:00) Why Creators Should Think Like Founders (17:17) NEW MEDIA: Will AI Content Survive? (19:30) How Mark Manson Uses AI (26:55) How To Write A Non-Fiction Book Today (32:34) How To Master Your Edge Case (35:13) Has The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck Changed? (37:13) The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck Anymore(39:46) Mark’s App - Purpose Watch or listen now on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify Download the transcript Our notes from this conversation 1. AI self-help is coming for most of human self-help.Therapy, coaching, and advice are all just language processed through experience — exactly what LLMs are built for. Mark’s bet with his new app, Purpose, is that AI will do it better and cheaper than most coaches ever could. 2. Non-fiction is on a countdown.Sales are down 20–30% over two years — not to podcasts, but to AI. Readers now get a chapter in, then interrogate the idea in ChatGPT instead. Survival means novel frameworks AI couldn’t have generated on demand. 3. Media is splitting into AI content and human content.AI is closing in on pure entertainment and education — it can already find the platonic ideal of what makes someone laugh or cry. What it can’t replicate is the parasocial layer: trust, belonging, a specific person’s judgment. 4. The moat isn’t the idea — it’s the audience you own.Mark regrets chasing traditional publisher/Audible/Netflix deals instead of owning distribution directly. Mel Robbins did it right: a viral book converted deliberately into live events, podcasts, and an owned brand. 5. Everyone needs a 99.9th-percentile intersection.As AI closes the gap on any single skill, defensibility shifts to combinations — three or four things that overlap in one person and can’t be cleanly copied. Not one moat, a stack of them. 6. Trust-dependent verticals resist AI longest.Relationships and money are getting hotter, not colder, in the AI era — because people don’t want the same answer ChatGPT gives everyone else. Credibility itself is becoming the scarce resource. 7. AI compounds — and legacy media is opting out.Mark’s research team shrank from four to two while output and quality went up. Meanwhile traditional publishing often bans AI outright, ceding a gap that compounds every quarter against competitors who didn’t wait. 8. Good advice has a shelf life.Mark’s own “give a f*ck about less” advice was right for an overwhelmed era — but it also fed the tribalism defining today’s polarization. Advice isn’t universal; it’s tied to the context that produced it. Links Follow Ollie on X here. Follow Mark on X here. Follow Mark on Instagram here. Download Mark’s new app Purpose here. Interested in NEW MEDIA? Visit our latest project on the most promising new media creators here. Related previous episodes If you enjoyed this episode, help sustain our work by clicking ❤️ and 🔄 at the top of this post. Get full access to NEW ECONOMIES at www.neweconomies.co/subscribe

  • July 5 · 49 min

    The Eventbrite Story | Julia & Kevin Hartz

    Subscribe to stay ahead of technology trends. Never miss future editions. How Eventbrite survived the business apocalypse — and why the internet made real life more valuable than ever Husband and Wife duo Kevin and Julia Hartz, co-founders at Eventbrite, join us on the NEW ECONOMIES podcast show to share how they built one of the world’s largest event marketplaces, navigating a leadership transition after a decade as co-founders, surviving COVID when their entire industry (and revenue) shut down overnight, and why the future belongs to companies bringing people together. About Eventbrite: Eventbrite is one of the world's largest event technology platforms, enabling anyone to create, promote, and sell tickets for live experiences. Since its founding in 2006, the company has powered millions of events across more than 180 countries, helping creators — from independent organizers to major venues — connect with audiences at scale. In our latest podcast episode, Kevin and Julia share Eventbrite's origin story — from a married founding team working out of a windowless office and surviving on cup noodles to building a global marketplace that transformed how people create and discover live experiences. They explain why curiosity became their greatest competitive advantage, why they ignored conventional startup advice by serving every event category from day one, and why complementary founders consistently outperform identical ones. If that’s not enough, we also unpack the brutal reality of leading a public company through COVID after revenue turned negative almost overnight, why acting before everyone agrees is often a founder’s greatest advantage, what selling Eventbrite to Bending Spoons (who went public this week) taught them about long-term stewardship, and why, despite every wave of technology, they believe the most valuable human experiences will always happen in real life. Timestamps (0:00) Kevin & Julia Hartz(1:45) A Blossoming Relationship(3:40) The Aha Moment for Eventbrite(8:15) Ideas Outside Eventbrite(9:24) Eventbrite’s First Year(12:50) The Product Market Fit Moment(14:58) Building a Self-Serving Product(17:25) 2016: Julia Takes Over as CEO(23:00) The Brilliance of Eventbrite vs. Competitors(30:22) The COVID Moment That Changed Us(38:22) IRL Is Back(41:34) Bending Spoon Acquires Eventbrite(45:13) A* Star Raises $450M(47:10) Young Founders to Watch(48:25) What’s Next? Watch or listen now on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify Download the transcript Our notes from this conversation * Eventbrite wasn’t built to sell tickets — it was built to make gathering possible. Kevin and Julia saw ticketing as an overlooked payments problem. If anyone could create an event as easily as sending an email, millions of communities, creators, and organizers could exist that otherwise never would. * The best co-founding teams divide by strengths, not titles. From day one, they focused on complementary abilities instead of overlapping responsibilities. Rather than competing for the same decisions, each founder owned the areas where they naturally created the most leverage. * Curiosity became the company’s competitive advantage. The early years weren’t spent making assumptions — they attended events, watched customers, worked the door themselves, and continuously simplified the product based on real behavior instead of internal opinions. * Product-market fit expanded by following customers, not chasing categories. Instead of focusing on one niche, Eventbrite launched broadly and observed where adoption naturally emerged. Every new customer segment revealed the next opportunity to build for. * Crisis rewards speed more than certainty. When COVID shut down live events almost overnight, the team assumed the worst immediately. They raised capital, reshaped the roadmap, focused on customer survival, and acted long before the situation became obvious to everyone else. * The internet didn’t replace real life — it made it more valuable. Every major technology wave has changed how people connect, but none has replaced the human desire to gather. Digital platforms increasingly become discovery engines for experiences that ultimately happen offline. * Building companies isn’t a chapter — it’s an identity. Even after taking Eventbrite public, leading it through COVID, and eventually selling it, Kevin and Julia continue building new companies and backing founders. For them, entrepreneurship isn’t a milestone — it’s how they approach the world. Links Subscribe to NEW ECONOMIES on YouTube.Follow Ollie on X: https://x.com/ollieforsyth.Follow Julia on X: https://x.com/juliahartz.Follow Kevin on X: https://x.com/kevinhartz. Visit A* Capital: https://www.a-star.co. Related previous episodes If you enjoyed this episode, help sustain our work by clicking ❤️ and 🔄 at the top of this post. Get full access to NEW ECONOMIES at www.neweconomies.co/subscribe

  • June 28 · 50 min

    How We Access The Best Companies

    Subscribe to stay ahead of technology trends. Never miss future editions. Ben Miller, CEO and Co-Founder at Fundrise, joins NEW ECONOMIES to explore the future of investing in an AI-driven world. From democratizing private markets to backing the next generation of technology companies, Ben explains why software is entering a new era of disruption, and how AI could reshape everything from work and housing to healthcare and human longevity. About Fundrise: Fundrise is the largest direct-to-consumer alternative asset manager with more than 385,000 active investors, 2.1 million platform users, and $3.3 billion in assets across real estate, venture, and private credit. In this episode, we explore why Fundrise expanded beyond real estate into venture investing, how Ben thinks about building with conviction instead of institutional consensus, and why some of the best investment decisions come from waiting rather than deploying capital on schedule. We also go deep on how AI is reshaping software, venture, and the broader economy — from why application-layer businesses may become harder to sustain, to why capital is increasingly concentrating around models, compute, and infrastructure. If that’s not enough, we also discuss why venture is far more relationship-driven than most people realize, why investors often overstate their impact relative to founders, and why Ben believes the next great opportunities won’t come from another consumer app — but from applying AI to the physical world through biology, materials, energy, and longevity. Watch or listen now on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify Download the transcript Timestamps (0:00) Ben Miller (1:42) Democratizing Access To Private Markets (9:50) Venture vs. Real Estate (12:48) Getting Access To Companies (15:07) Venture Is Changing (20:10) What Happens Next? (22:10) Companies Going Public (28:16) Where Are The Next Opportunities? (31:22) The Impact of Longevity (33:30) Tough Categories Right Now (35:15) Thoughts On Vibe Coding Tools (36:12) Ollie Joining As Chief of Staff (37:35) How Ben Uses AI (40:53) The Next Big Act For Fundrise (44:22) What Categories Would Ben Build In? (46:13) Rapid Fire Our notes from this conversation * Fundrise was built as a reaction to the financial system. The idea didn’t start with real estate — it started with distrust. After living through the 2008 financial crisis firsthand, Ben’s view became simple: people should be able to own real assets directly instead of relying entirely on financial institutions. * Private markets became consumer products. Fundrise saw the opportunity earlier: It took institutional investing models — private equity, real estate funds, venture — and rebuilt them for individuals. The thesis wasn’t to invent a new asset class. It was to open access to one that already existed. * Great investing often means not doing what you said you would. The team raised venture capital to invest in tech — and then barely invested for a year. Instead of deploying because markets expected it, they waited. Flexibility became an advantage over institutional pressure. * Access in venture is more random than people admit. From the outside, venture looks like a system. Inside, it often looks like relationships, timing, and proximity. Many of the best investments happen through unexpected connections rather than structured processes. * Founders create outcomes. Investors mostly provide fuel. The venture industry talks heavily about value-add. Ben’s view: teams build companies. Capital matters. Advice occasionally matters. But execution compounds more than introductions. * AI is making software easier — and company building harder. As models become more capable, application layers become vulnerable. Product roadmaps compress. Builders increasingly compete not just with startups, but with the platforms underneath them. * Capital is concentrating faster than people expect. AI isn’t only changing software — it’s redirecting capital. Trillions are flowing into models, compute, and infrastructure, creating second-order effects across housing, credit, real estate, and the broader economy. * The next breakthrough isn’t digital — it’s physical. The most exciting opportunities may not be chat interfaces or copilots. They may come from applying AI to biology, materials, medicine, energy, and the physical world itself. * The future belongs to people willing to suffer for the hard decisions. Ben’s framework for leadership is simple: the best decisions are often the ones that are personally painful. Building means choosing uncertainty, absorbing pressure, and taking responsibility before outcomes are obvious. * Learning remains the ultimate competitive advantage. The next company, sector, or wave rarely looks obvious in advance. Curiosity, experimentation, and being willing to look outside your category matter more than defending a fixed identity. Links Subscribe to NEW ECONOMIES on YouTube Follow Ollie on X (https://x.com/ollieforsyth) Follow Ben on X (https://x.com/BenMillerise) Related previous episodes If you enjoyed this episode, help sustain our work by clicking ❤️ and 🔄 at the top of this post. Get full access to NEW ECONOMIES at www.neweconomies.co/subscribe

  • June 21 · 1 hr 1 min

    Why We Sold To Grammarly | Rahul Vohra

    Subscribe to stay ahead of technology trends. Never miss future editions. Why email never died — and why Superhuman is betting on voice, AI, and the future of work Rahul Vohra, founder of Superhuman and now CEO of Superhuman Mail inside the newly formed Superhuman group, joins NEW ECONOMIES on why email remains the most important layer of modern work, how AI is transforming productivity beyond the inbox, and why distribution and focus matter more than technical moats in the age of infinite software. In our latest podcast episode with Rahul, we unpack Superhuman’s eleven-year journey — from the contrarian decision to reinvent email when everyone said it was dead, to building one of Silicon Valley’s most iconic productivity brands and eventually becoming the foundation for a much bigger ambition: the AI-native productivity suite. We also explore why voice could become the default interface for knowledge work, how AI assistants are becoming a new growth channel for software companies, and why Rahul believes the next generation of winners won’t be defined by who writes the best code — but by who owns distribution, executes relentlessly, and knows what not to build. If that’s not enough, we go deep on the acquisition story that led Grammarly to rename the entire company around Superhuman, why email continues to outperform every prediction of its demise, and what building the productivity bundle of the future actually looks like. Watch or listen now on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify Download the transcript Timestamps (0:00) Rahul Vohra(1:44) Why Go After Disrupting Email(4:22) Will Email Still Stay Relevant?(9:20) The Impact of Voice(14:20) PLG: Sent by Superhuman(18:57) Why Moats Are Becoming Increasingly Hard to Build(24:30) How Does Superhuman Group Stay Focused?(28:55) Inside Superhuman(33:20) Missing Products from the Bundle(36:52) The Acquisition(45:45) Ollie Joining as Chief of Staff(47:45) Angel Investing Our notes from this conversation * Email is still the most important protocol at work. Every few years someone declares email dead — and every few years they’re wrong. Email remains identity, authentication, and the default layer for company communication. The interface will change. The infrastructure probably won’t. * Voice is becoming the new keyboard. The breakthrough isn’t transcription — it’s intent. Instead of writing emails, scheduling meetings, and prompting AI manually, people will increasingly speak outcomes and let software execute. Work becomes orchestration. * The biggest moats aren’t technical anymore. Software is becoming cheaper and easier to build. Features get copied faster than ever. Distribution, trust, brand, and knowing exactly what not to build are becoming the new defensibility. * Distribution compounds. Products alone don’t. The winners won’t necessarily be the teams with the smartest models — they’ll be the teams that own attention, create habits, and get embedded where users already work. Distribution has become product. * AI changes interfaces before it changes infrastructure. Voice, agents, and AI-native workflows will reshape how we interact with email, docs, and software — but the systems underneath often survive much longer than people expect. * Focus becomes more valuable as building gets easier. When the cost of creation trends toward zero, restraint becomes leverage. The companies that win won’t build the most — they’ll build the few things that matter. * The next growth channel is AI itself. Users are no longer only discovering products through search, social, or sales. Increasingly, AI assistants recommend, connect, and even activate software on behalf of users. Tools such as The Prompting Company help companies get cited in AI models for example. * The future isn’t humans or AI — it’s humans with AI. The products that endure won’t remove people from work. They’ll amplify judgment, creativity, and decision-making while automation handles the repetitive layers underneath. Links Subscribe to NEW ECONOMIES on YouTube here. Follow Ollie on X (https://x.com/ollieforsyth) Follow Rahul on X (https://x.com/rahulvohra) Sign up to Superhuman (https://superhuman.com) Related previous episodes If you enjoyed this episode, help sustain our work by clicking ❤️ and 🔄 at the top of this post. Get full access to NEW ECONOMIES at www.neweconomies.co/subscribe

  • June 16 · 49 min

    Replit's President & Head of AI | Michele Catasta

    Subscribe to stay ahead of technology trends. Never miss future editions. Why I built the coding tool everyone dismissed — then watched it take over the Fortune 500 Michele Catasta, President and Head of AI at Replit, joins NEW ECONOMIES on why vibe coding is no longer just for hobbyists, how Replit went from a side project to having 85% of the Fortune 500 as users, and why 2026 is the year everyone becomes an agent manager. In our latest podcast episode with Michele, we discuss Replit's origin story — a fifteen-year journey that started as an open source side project in 2011 and spent years building infrastructure in obscurity before the AI unlock that changed everything — and how launching the very first vibe coding agent on the market, before the term even existed, put Replit at the centre of a category it invented. We also unpack why the SaaS apocalypse is real but overblown, why technical moats don't matter as much as execution moats, and how a crucible encounter with Replit's founder Amjad over a primitive AI demo set the course for what the product would eventually become.If that’s not enough, we also explore why Replit scrambled an enterprise sales team almost overnight after Fortune 500 IT departments started knocking, the Visa partnership that lets anyone monetize a product they built in a single prompt, and why Michele believes the coding problem is almost solved — and what that means for where Replit goes next. Watch or listen now on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify Download the transcript Timestamps (0:00) Michele Catasta(1:25) The State of AI(3:25) The Impact of AI Companies Going Public(6:17) What Michele Is Most Excited About(8:50) Replit's Founding Story(18:40) Where Is Vibe Coding Going Next?(21:00) The Role for PMs Today(26:07) What Are Agent Managers?(33:42) Are Technical Moats Relevant?(36:31) Visa Partnership(40:05) Ollie Joining as Chief of Staff(43:48) How to Stay Disciplined(46:27) Rapid Fire Round Our notes from this conversation 1. Launch before the category has a name. Replit shipped a vibe coding agent months before the term even existed. They didn’t wait for validation — they built, launched, and let users define the market. Lesson to founders is to just launch fast. 2. Sometimes being early means writing the playbook, which is totally okay! Product–market fit as we know can takes ages to figure out. For a decade, Replit looked technically strong but commercially stuck. Those years built the infrastructure and conviction that made the AI moment possible. Remember, successes very rarely happens overnight. 3. Enterprise wasn’t actually a strategy for the team - their users pulled them there. When employees started building internal tools, IT followed. Strong PLG can create demand before sales does. 4. Technical moats fade. Execution moats compound. Features can be copied. Judgment can’t. A decade of learning what breaks, scales, and actually matters becomes the real advantage. 5. Coding is becoming the easy part. The harder problem is everything around it — integrations, payments, governance, and infrastructure. The product becomes the platform. 6. 2026 is the year of ‘’the agent manager.’‘ Work shifts from creating everything yourself to directing, reviewing, and orchestrating multiple agents. The operating model changes before the job titles do. Links Subscribe to NEW ECONOMIES: ‪@NEWECONOMIESPOD‬Follow Ollie on X (https://x.com/ollieforsyth) Follow Michele on X (https://x.com/pirroh) Sign up to Replit: (https://replit.com) Related previous episodes If you enjoyed this episode, help sustain our work by clicking ❤️ and 🔄 at the top of this post. Get full access to NEW ECONOMIES at www.neweconomies.co/subscribe

  • June 10 · 50 min

    Inside Mercury's Founding Story | Co-Founder & CEO Immad Akhund

    Subscribe to stay ahead of technology trends. Never miss future editions. Why I built banking for America's startups — then rebuilt it around AI Immad Akhund, Co-Founder & CEO at Mercury, joins NEW ECONOMIES on banking one in three U.S. startups, raising $200M without needing a dollar of it, and why the legacy banking system was never going to win. In this episode, we discuss Mercury’s origin story — launched in 2019 when the entire industry told founders that nobody would trust a startup with their money — and how a million-dollar deposit arrived within four days of launch from someone Immad had never spoken to. We dig into why incumbent banks were always going to lose this fight, why AI makes their position ten times worse, and how Mercury is now rebuilding its entire product around the idea that your bank should live inside whatever AI tool you already use.We also explore why Immad dropped all one-on-ones after watching Jensen Huang run NVIDIA with 60 direct reports, the Amazon “working backwards” process that mapped out Mercury’s entire AI roadmap from a single doc, and why the fintech companies that planted seeds in 2017 are only now bearing fruit. Watch or listen now on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify Download the full transcript: Timestamps (0:00) Immad Akhund(2:35) Why Raise $200M?(3:55) Why FinTech Is Having a Moment(6:02) How Has AI Impacted Mercury?(10:25) What Is Defensibility Today?(13:29) Mercury Finding Product-Market Fit(15:22) Legacy Banks Never Caught Up(19:22) Inside Mercury's Product Team(23:56) The Nuclear Power of Talent(26:05) Is AI Moving Too Fast?(29:00) Keeping Up-to-Date with AI(31:20) Ollie Joining Immad as Chief of Staff(33:45) Our Latest Product Features(35:45) Immad's Interest in Angel Investing(38:20) Today's Underappreciated Opportunities(40:36) AI Wrappers: Will They Last?(42:34) Why Is Consumer So Hard?(44:17) Immad's Quick-Fire Round Our notes from this conversation 1. Raise when you don’t need to — and the terms will show it Mercury has been profitable for four years. That single fact changed everything about the Series D. When you’re not desperate, you get to choose your investors, your timing, and your narrative. Immad has watched enough founders raise under duress to know the difference — and deliberately built Mercury to a position where fundraising is a strategic move, not a survival one. The best negotiating leverage is not needing the deal. 2. Legacy banks lost because their incentives were always wrong Deposit banking is a cost center for incumbent banks. Their real product is loans. That single structural fact explains almost everything: why they underinvest in product, why they charge fees instead of building features, why their “engineering” teams are actually IT teams stitching together third-party vendors. They weren’t slow to adapt — they were optimized for something else entirely. Mercury was always competing on a different game board. 3. Trust isn’t a brand asset. It’s an infrastructure layer Within four days of launch, someone Immad had never spoken to wired a million dollars into a Mercury account. That moment signaled something real — but it took seven more years to get customers holding $400M in their accounts. Trust compounds slowly and is almost impossible to manufacture quickly. It’s also, eventually, one of the most durable moats in financial services. The product is the interface. The trust is the product. 4. AI made the incumbent problem ten times worse If legacy banks couldn’t keep up with Mercury’s pace over the last decade, they have no chance now. The window for meaningful product decisions has shrunk from years to months. Launching an MCP integration, shipping an AI-native feature, rebuilding a workflow around an agent — these are things Mercury can do in weeks. A bank operating on a core banking vendor’s release cycle cannot. The faster the world moves, the more permanently the gap widens. 5. The paradigm shifts every six months — that’s the feature, not the bug A year ago, nobody was seriously talking about agents living on your machine and connecting to every service you use. Now it’s Mercury’s central product thesis. Immad isn’t trying to predict which paradigm comes next — he’s building an organisation that can absorb the shift when it arrives. Curiosity and optimism aren’t soft skills. They’re survival mechanisms for operating in an environment where the rules rewrite themselves annually. Links Subscribe to NEW ECONOMIES on YouTube. Follow Ollie on X (https://x.com/ollieforsyth) Follow Immad on X (https://x.com/immad) Join Mercury (https://mercury.com) Try Mercury Insights (https://mercury.com/insights) Our NEW MEDIA Community (new-media.co) Related previous episodes If you enjoyed this episode, help sustain our work by clicking ❤️ and 🔄 at the top of this post. Get full access to NEW ECONOMIES at www.neweconomies.co/subscribe

  • June 6 · 54 min

    Inside Gusto's Founding Story | Co-Founder & CTO Eddie Kim

    Subscribe to stay ahead of technology trends. Never miss future editions. Why I built America's most-loved payroll company then reinvented it with AI Eddie Kim, Co-Founder and CTO at Gusto, joins NEW ECONOMIES on cracking the small business market, keeping all three co-founders for 15 years, and why he just built the most important product of his career in eight weeks. Watch or listen now on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify Download the full transcript: Eddie Kim is the co-founder at Gusto, the small business platform that just crossed a billion dollars in annual revenue serving over 500,000 companies across payroll, benefits, HR, and compliance. A two-time YC founder who met his co-founders at Stanford and at a half marathon starting line, Eddie has spent 15 years proving that the most unglamorous problems in business are often the most valuable ones to solve. In this episode, we explore what it actually takes to build a category-defining company in a space nobody wanted to touch — and why Eddie believes he just built the most important product of his career — Gusto Cofounder: The AI Teammate Built for Small Business. We also explore the blank canvas problem holding AI back from mainstream adoption, why the distinction between engineer and designer is disappearing, and how a team of five people went from zero code to full launch in eight weeks. Timestamps (0:00) Eddie Kim, Co-Founder at Gusto (5:40) Lessons from Y Combinator (9:30) 15+ years on co-founder relationships (15:00) How to give feedback to your co-founders (17:45) The early days at Gusto(21:10) Gusto’s new product: Gusto Cofounder (33:05) How to launch new features (38:15) The rise of solo entrepreneurs (41:25) How to avoid distractions (45:20) How Gusto would launch today from scratch(47:00) Lightning fire round Our notes from this conversation 1. Boring problems are the best problems — if you can stomach the grind In 2011, the hottest companies were chasing eyeballs. Mobile, social, local. Nobody wanted to work on payroll. Hiring was nearly impossible, and one of the category’s own pioneers told the Gusto founders to their faces: don’t do it. That discouragement was actually the signal. The problems everyone avoids are exactly the ones worth solving — because if you can crack them, the competitive field is almost empty. 2. The co-founder relationship is built over years, not conversations All three Gusto co-founders are still at the company 15 years later — a genuinely rare thing. What makes it work isn’t a communication framework or a weekly check-in cadence. It’s shared values, accumulated trust, and the quiet confidence that comes from having survived a hundred disagreements and come out the other side. Real directness — saying what you actually think — only becomes possible once you’ve built that foundation. You can’t shortcut it. 3. The blank canvas problem is AI’s biggest obstacle The reason most small business owners can’t harness AI isn’t capability — it’s context. Install Claude Code or open a frontier model and you’re staring at infinite possibility with no clear starting point. That’s paralyzing. The insight behind Gusto Co-Founder is that AI becomes transformative the moment it’s anchored to a specific domain, with real data and real problems already loaded in. Generic intelligence is a tool. Contextual intelligence is a co-founder. 4. Trust is infrastructure — and it takes 15 years to build Gusto couldn’t have launched its AI co-founder product on day one. The depth in payroll, benefits, compliance, and tax took over a decade to accumulate. That history — 500,000+ customers, millions of data points on what makes small businesses succeed or fail — is what makes the product genuinely useful rather than just technically impressive. The lesson: trust and data are compounding assets. The longer you stay focused on one problem, the harder your moat becomes to replicate. 5. The future of building is builders — not roles The team that built Gusto Co-Founder was five people: four engineers and a designer. No roadmaps, no sprint planning, no documentation. The designer wrote code. The engineers made design decisions. They ran a permanent Zoom call instead of meetings. In eight weeks, they went from zero to launch. That’s not a fluke — it’s a preview. AI is erasing the gaps between specialties. The builder mindset is the only identity that matters now. Links Subscribe to NEW ECONOMIES (‪‪@NEWECONOMIESPOD‬)Discover Gusto CoFounder (https://gusto.com/company-news/cofounder)Follow Ollie on X (https://x.com/ollieforsyth) Follow Eddie on X (https://x.com/edawerd) Our NEW MEDIA Community (new-media.co) Related previous episodes If you enjoyed this episode, help sustain our work by clicking ❤️ and 🔄 at the top of this post. Get full access to NEW ECONOMIES at www.neweconomies.co/subscribe

  • June 3 · 57 min

    We Had to Reimagine Nextdoor | CEO & Co-Founder Nirav Tolia

    Subscribe to stay ahead of technology trends. Never miss future editions. Why I Returned As CEO After 5 Years Away Nirav Tolia, Co-Founder & CEO at Nextdoor, joins NEW ECONOMIES on the company's founding story, why Nirav came back as CEO and the impact of community in the midst of AI. Watch or listen now on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify Download the full transcript: Nirav Tolia is the co-founder and CEO at Nextdoor, the neighborhood network connecting over 110 million people across communities worldwide. Having built and sold Shopping.com to eBay, returned to lead Nextdoor through a major transformation, and served as a guest shark on Shark Tank, Nirav is one of Silicon Valley’s most seasoned operators. In this episode, we explore what it takes to rebuild a company from the inside — and why the hardest thing in tech isn’t starting, it’s coming back. We discuss Nextdoor’s origin story, born from the ashes of a failed startup called Fanbase, and the crucible moment that gave Nirav the courage to keep going. We dig into what it really feels like to return as founder-CEO after five and a half years away, why incumbency is often the straightest path to irrelevance, and how Nextdoor is repositioning itself for what Nirav calls the age of human connection — where AI reduces friction but real neighbors remain irreplaceable. We also explore the future of local community, the untapped potential of 110 million sign-ups, and the lessons Nirav has taken from working alongside legendary investor and mentor Bill Gurley for over two decades. Timestamps (0:00) Nirav Tolia, Co-Founder & CEO at Nextdoor(2:05) A Multi-year Turnaround (4:20) Crucible Moments That Led to 20+ Million Weekly Active Users (9:25) How to Fight Through Difficult Days (13:20) A Blossoming Co-founding Relationship (17:37) Stepping Away, Then Coming Back as CEO (24:40) The Third Act: An AI-Enabled Version (29:50) The Age of Human Connection (36:30) Building to Stay Relevant (44:30) Will Nextdoor Win In This Market? (52:15) Rapid Fire Round Our notes from this conversation 1. The Crucible Moment Is About Daily Survival, Not Long-Term Vision The romanticized version of founding a company — the carefully considered spreadsheet, the bold strategic plan — is a myth constructed in retrospect. In the moment, it’s pure survival. Nextdoor was born from the ashes of a failed company called Fanbase, with co-founders who gave themselves one last summer to find something that worked. Having the courage to keep going when things are at their darkest is what separates founders who break through from those who don’t. 2. The Only Tolerable Way Through the Entrepreneurial Journey Is With Other People Nirav credits community — specifically his co-founder Sarah Leary, who he’s worked alongside for 27 years — as the through line of everything. Great co-founders aren’t just talented; they’re people you like, respect, and trust in equal measure. You need someone who can crack a joke at the right moment, solve an impossible problem the next, and stay when everyone else heads for the exits. That combination is extraordinarily rare, and when you find it, you don’t let go. 3. Coming Back as CEO Is Harder Than Starting From Scratch Returning founders face a unique psychological challenge: the temptation to restore what once was. Nirav was clear from day one that the answer was never to go back. The company he left in 2018 was different from the one he rejoined in 2023, and the company that needs to be built now is different again. The only useful frame when returning is phase three — learning from both prior chapters, but building something genuinely new. 4. Incumbency Is the Straightest Path to Irrelevance The story of the tech industry is one company eating another in a cycle of creative destruction. Standing still is effectively moving backwards. Nextdoor’s next phase required asking honestly: what still matters to people today, and what doesn’t? The shift from “what happened last weekend in my neighborhood” to “what’s happening this weekend” is deceptively simple but fundamentally changes the product — moving from objective information to subjective, human recommendation, which is something an LLM will never do as well as a neighbor. 5. The Age of Human Connection Is Not in Competition With AI — It Requires It The false choice between AI efficiency and human authenticity is one of the most important things Nirav pushes back on. The birth of the internet was the age of information. The emergence of AI is the age of intelligence. What comes next is the age of human connection — and AI’s role is to reduce the friction that stops people from finding each other, not to replace the connection itself. Nextdoor’s early decision to require real names and verified addresses, made long before AI was a concern, turns out to be one of its most valuable assets in a world where trust and identity are everything. 6. Bill Gurley’s Lesson: Whatever You’ve Achieved, 10x It No matter where Nextdoor reached, Bill Gurley’s consistent challenge was to multiply it. Not iterate — multiply by 10x. That relentless expansion of what’s possible, held by someone who simultaneously believes you’re capable of it, is the rarest and most valuable thing an investor can offer a founder. It’s not just high expectations. It’s high expectations paired with genuine faith. Related previous episodes If you enjoyed this episode, help sustain our work by clicking ❤️ and 🔄 at the top of this post. Get full access to NEW ECONOMIES at www.neweconomies.co/subscribe

  • May 20 · 52 min

    Maria Sharapova - Tennis Icon | Entrepreneur | Investor | New Media Creator

    Subscribe to stay ahead of technology trends. Never miss future editions. Watch or listen now on… YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify Maria Sharapova is one of the greatest sporting icons of our time, having played over 800 matches, won 36 singles titles, and claimed 5 Grand Slams. Since retiring from the sport, she has become an entrepreneur, investor, and more recently, the host of her podcast Pretty Tough.In this episode, we explore what it takes to reach the top of your game in sport and why athletes should always be planning for their second act after retirement. We discuss some of Maria’s most iconic championship moments and which fellow tennis icon she has the most respect for.We also explore NEW MEDIA — the latest buzzy tech trend changing how we consume news and information, and who we get it from. Reflecting on our thoughts about the new media landscape, we discuss the impact of AI, how to become a great storyteller, and why creators could become the next generation of reporters at sporting press conferences. This was a very special episode, enjoy! Timestamps (0:00) Intro(3:19) Maria's Proudest Moment(4:45) Preparing for a Match(10:34) How to Find Balance(12:18) The Business of Sport(14:16) Having Dad as a Coach(17:32) Preparing for Retirement(20:40) How to Reinvent Yourself(25:40) New Media: Maria's New Podcast(35:30) Maria's Take on AI(39:55) Is Legacy Media Fading?(44:15) Reflecting on Maria's Career(48:15) Our Pretty Tough Questions Links Subscribe to Pretty Tough (https://www.youtube.com/@mariasharapova)Subscribe to NEW ECONOMIES (https://www.youtube.com/@NEWECONOMIESPOD)Follow Maria on Instagram (https://www.instagram.com/mariasharapova/) Follow Maria on X (https://x.com/MariaSharapova)Follow Ollie on X (https://x.com/ollieforsyth) Recently published editions relevant to new media If you enjoyed this episode, help sustain our work by clicking ❤️ and 🔄 at the top of this post. Get full access to NEW ECONOMIES at www.neweconomies.co/subscribe

  • May 13 · 57 min

    Why Startup Valuations No Longer Make Sense | Eric Hippeau

    Learn from the greatest technology leaders every week on the NEW ECONOMIES podcast. Subscribe to never miss a future episode. Hey listeners, If you work in tech, you’ve probably heard of Eric Hippeau, co-founder of Lerer Hippeau Ventures, one of the most prominent venture firms focused on the NYC startup ecosystem. With decades of experience in venture capital, Eric joins us to help unpack where we are in the new AI era, and where things may be headed next. Throughout this episode, we discuss what the current state of AI means for startup valuations, how many $10B+ companies this wave could create, what it really means to take a company public and whether it’s still the right path for founders, and how venture firms can continue to stay relevant in a rapidly changing landscape. Finally, as the former CEO of The Huffington Post - one of the most influential digital media publications of its time - Eric shares his words of wisdom on the future of news, creators, and how we consume information online. In this episode, we cover: How Eric thinks about physical AI: Why the best startups won’t just be thin wrappers around existing models. Why today’s startup market feels disconnected: With mega-funds, inflated seed rounds, and fewer realistic paths to liquidity. What happened to journalism online: From building The Huffington Post to navigating today’s fragmented media environment. How is the new media landscape being shaped? Venture capital is changing: Why solo GPs may struggle to compete against larger firms over the next decade. Could AI reshape healthcare: Especially across diagnostics, primary care, and lowering the cost of basic medical services. Anthropic tools like Claude are changing internal workflows: Why some firms are rebuilding around AI from the ground up. AR glasses may deserve another look: Why lightweight wearables could succeed where bulky headsets failed. The best founders treat startups like a marathon: How long-term thinking helps companies survive difficult markets and failed bets. Watch or listen now on… YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify Chapters in this episode: (0:00) Why the Tech Market Feels Broken Right Now(4:45) The Biggest Tech Trends Everyone’s Watching(10:30) The New North Star for Startups(14:20) The Hidden Cost of Overvalued Startups(21:00) Why Companies Still Go Public(24:00) Why AI Could Create Massive New Wealth(26:40) How VCs Are Fighting to Stay Relevant(32:20) The Biggest Mistakes Solo GPs Make(33:56) How New Media Changed Everything(43:30) Building The Huffington Post(49:10) Can Creators Build Billion-Dollar Companies?(53:00) Rapid Fire Questions Stay in touch Follow Eric on X (https://x.com/erichippeau) Visit Lerer Hippeau (https://lererhippeau.com) Follow Ollie on X (https://x.com/ollieforsyth) If you enjoyed this episode, help sustain our work by clicking ❤️ and 🔄 at the top of this post. Get full access to NEW ECONOMIES at www.neweconomies.co/subscribe

  • May 6 · 53 min

    Will AI Models Ever Compensate Creators?

    Learn from the greatest technology leaders every week on the NEW ECONOMIES podcast. Subscribe to never miss a future episode. Hey ReadersIf you work in tech, you’ve probably heard the term “new media” — a new wave of the creator economy where creators are becoming the preferred distribution channels for brands and businesses.To better understand new media, the creator economy, and what the future of writing actually looks like, I spoke with Tony Stubblebine, CEO of Medium, to unpack what’s really happening.We also talked about Medium’s own journey. As many of you know, the company has faced its share of challenges: losing $2.5M a month at its peak, paying back $37M in overdue loans, making painful layoffs during COVID, and facing the enormous task of turning the business around. In this episode, we explore * The $2.5M Monthly Leak: How Tony restructured a “toxic” financial situation and turned a struggling unicorn profitable in under two years. * The Death of Free Traffic: Why the era of “free customers” from Google is ending and how to pivot your business model before it’s too late. * The “Barbell Effect” in Content: Why the middle class of creators is disappearing while AI slop and high-end human expertise move to opposite ends of the spectrum. * The Rise of Private Walled Gardens: Why the best writers are moving their content into private groups to protect their IP from AI scrapers. * AI as a Productivity “Power-Up”: Why writing is currently one year behind programming in the AI-adoption curve - and how to use it to 10x your output without losing your soul. * The Expert Economy vs. The Creator Economy: Why “living a life” is the only defensible moat left in a world of instant AI generation. * The New Rules of Distribution: How to build a “timeless” media brand that survives AI summaries and thrives in a world of subscription fatigue. Watch or listen now on… YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify In this episode, we unpack: (0:00) Intro (2:10) What is New Media?(5:20) What is good content today? (8:37) How did we end up here as creators?(12:25) Medium’s founding story (19:25) Medium’s lowest era(27:40) Tony’ toughest moments as CEO(31:25) Should creators be concerned about AI? (41:00) Will LLMs compensate creators? (46:12) Is The Creator Economy dead?(51:50) Medium’s next 12 months Links mentioned in this episode:NEW MEDIA (www.new-media.co)Medium (www.medium.com)Books: 1. How to win friends and influence people 2. The First 90 days Content pieces: 1. Want to Raise Venture Capital More Easily? Clean Up Your Own Shite First 2. Fell in a hole, got out TK App (https://medium.com/tk)Follow Ollie on X (https://x.com/ollieforsyth)Follow Tony on X (https://x.com/tonystubblebine) If you enjoyed this edition, help sustain our work by clicking ❤️ and 🔄 at the top of this post. Get full access to NEW ECONOMIES at www.neweconomies.co/subscribe

  • April 30 · 57 min

    Why Attio Stayed in Stealth for 1,000 Days

    Learn from the greatest technology leaders every week on the NEW ECONOMIES podcast. Subscribe to never miss a future episode. As we know, the CRM landscape is undergoing a huge transformation — with incumbents such as Salesforce being slow to move and innovate, newer players are entering the arena, moving faster with better innovation. To help us understand how legacy software is being forced to evolve, Nicolas Sharp, founder of Attio joins us on the podcast and shares his perspective on what it actually takes to build an “AI-native” business in a market dominated by slow-moving incumbents. In this episode, we explore * Why Attio spent 1,000 days in the lab perfecting its architecture while the rest of the world chased “ship-fast” agility. * Why Attio embedded AI across its products to stay ahead of the curve. * The playbook for deploying agents and AI features at scale when you serve thousands of customers. * Attio raised $52M last year — Nick explains how fundraising has evolved in the post-AI era. * The shrinking “half-life” of product-market fit in a world of rapid model iteration. * How to build a world-class team with high ambition while giving people the autonomy to thrive. * Why Europe is having a breakout moment — producing more unicorns and emerging as a global AI hub. Watch or listen now on… YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify Chapters in this episode (0:00) Building in stealth for 1,000 days (10:10) Attio was built to be AI-native before it was the default(15:40) How does distribution effectively work when deploying AI agents?(22:40) What is product market fit today? (25:18) How to stay relevant (30:35) The biggest change when fundraising today (32:40) How to stay up to date with AI trends (35:20) How teams operate today looks very different vs before (38:20) Attio's culture (41:50) Why Europe is having its moment (45:40) Attio's ambitious 12 month plan (48:25) Who will build the next Slack? (49:00) Quick fire questions Discover previous episodes and stay ahead of the latest trends Explore all past episodes on your favorite podcast apps, including: * Yahoo CEO Jim Lanzone on the company’s turnaround story. * Dan Shipper on why traditional coding workflows are breaking. * Colin Angle on the $1.7B founder failure story. * David Haber (a16z) on the future of venture capital. * Emad Mostaque on AI systems replacing personal productivity. * Anatoly Yakovenko on how Solana survived early collapse. * Anish Acharya on the realities of building in the AI era. and more… Watch and subscribe now! Thanks for listening, see you in the next episode 👋 P.S. When you become an annual paid subscriber, you automatically access these best-in-class AI tools for free - for 12 months. Save thousands of dollars now! Get full access to NEW ECONOMIES at www.neweconomies.co/subscribe

  • April 22 · 50 min

    Why A16Z Is Still Betting Big On Crypto

    AI and crypto are merging faster than anyone predicted. We asked the investor with a front-row seat to explain exactly where it’s going. Subscribe to never miss a future episode. As we know, crypto is evolving daily - right alongside AI. We wanted to get to the bottom of where these two fast-moving sectors are truly intersecting, so we sat down with Ali Yahya, General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz (a16z). With a background as an engineer at Google Brain before his move into venture capital, Ali has a front-row seat to this ‘relentless exponential’ growth and a unique perspective on how these two worlds are merging. In this episode, we explore: Why the definition of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) has shifted from a sci-fi benchmark to a tangible economic goal; how a16z’s massive “platform” team of experts is rewriting the rules of venture capital; and why privacy is becoming the ultimate defensive “moat” for the next generation of crypto startups. We also dive into the ‘agentic economy’ - a future where your AI agent evolves from a simple assistant into a sophisticated tool that can automate workflows and interact with the digital world. We challenge the popular narrative around agents holding their own crypto wallets and discuss why the reality of agentic commerce will likely look quite different. Plus, Ali shares why, if he were starting his career today, he would bet everything on the next great frontier: ‘physical intelligence’ in robotics. Watch or listen now on… YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify Chapters in this episode (0:00) How far we have come (4:10) What does AGI actually mean? (5:30) Inside Andreessen’s crypto fund (9:00) The impact of platform teams inside venture firms (12:00) Should we still be excited about crypto? (14:30) Why did NFTs not work? (19:00) Is privacy the new moat?(23:45) Where do startups go wrong within privacy?(26:30) Will AI agents ever transact on our behalf? (31:35) How long until AGI is fully adopted? (34:00) Is moving too quickly a distraction? (35:00) How has fundraising changed for founders? (37:20) The types of roles that are changing (41:25) Prediction markets(44:45) Startup ideas! Stay ahead of the latest trends: Watch all previous episodes Watch all previous episodes now on your favorite podcast apps. Episodes include: * Yahoo CEO Jim Lanzone on the company’s turnaround story. * Dan Shipper on why traditional coding workflows are breaking. * Colin Angle on the $1.7B founder failure story. * David Haber (a16z) on the future of venture capital. * Emad Mostaque on AI systems replacing personal productivity. * Anatoly Yakovenko on how Solana survived early collapse. * Anish Acharya on the realities of building in the AI era. and more… Watch and subscribe now! Thanks for listening, see you in the next episode 👋 P.S. When you become an annual paid subscriber, you automatically access these best-in-class AI tools for free - for 12 months. Save thousands of dollars now! Get full access to NEW ECONOMIES at www.neweconomies.co/subscribe

  • April 15 · 46 min

    AI Is Replacing School Teachers

    Subscribe to NEW ECONOMIES to avoid missing future episodes. Hey listeners, Imagine walking into a classroom where there are no traditional teachers - just tablets, robots, and human instructors guiding every lesson. That future isn’t hypothetical. It’s already here. Today’s guest on the podcast is Joleen Liang, co-founder of Squirrel AI, an education startup from China that’s already teaching thousands of students without any form of traditional teachers present. With over 20 billion data points informing its system, the company is pushing the boundaries of personalized learning. They’re building toward a future with teacher robots, preparing for a public listing, and already generating hundreds of millions in revenue. Watch or listen now on… YouTube, Apple Podcasts, and Spotify Takeaways from this episode * The Autonomous Engine: Joleen explains why Squirrel AI isn’t just a chatbot, but a “virtual super-teacher” capable of handling 100% of knowledge transfer, moving toward a future of fully self-directed, teacher-less instruction. * The “LAM vs. LLM” Edge: Why generic AI models are insufficient for education; Joleen breaks down their proprietary Learning Analysis Model (LAM) that analyzes 20 billion data points to diagnose why a student is stuck rather than just giving them the answer. * The “Double Reduction” Resurrection: A raw look at the 2021 Chinese regulatory shift that sent revenue to zero overnight from hundreds of millions of dollars, and how Squirrel AI pivoted from software-only to a hardware-integrated “Smart Tablet” powerhouse to survive. * The “Data Analyst” Instructor: How the role of the teacher is being permanently re-coded - shifting from a lecturer to a “psychologist and data scientist” who only intervenes when the AI triggers an alarm on a student’s frustration levels. * The “Equity for Debt” Gambit: The incredible story of how 80% of their franchisees, facing a total market collapse, chose to convert their debt into company stock because they believed in the AI’s results more than the immediate cash. * The “Multimodal” Mirror: A deep dive into the use of eye-gazing, facial expression tracking, and “mistake reasoning” to create a learning profile so specific it can predict a student’s mastery better than a human tutor ever could. * The “Modern Discipline” Divide: Joleen discusses the cultural friction of expanding into the US, comparing the disciplined learning habits of Asian markets with the need for high-engagement, hyper-interesting content to keep Western students focused. In this episode, we cover: (0:00) AI is replacing school teachers(1:45) Why is edTech having its moment?(4:20) What do parents actually think about AI?(7:00) Do we REALLY need to spend 20+ years in school today?(9:50) How do students actually use AI inside the classroom?(12:45) Can Squirrel be globally adopted outside of China?(20:00) How China tracked students’ performance(25:45) The terrifying moment in 2021(35:30) How to disagree with your team(39:50) Why IPO vs. private?(41:20) Where to expand next?(42:15) Our next five years(45:00) One lesson you teach other founders Thanks for listening, see you in the next episode 👋 P.S. When you become an annual paid subscriber, you automatically access these best-in-class AI tools for free - for 12 months. Save thousands of dollars now! Get full access to NEW ECONOMIES at www.neweconomies.co/subscribe