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Good morning 👋 This week’s stories cover the highs and lows of building: from billion-dollar bets to scrappy persistence. Whether you’re chasing scale, resilience, or leverage, you’ll find it here.
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In this issue:
Altman takes on Neuralink with his own brain-implant play 🧠
How $70M founders blew their community’s trust overnight 🤦♀️
The book launch that pulled in $105M in a single day 📖
One maker’s 30 failed projects before hitting $10K MRR 😜
The AI tool that automates newsletters end-to-end 💌
Learn from this investor’s $100m mistake
In 2010, a Grammy-winning artist passed on investing $200K in an emerging real estate disruptor. That stake could be worth $100+ million today.
One year later, another real estate disruptor, Zillow, went public. This time, everyday investors had regrets, missing pre-IPO gains.
Now, a new real estate innovator, Pacaso – founded by a former Zillow exec – is disrupting a $1.3T market. And unlike the others, you can invest in Pacaso as a private company.
Pacaso’s co-ownership model has generated $1B+ in luxury home sales and service fees, earned $110M+ in gross profits to date, and received backing from the same VCs behind Uber, Venmo, and eBay. They even reserved the Nasdaq ticker PCSO.
Paid advertisement for Pacaso’s Regulation A offering. Read the offering circular at invest.pacaso.com. Reserving a ticker symbol is not a guarantee that the company will go public. Listing on the NASDAQ is subject to approvals.
News
Altman wants a Neuralink of his own
TL;DR: Sam Altman is reportedly raising funds for Merge Labs, a brain-computer interface startup positioned as OpenAI’s entry into hardware implants. The move pits him directly against Elon Musk’s Neuralink and Synchron, but OpenAI has zero medical hardware experience—making acquisition the fastest path forward.
Merge Labs is targeting an $850M valuation out of the gate, with OpenAI Ventures footing much of the bill.
The name comes from Altman’s long-standing idea of “the merge”—humans blending with machines to keep up with accelerating AI.
OpenAI’s recent flat reception to GPT-5 likely accelerates the push into new frontiers beyond just scaling models.
Altman is partnering with Alex Blania (Tools for Humanity, Worldcoin), signaling this could be another high-risk, global moonshot.
When AI progress stalls, the next frontier isn’t more tokens—it’s tighter integration with human inputs. This is less about selling implants tomorrow and more about planting a flag in the “post-smartphone” future.
WTF
The App Mafia dudes torched their own community
TL;DR: A group of wildly successful app founders—$70M revenue, 300M downloads—launched App Mafia, a secretive campaign that tricked hundreds of respected builders into promoting what turned out to be a $997 course. The backlash was immediate: accusations of a rugpull, trust destroyed, and an entire community left feeling used.
The setup was marketing psychology at its sharpest: exclusivity, mystery, and social proof. Invites said only “You’ve been selected,” creators proudly displayed badges, and hype snowballed.
The reveal (a pricey course) sparked outrage. The very builders who had amplified the hype weren’t partners, just unpaid promoters.
The big question: why sell a course if you’ve already made $70M? The answer: diversification. But the execution felt scammy, not strategic.
Core mistakes: flexing lifestyle instead of offering value, zero upfront transparency, and no free content to build trust.
Attention is leverage. App Mafia had it in spades, and squandered it. With that audience, they could’ve built an accelerator, a SaaS suite, a $100M brand. Instead, they traded credibility for quick cash. For founders, the lesson is simple: how you monetize is just as important as what you monetize. Trust is the most fragile currency in the builder economy.
Productivity
The $105M book launch that beat everyone but Harry Potter
TL;DR: Alex Hormozi’s latest book release generated $105 million in 24 hours, setting the world record for nonfiction book sales in a single day. The launch was powered by paid ads, affiliate leverage, and marathon livestreams—all designed to turn a book drop into a cultural event.
Hormozi invested $4M+ in paid ads, creating massive top-of-funnel reach.
He built a large affiliate network that multiplied his distribution far beyond his own platform.
Days-long livestreams generated urgency, community, and social proof.
The launch wasn’t just sales—it was a trust-building spectacle that reinforced his brand.
Even in the most “niche” category (internet business books), distribution can turn content into a mass-market moment. Founders should think of launches not as announcements, but as orchestrated events.
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Founder Story
From 30 failures to $10K MRR
TL;DR: Thomas launched over 30 projects that went nowhere before Unid reached $10K/month. His abandoned GitHub repos are proof: failure isn’t a detour, it’s the main road to success.
Each failed project gave him a new skill—tech, design, distribution, or resilience.
Most founders quit after 1–2 misses; Thomas treated failure as iteration.
By sheer volume, he increased his odds of eventually hitting product-market fit.
The takeaway: compounding attempts matters as much as compounding revenue.
Founders romanticize the “big idea.” In reality, success usually comes from surviving long enough to stumble into the right timing, product, and audience.
Tutorial/Framework
Automating newsletters end-to-end
TL;DR: Vengage’s AI generator can spin up an entire newsletter from a single prompt—including copy, layout, visuals, and structure…dramatically cutting creation time.
The demo showed Apple’s July achievements newsletter built in minutes.
Logos, section headers, leadership notes, and visuals were automatically included.
Formats can be exported as PDF, HTML, PNG, or shared directly via email/links.
The tool reduces a multi-hour workflow to a few guided edits.
For small teams, this means reclaiming hours every month. For large orgs, it means consistent communication without scaling headcount.
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