Building in public & scaling in secret

Welcome or welcome back to the MakerThrive newsletter 👋 This week is all about distribution games—who controls the interface, who earns the attention, and who gets locked out. From Musk suing Apple, to Claude navigating browser risks, to founders monetizing niche products with precision, these stories show how leverage is shifting fast—and what it takes to stay in control.

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TL;DR: Elon Musk’s xAI just sued Apple and OpenAI, claiming they’ve colluded to block competition in AI by giving ChatGPT preferred treatment on Apple devices, while allegedly suppressing rivals like Grok and the X platform. The lawsuit accuses them of running an “anticompetitive scheme” to dominate both the smartphone and AI chatbot markets.

This lawsuit isn’t just about sour grapes. If Musk can back up his claims, it could trigger regulatory scrutiny around Apple’s AI partnerships and App Store governance. For founders, it’s a big reminder: platform dependency cuts both ways. When distribution is controlled by a few tech giants, even deep pockets and strong tech might not be enough to win.

TL;DR: Anthropic just launched a research preview of “Claude for Chrome,” a browser-integrated AI agent that can click, type, and navigate the web on your behalf. It’s a major leap in usability, but also a magnet for prompt injection attacks. Anthropic’s pilot, limited to 1,000 Max users, is as much about red-teaming and real-world learning as it is about launching a new feature.

Browser-native agents are the endgame for useful AI, but they’re also uniquely vulnerable to invisible threats. Claude for Chrome is a proving ground, not just for product-market fit, but for trust. Everyone building a browser agent or workflow tool should be watching this closely. The way Anthropic handles safety, permissions, and red-teaming could define the playbook.

TL;DR: While most industries scramble to integrate AI, a few are thriving by going in the opposite direction—doubling down on physical presence, exclusivity, and distraction-free spaces. This podcast ep highlights four such models: high-end social clubs, co-working-community hybrids, pet-amenity real estate, and phone-free zones—all built around scarcity, lifestyle alignment, and human connection.

As digital overwhelm hits a breaking point, the edge is shifting toward businesses that can’t be automated. Think local, analog, human-centric, and hard to scale. For founders, that means new opportunity in old formats: community spaces, curated access, and products that sell presence over productivity.

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TL;DR: Frey Chu walks through how he added authentication, admin-approved claim requests, and a featured listing upsell to a directory app, all powered by Supabase and AI coding prompts. It’s a real-world look at iterative backend dev, database migrations, and UX polish to turn utility into monetization.

If you're building a SaaS or directory project, this is a clean model to copy: seed your data, let users claim listings, then monetize visibility. Frey shows how AI tools fit into the loop without replacing real developer decisions.

TL;DR: Hunter Dickinson scaled a payments platform from a basic Stripe wrapper to $800M+ in volume… all without traditional marketing. He used peer group infiltration, hyper-specific segmentation, and a playful, tech-augmented sales engine built on advice-seeking, not pitching.

Founders often chase growth through ads or brute-force cold email. Hunter shows another path: precision, personality, and tech leverage. His tactics scale because they don’t feel like scale, they feel personal. For early-stage SaaS teams: dominate a niche, automate the grunt work, and build real relationships with the people who move markets.

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