Happy Tuesday!

We’re live on X and YouTube — let’s ride!

David Protein Ice Cream - David Protein Ice Cream has finally landed. The macros are the headline: a full pint packs 30g of complete protein from whey and milk isolate while keeping the whole pack to just 210–260 calories with 2g of sugar or less. And they sold out in less than 30 minutes at $15 per pint! The K-shaped economy continues to play out in the CPG world. A David Protein IRL Scoop Shop to open in NYC soon.

Meta AI Exposed to Hijack IG Accounts - A wave of Instagram hijackings hit hundreds of verified, locked-down accounts — even an Obama-era White House handle — using a shockingly simple trick: attackers spoofed the target's location, then fooled Meta's AI support flow by uploading an AI-generated video of the person's face to pass the selfie verification. It's a stark warning about automating account security with no human in the loop — one AI tricking another while victims got stuck with a useless chatbot, and though Meta has patched it, this likely won't be the last time.

Dad Gang Teams up With Shopify - Dad Gang has crossed $35 million in sales and 250,000-plus hats in just two years, and it's marking the milestone with a limited-edition hat drop in partnership with Shopify. The brand grew out of three new-dad friends' frustration that fatherhood marketing was all cheesy jokes and stereotypes — so they built a simple, high-quality product dads could wear with pride.

19-Year-Old Founder’s Secret to Raising +$500k from CPG Royalty

Aditya Banerjee is 19. He started a protein bar brand, Posana, out of his Berkeley dorm. When I heard that, I assumed it was the Cal network — warm intros, rich roommates, the usual. It wasn't. Almost all of it was cold. And the way he closed those people is the part every founder needs to hear.

He didn't cold-email his way in. He tried — they don't respond half the time. Celebrities and exited founders are too hard to reach through an inbox. So he stopped relying on the inbox entirely.

Instead, he showed up. Conference after conference, expo after expo, party after party. He met Ben Van Leeuwen on the street. He kept appearing in the same rooms with a Posana bar in his hand, handing it over, saying: here's what happened this month, here's what we're building, here's why I want you in.

He called it being "annoying" on purpose.

The bar does the talking. You can dodge an email but it's a lot harder to dodge a real person standing in front of you who made something and wants your honest take on it.

And the in-person relationship compounds in a way a DM never will. When you meet someone at an event, the trust you build is on a completely different level. That's how a teenager ended up with CPG royalty writing checks — not because he found the perfect email template, but because he refused to stay behind a screen.

He treats conferences like the networking Olympics.

Where the World Cup goes, he goes. Most operators in our space write expos off as a waste of time. He sees them as the highest-leverage room in the building.

Your competitors are all fighting over the same cold inbox, getting ignored at the same rate. The edge isn't a better subject line. It's being willing to physically show up, again and again, with something real in your hand. Aditya is 19 and already gets this. The question is why so many founders twice his age still don't.

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See you live,
Ecomm Cowboy Team