Happy Wednesday!
Today’s Squad
Leandro Cabrini (Founder & CEO, Proppel) → 12:40PM CT
Will Nitze (Founder & CEO, IQBAR)→ 1:10PM CT
Tal Bar-Or (Founder & CEO, Altina) → 1:45PM CT
Top Stories
FIGURE joins Catalyst Brands to Deploy Humanoid Robots - Catalyst Brands (the holdco behind JCPenney, Aéropostale, and Brooks Brothers) just signed Figure to deploy humanoid robots into its Reno distribution center, with plans to scale across the portfolio. The deal targets the physical, hard-to-staff work in the supply chain.
Eli Lilly rewrites pharma roadmap? - A one-dose gene therapy for LDL cholesterol that could prevent most heart disease with a single infusion, plus vaccines for chlamydia, gonorrhea, and Epstein-Barr in the chamber. 5.4M views in a day tells you the market is paying attention, and "a golden age of pharma" doesn't feel like hyperbole when one company is lining up shots on this many generational diseases at once.
Everlane Founder Starting Over - Everlane founder Michael Preysman is starting over. After the current management team sold Everlane to Shein last week, Preysman launched "Still Radical" — same principles, no venture capital, no private equity, and 40K+ signups already on the landing page.
Your next great hire is 19 and Claudemaxxing.
By Colin Dougherty // 1 min. read
Your next great hire is 19, still in college, and outshipping your senior creative director.
Jamey Gannon's younger sister Riley Jean Gannon needed money and tried UGC at $10 a video. A few weeks later she was running a 20-creator program end-to-end for a calorie tracking app. Broke college kid to in-demand operator in about three months.
Riley's whole training was a 2-hour Friday night Notion walkthrough with Jamey's boyfriend Justin, and a Claude Max subscription. No bootcamp. No agency apprenticeship. Just start talking with Claude and figure it out.
What she shipped without being asked?
A live hook generator creators plug into for niche-specific openers. A compliance checker that reworks scripts before TikTok shadowbans them. A viral creator playbook covering 60+ niches with scripts and hooks — all in HTML, and all this from her dorm room.
Cosmos reached out. Julia Pinter (the UGC queen) took her call. Jamey says Riley speedran five years of her own career in three months.
Most people are about to spend $150k plus benefits on a senior creative director who needs three months to ramp and a team of four to ship.
Your next great hire may be finishing her finals.
Highlight Reel: Yes, Phillip Morris Accidentally Created “Healthier-Alternative” Pouches.
Timeline: Town Square
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Made Possible By:
Axon by AppLovin - Reach 1B+ new customers; advertise on mobile games.
Seguno - the Shopify-native marketing suite for brands that run it themselves.
Insense - The all-in-one UGC and influencer marketing platform.
Postscript - Make more money from every SMS message.
Proxima - Use real conversion data to power your creative briefs.
Northbeam - Measure the “unmeasurable,” make your marketing profitable.
Rokt Aftersell - More profit from the orders you’re already getting.
Universal Ads - TV ads that deliver for performance marketers.
See you live,
Ecomm Cowboy Team