Podcasts about Billion

The FCC Proposes a Ban on Chinese Data Center Equipment, Apple Escalates Trade Secrets Lawsuit Against OpenAI, and Bending Spoons to Acquire Airtable for $1.285 Billion. MP3 Please SUBSCRIBE HERE for free or get DTNS shows ad-free. A special thanks to all our supporters–without you, none of this would be possible. If you enjoy whatContinue reading "Spotify Hits 300 Million Paid Subscriber Milestone – DTH"

Drake THREATENED By YG, Spider-Man: Brand New Day $1 Billion Box Office, AI Hit EXPOSED | Club Ambition Podcast Ep 253

Your morning briefing. All the news you need to start your day.On today's podcast:(1) HSBC announced a fresh stock buyback and raised its cost-cutting target as it reported second-quarter earnings that beat estimates despite China’s crackdown on cross-border wealth flows.(2) The Rhine River’s water levels dropped to the lowest in nearly 150 years as hot, dry weather grips Europe, threatening to disrupt a crucial route for transporting coal, fuel and industrial commodities across a large swath of the continent. (3) President Donald Trump said his latest offer of talks is a “last chance” for Iran after he called off what he said was a major attack on the Islamic Republic.(4) The Iran war's impact is unfolding across Asia and it's visible from space. Bloomberg Economics analysis of NASA satellite imagery found that nearly 60% of the land area in the region experienced abnormal declines in nighttime radiance since the conflict began.(5) The EU will try to restore unity today at a meeting of home affairs ministers, after Spain's migrant crisis exposed deep divisions within the bloc.(6) Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s call for the Federal Reserve to boost a facility that Japan can use to support its currency has put renewed attention on the ties between the two institutions, which typically operate at arm’s length.(7) Apple is yet again challenging the UK government in court over its attempts to access the encrypted data of customers, including iPhone users, according to two people familiar with the matter.Podcast Conversation: Americans Are Rethinking Their Love Affair With Plant MilksSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

From rebuilding after the REO era to leading 220 agents, George Laughton breaks down how he scaled a Phoenix-based team to $1B in annual volume. Learn the hiring frameworks, decision filters, and timing that turned opportunity into durable market share. In this episode: The reset: from REO team to George, his wife, one agent, and one assistant—then scaling to 220 agents $1B/year, 1,800–2,000 transactions, and gaining share despite a contracting market When to start a team—and when not to (operator vs. visionary vs. top producer) First hires, role clarity, and setting outcomes for 90 days/6 months/1 year Hiring to strategy vs. getting swept up by "magnetic" candidates Moving fast for undeniable talent and when opportunity forces scale (Zillow Offers) Internet lead gen at scale and training that unlocks agent capacity Footprint: five Phoenix offices, Tucson, small NV/Denver presence, Texas on deck; 98% of deals in AZ   Links & resources: George's Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/georgelaughton/ Zillow Premier Agent: https://www.zillow.com/premier-agent/ Realtor.com: https://www.realtor.com/ Ojo (OJO Home): https://ojo.com/ Follow Up Boss: https://www.followupboss.com/ Fireflies.ai: https://fireflies.ai/ HouseWhisper: https://www.housewhisper.ai/ The Infinite Game by Simon Sinek: https://simonsinek.com/books/the-infinite-game The 4 Disciplines of Execution: https://www.franklincovey.com/books/the-4-disciplines-of-execution/  

Interview with Andrew Dunbar, CISO at Shopify After 13 years at Shopify, Andrew has some valuable insights to share on application security. In this episode, we discuss how AI has changed application security processes where bug bounty now fits in a post-Mythos, post-AI harness world. Andrew's Resources: https://shopify.engineering/building-an-agentic-harness-that-outlasts-the-model Interview with Kern Smith Kern Smith, VP of Global Solutions at Zimperium, joins us to talk about the state of mobile security. This was a great conversation, talking about the history of mobile devices in the enterprise and how challenging securing mobile apps is in the age of vibe-coding. Segment Resources https://zimperium.com/resources/new-zimperium-research-reveals-that-ai-based-attacks-are-targeting-and-succeeding-on-mobile Global Mobile Threat Report 2026 Enterprise Security News Finally, in the enterprise security news, Pre-black hat funding goes nuts we have 4 new cybersecurity unicorns! Cyera acquires Oasis for one BILLION dollars Lots of new product announcements with hacker summer camp next week Hugging Face got hacked by a competitor's agent and are cool with it? Finding out that wiping a burner phone is illegal the week before DEF CON is not ideal Are open, local models the future of AI? AI isn't coming for your job lots of vendor reports bad cybersecurity takes are apparently mainstream memes now??? All that and more, on this episode of Enterprise Security Weekly. Visit https://www.securityweekly.com/esw for all the latest episodes! Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/esw-470

Interview with Andrew Dunbar, CISO at Shopify After 13 years at Shopify, Andrew has some valuable insights to share on application security. In this episode, we discuss how AI has changed application security processes where bug bounty now fits in a post-Mythos, post-AI harness world. Andrew's Resources: https://shopify.engineering/building-an-agentic-harness-that-outlasts-the-model Interview with Kern Smith Kern Smith, VP of Global Solutions at Zimperium, joins us to talk about the state of mobile security. This was a great conversation, talking about the history of mobile devices in the enterprise and how challenging securing mobile apps is in the age of vibe-coding. Segment Resources https://zimperium.com/resources/new-zimperium-research-reveals-that-ai-based-attacks-are-targeting-and-succeeding-on-mobile Global Mobile Threat Report 2026 Enterprise Security News Finally, in the enterprise security news, Pre-black hat funding goes nuts we have 4 new cybersecurity unicorns! Cyera acquires Oasis for one BILLION dollars Lots of new product announcements with hacker summer camp next week Hugging Face got hacked by a competitor's agent and are cool with it? Finding out that wiping a burner phone is illegal the week before DEF CON is not ideal Are open, local models the future of AI? AI isn't coming for your job lots of vendor reports bad cybersecurity takes are apparently mainstream memes now??? All that and more, on this episode of Enterprise Security Weekly. Show Notes: https://securityweekly.com/esw-470

Sens. John Cornyn, R-Texas, and Thom Tillis, R-N.C., said Monday they'll back Todd Blanche's confirmation as attorney general after he issued an order rescinding the Justice Department's controversial “anti-weaponization fund,” but critics fear the government could still revive the fund in the future. Read the full story on Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/alisondurkee/2026/08/03/todd-blanche-wins-key-confirmation-holdouts-but-questions-over-trumps-18-billion-fund-linger/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

NEWS: ERC to Meralco: Refund P9.51 billion to customers | August 3, 2026 Subscribe to The Manila Times Channel - https://tmt.ph/YTSubscribe Visit our website at https://www.manilatimes.net Follow us: Facebook - https://tmt.ph/facebook Instagram - https://tmt.ph/instagram Twitter - https://tmt.ph/twitter DailyMotion - https://tmt.ph/dailymotion Subscribe to our Digital Edition - https://tmt.ph/digital Check out our Podcasts: Spotify - https://tmt.ph/spotify Apple Podcasts - https://tmt.ph/applepodcasts Amazon Music - https://tmt.ph/amazonmusic Deezer: https://tmt.ph/deezer Stitcher: https://tmt.ph/stitcherTune In: https://tmt.ph/tunein#TheManilaTimes#KeepUpWithTheTimes Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We're breaking down the latest F1 news this week, including: - Toto Wolff vacationing with Max Verstappen, Kimi Antonelli, and NOT George Russell - What's Max's next move? - Aston Martin's improvement and their new ceiling - Why the battery graphic is gone - Latest valuation of F1 teams according to Flavio Briatore - Why F1 is like a Marvel movie - Will we be racing in the snow at Imola? - Why stewards think twice about penalizing Max - AND MORE! SUBSCRIBE TO OUR PATREON: patreon.com/trfpod PRE-ORDER OUR BOOK: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250397478/formula101/ GET OUR AMAZING MERCH: https://theredflagspod.com/collections/shop-all The Red Flags Podcast is part of Vox Media. CHAPTERS: 00:00 - INTRO 01:09 - TOTO & MAX ON VACAY 11:35 - GEORGE NEEDS MORE LOVE 17:49 - ASTON MARTIN'S COMEBACK 38:25 - DOES F1 CARE ABOUT ITS FANS? 51:46 - HOW MUCH IS AN F1 TEAM WORTH? 01:01:17 - RACE SCHEDULE UPDATE Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

How can billions of video game clips train AI to control robots? General Intuition CEO Pim de Witte explains why gaming data may be the missing ingredient for the next generation of robotics and AI agents.Pim de Witte built the world's largest RuneScape private server as a teenager before founding Medal, one of the biggest gaming clip platforms in the world. Today, Medal processes roughly one billion gameplay clips every year, creating a unique dataset that powers General Intuition's AI models for robotics, world models, and autonomous agents.In this conversation with Eric Newcomer, Pim explains why video games may be one of the most valuable training grounds for artificial intelligence, how gaming data transfers to real world robotics, why humanoid robots may not be the future, and what AI means for gamers, developers, and the future of work.

This week, we're bringing you an episode of WSJ's Take On the Week. Host Telis Demos and guest host Spencer Jakab, investing columnist and writer of the Markets A.M. newsletter, are joined by Kaitlin Hendrix, asset allocation research director at Dimensional Fund Advisors, to decode investors' surging interest in private markets. They break down how investors may already have exposure in their investment portfolios to private companies like Anthropic, Stripe and Flipkart, through holdings in companies like Alphabet's Google, Amazon and Nvidia. Hendrix explains why your public index fund might already provide the diversification you're looking for, without the high fees. Plus, Jakab explains the way that big tech's private company investments are boosting earnings to near-unprecedented levels.  To watch the video version of this episode, visit our WSJ Podcasts YouTube channel or the video page of WSJ.com Sign up for the WSJ's free What's News newsletter. Further Reading:  Earnings Forecasts Are on Steroids For more coverage of the markets and your investments, head to WSJ.com, WSJ's Heard on The Street Column, and WSJ's Live Markets blog. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Late payments have become so common that many businesses simply accept them as part of commercial life. But should they? In this episode of Tech Talks Daily, I speak with Pat Bermingham, founder and CEO of Adflex, about why late payments continue to cost the UK economy an estimated £11 billion every year, why thousands of businesses fail because of cash flow pressures, and how technology could help change payment behavior rather than simply respond to it. Pat argues that late payments are rarely an administrative accident. In many industries they have become an informal financing mechanism, allowing larger organizations to protect their own cash flow while placing increasing financial pressure on smaller suppliers. Construction is one example, but the challenge extends across many sectors where long supply chains and uneven bargaining power make delayed payments the norm rather than the exception. We discuss why new government proposals to strengthen payment regulations represent progress, while also examining why legislation alone cannot solve a structural problem that has developed over decades. Instead, Pat believes technology can play a much bigger role. He explains how virtual commercial cards and Straight Through Processing (STP) allow buyers to access extended finance while suppliers receive payment far more quickly, without introducing additional friction into the payment process. Rather than forcing suppliers to accept card payments directly, the technology automates the process behind the scenes while improving reconciliation, increasing visibility and supporting healthier cash flow across the supply chain. The conversation also explores why many organizations still rely on fragmented payment systems created through years of acquisitions and disconnected technologies. Modernizing payment infrastructure can reduce delays, improve operational efficiency and help businesses build stronger supplier relationships rather than treating late payment as a normal business practice. Pat also shares how an earlier career as a music producer shaped his thinking about technology. Watching digital innovation transform music production helped him recognize how technology can simplify complex processes while also creating new business models that challenge established industries. For finance leaders, procurement teams, CIOs and business owners, this episode provides practical insights into improving cash flow, strengthening supplier relationships, modernizing payment processes and preparing for a future where prompt payment becomes both a commercial advantage and an increasing regulatory expectation. Changing payment legislation is important. Changing payment behavior is what will ultimately strengthen businesses, protect suppliers and create more resilient supply chains.

Artificial intelligence is changing America faster than most people realize—and the price tag is staggering.Corporate America is projected to invest **$700 billion** into AI data centers, with companies like Amazon, Microsoft, Google, and Meta racing to build the infrastructure that could define the next generation of technology. But who benefits, who pays the price, and what does it mean for your community?In this special two-hour edition of **Habari Live**, Damon and Iesha take a deep dive into the AI revolution, examining the environmental, economic, and social impacts of America's data center boom.Tonight we discuss:

On Episode 937 of The Core Report, financial journalist Govindraj Ethiraj talks to Umesh Sharma, CIO–Fixed Income at The Wealth Company Mutual Fund as well as Ashok K Bhattacharya, Editorial Director at the Business Standard.SHOW NOTES(00:00) The Take(05:00) NRIs Bring In Close To $37 Billion, Though The Rupee Is Little Changed(06:35) Foreign Portfolio Investors Are Inching Back Towards India(10:54) Why Bloomberg Has Deferred Inclusion Of Indian Govt Bonds In Its Index(19:08) Is Strong Political Capital Distracting The Government From Focussing On The Jobs QuestionEVENT: Spotify x The Core's "Building Wealth for a Longer Life" with Saurabh Mukherjea of Marcellus Investment Managers. ⁠⁠Register Here⁠⁠For more of our coverage check out ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠thecore.in⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Subscribe to our Newsletter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Follow us on:⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Twitter⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ |⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Linkedin⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ |⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠Youtube⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

In today's episode, I'm sat down with Sean Henry, founder of 'Stord', an American made shipping business. We discuss everything from how Sean started in his bedroom, to taking on his very first employee and scaling all the way to a $3 Billion valuation.This may just be one of the most valuable episodes on the channel, I suggest you grab a notepad and get all your ideas down!Improve your health and life with Sunna Supplements, our official partner. Use code 'CEOCAST' at checkout for 10% off your order:https://sunnasupplements.comBuild YOUR PERSONAL BRAND and join the FREE live workshop I'm hosting tomorrow! Register using the link:https://ceobrandworkshop.comWork with us/collaborations:info@theceocast.com

Bob Zimmerman reports SpaceX's Starship successfully floated for a week after splashdown, providing invaluable data for rapid reusability. The company further cemented its market dominance with a $1.6 billion Space Force contract, while competitors remain grounded. Additionally, startups are emerging to solve technical hurdles for orbital data centers, such as advanced heat radiation. These advancements indicate that the future of massive data processing may eventually move into permanent space orbit. (15)AUGUST 19554

Raymond Plank founded Apache Corporation with just $250,000 in 1954. 50 years later his company was worth $50 billion. This episode examines the life and entrepreneurial philosophy of Raymond Plank through his memoir A Small Difference Rather than presenting a conventional history of Apache, this episode focuses on the lessons, maxims, and beliefs Plank accumulated over seven decades in business. Written when he was nearly 90, the memoir reads like a lifelong diary of how to think about opportunity, courage, cost control, resourcefulness, and adaptation. Lots of wild stories in this one. Made possible by: Ramp: ⁠⁠⁠https://ramp.com⁠⁠⁠ Applovin: ⁠⁠⁠https://www.applovin.com⁠ Vanta: ⁠⁠⁠https://vanta.com/founders⁠ ⁠Add your email here⁠ and I will send you my top 10 quotes from every episode: https://davidsenra.substack.com

You didn't lose a ball—and that's a great feeling. But what about the sideways chip-outs? In this episode, Lou asks Mark and Greg how a 10-index scores when he has no penalty shots, but does have recovery shots. What happens to scores in rounds when you're punching out from under a tree a few times? And since we're all going to end up there: how do we get better at making those shots useful?Each of these will be a mini-episode (10-15 minutes long) about an interesting golf stat. We will discuss what you can learn, and most importantly, how you can apply this on the golf course to lower your scores and lower your handicap. Listen on your drive to the golf course or over your Saturday morning coffee!Data is sourced from Arccos Golf. They have over 1 BILLION shots in their database. Check them out at: https://www.arccosgolf.com/ Use code DATALOU15 for 15% off!If you have a question you want covered on the pod, please submit here: https://www.hackitoutgolf.com/contact/Listeners can also leave us a voicemail! https://www.hackitoutgolf.com/voicemail/Where to find us:Mark Crossfield's weekly newsletter: https://www.crossfieldgolf.com/subscribeMark Crossfield on Twitter: https://twitter.com/4golfonlineMark Crossfield on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/4golfonlineLou Stagner's weekly newsletter: https://newsletter.loustagnergolf.com/subscribeLou Stagner on Twitter: https://twitter.com/LouStagnerGreg Chalmers on Twitter: https://twitter.com/GregChalmersPGASee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Don’t get left behind on AWS! Don’t get left behind on AWS! Subscribe to our Newsletter: https://theultimatepartner.com/ebook-subscribe/ Check Out UPX: https://theultimatepartner.com/experience/ In this episode, we go deep inside the AWS Marketplace with Louise Strandoo, who spent nearly a decade building AWS’s marketplace business from the ground up and now leads partner development for AWS’s data, analytics, and storage practice. Louise unpacks COST, the six-pillar framework her team built by studying what actually separates hypergrowth startups and billion-dollar sellers from partners who treat marketplace as a side project. We break down why operational excellence has to be in place before you ever enable your sales team, why executive sponsorship from the top of the organization is what keeps a marketplace strategy from collapsing into a single point of failure, and why product-led growth is no longer optional now that buyers, and increasingly AI agents, expect to try, buy, and deploy software without waiting on a human to close the loop, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwyAP7yVy3I Key Takeaways Success on AWS Marketplace requires a comprehensive framework like COST, not just a simple checklist of tasks. Your product must be something customers actually want to buy, not a subpar offering used merely to test the waters. Operational excellence is required to ensure your marketplace motion has the sustainability to scale globally. Product-Led Growth (PLG) is essential for enabling frictionless procurement, especially as buyers shift toward agent-driven AI solutions. Executive sponsorship is critical; building a strategy without leadership buy-in will prevent it from gaining real traction. Sales alignment ensures reps are appropriately compensated and friction is removed, preventing them from avoiding marketplace transactions. If you're ready to lead through change, elevate your business, and achieve extraordinary outcomes through the power of partnership—this is your community. At Ultimate Partner® we want leaders like you to join us in the Ultimate Partner Experience – where transformation begins. Key Tags AWS Marketplace framework, COST methodology, product-led growth, agentic procurement, hyperscaler ecosystem, operational excellence, revenue friction, private offers, co-sell acceleration, strategic collaboration agreements, resilient architecture, cloud commitments, organizational transformation Key Tags Louise Strandoo Audio Episode [00:00:00] Louise Strandoo: Salespeople, rightly so. They don’t wanna introduce something that’s going to add a complexity to the deal. They’re like, why would AWS wanna be involved? [00:00:11] Vince Menzione: You can feel it happening. The ecosystem is shifting beneath us, the way Hyperscalers are partnering, how AI’s remaking the channel and what it means to win in 2026. [00:00:22] Louise Strandoo: Welcome to the Ultimate Partner Podcast. I’m Vince Menzi. Own [00:00:26] Vince Menzione: your host. And each week I sit down with leaders at the intersection of technology, partnerships and outcomes. The voices shaping how ecosystems actually work. We talk about what’s real, what’s changing, and what it takes to lead in this era where the partner channel isn’t just part of the strategy. [00:00:45] Vince Menzione: It is the strategy because being in the room changes everything. Let’s start. [00:00:53] Louise Strandoo: And Louise Strand, come on out. Come on up. Uh, our first, our first [00:00:59] Vince Menzione: Amazon executive at, at this session. Not our first ever, but our first at this session. [00:01:06] Louise Strandoo: Happy to be [00:01:07] Vince Menzione: thrilled to have you. I, why don’t we sit down on an, um, I’ll have you sit here and, you know, you get, take one of the ultimate partner pillows with you since you’re a first assignment attend. [00:01:15] Louise Strandoo: Wonderful. [00:01:16] Vince Menzione: Uh, [00:01:16] Louise Strandoo: good [00:01:17] Vince Menzione: to hear. So great to have you. I thought maybe we’d start, maybe, uh, with you, uh, explaining your role. Then we can start talking about costs, which is the subject is like near and dear, and we’ll talk about that, about what that is. But I want to keep people on their pins of their seats right now. [00:01:33] Vince Menzione: So tell us, tell us more about you and your role and your journey at AWS. [00:01:37] Louise Strandoo: Yeah, well thanks for having me. Good to see everybody in the room. Um, so my name’s Louise. I have spent the better part of the last nine and a half years at AWS and I spent almost that whole time, probably around eight years. In AWS Marketplaces business Development organization, um, I joined to help startups figure out how to scale their business on the marketplace. [00:02:00] Louise Strandoo: And from there, I grew into a number of different roles, helped ISVs figure out how to scale their marketplace business of all sizes. Um, I worked with some of our top sellers on the marketplace, figure out how to really scale their revenue through the marketplace. Today I am actually the lead of the data analytics and storage partner development team. [00:02:20] Louise Strandoo: Nice. Within the US Tech partnerships organization. So it’s been a really cool transition to go from like all marketplace focused. And throughout that time, marketplace kind of became the center of partnerships. Yep. Within our partner program. Um, so now I manage PDMs and partners and we still talk a lot about marketplace. [00:02:40] Louise Strandoo: Also everything else that we do as a partner. So it’s, um, it’s been a fun journey. [00:02:45] Vince Menzione: And we were talking about this earlier, like you started with Marketplace and then moved out where all the other organizations started from partnership and moved into marketplace. Mm-hmm. Almost the other up. And you have built a framework costs [00:02:59] Louise Strandoo: mm-hmm. [00:03:00] Vince Menzione: Characteristics of successful sellers. And I have a set of operating principles about successful partnering. So I’m really intrigued about this conversation. I was hoping you could walk us through it, like what are these characteristics and where do most partners fall short in terms of characteristics? [00:03:18] Louise Strandoo: Yeah, so, um, like all really good things, cost was an effort that I built alongside a bunch of other really smart people. And we started to have this conversation about what does, uh, you know, what does success look like? We we’re focused in the beginning, in my marketplace journey on getting. Partners to sell on the marketplace, getting them to list and adopt the features. [00:03:41] Louise Strandoo: And of course they’re like, why would we do this? And we’re like, that’s a great question. Let’s figure out like really what the why of this whole thing is. And as we started to get partners who were startups and some of our really large partners activated, we started to see all kinds of value and how marketplace was helping co-sell and all this good stuff. [00:03:59] Louise Strandoo: And we needed to figure out like how do we identify what is like the lightning in the bottle? So we looked across some of the most, uh, hypergrowth companies on the marketplace. Mm-hmm. Some of those startups that had really propelled into major success stories. And then some of those like really scaled enterprise sellers, the one [00:04:17] Vince Menzione: that got to a billion dollars. [00:04:18] Louise Strandoo: Exactly. The market, our billion dollar market market. Billion dollar sellers. Right? Yep. And we looked at what are the common characteristics that all of those partners embody. Yes. And how do we kind of. Define a framework that is not a checklist because a lot of us were doing that at the time. Here’s all the things that you should do to make it work well. [00:04:34] Louise Strandoo: It doesn’t really work from partner to partner. Everyone has a unique go-to market strategy. Yeah, so we developed costs to kind of be this overarching tool that partners can use to say, do we have the right kind of fundamental approach to how we’re going to market with AWS and how we’re thinking about the marketplace. [00:04:51] Louise Strandoo: Do we have the right tools to like bring our overall go-to-market strategy to A AWS and to the marketplace so we’re not doing two separate things. That was sort of the genesis of the idea. Makes [00:05:02] Vince Menzione: a lot of sense. [00:05:04] Louise Strandoo: So, um, the characteristics, there’s six of ’em. I won’t go into detail about every single one. [00:05:11] Louise Strandoo: Oh, [00:05:11] come [00:05:11] Vince Menzione: on. We’ll do that one. Yeah. We have some people in the room that are gonna be intrigued by this. Go ahead. [00:05:16] Louise Strandoo: So, um, the first pillar is. Partnership with AWS, you can’t do marketplace without figuring out what, what’s your overall partner strategy, right? So how are you using the partner programs to drive differentiation in your business? [00:05:30] Louise Strandoo: Yep. How are you using our funding programs to elevate the parts of your business that you really wanna accelerate? Um, and how are you thinking about your partner strategy with AWS overall? [00:05:40] Vince Menzione: Interesting. [00:05:41] Louise Strandoo: The second one is, uh, selection on AWS marketplace. [00:05:44] Vince Menzione: Product selection. [00:05:45] Louise Strandoo: That’s right. [00:05:45] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:05:46] Louise Strandoo: You gotta have a product on the marketplace that your customers wanna buy. [00:05:49] Louise Strandoo: I think the biggest thing that partners have done wrong over the years is they think, let’s do crawl, walk, run. We’re gonna put something up there that we’re not, you know, really excited about, but we’ll see how it does and then we’ll try to invest from there. [00:06:03] Vince Menzione: Mm-hmm. [00:06:04] Louise Strandoo: If you put something out there that nobody knows how to sell, then that you’re not excited about, your customers aren’t probably excited about it either. [00:06:09] Louise Strandoo: There’s no reason it’s gonna do well in the marketplace. [00:06:10] Vince Menzione: Yeah. It makes no sense to me. [00:06:12] Louise Strandoo: Yep. So you gotta have something good. You gotta have your marquee product, and then you wanna use features that are gonna help buyers actually access that product in a way that’s frictionless. Yeah. The third one is operational excellence. [00:06:25] Louise Strandoo: So that’s looking at how are you structuring your organization and investing in all the right processes that you need to scale the business. Reporting at a global scale, understanding how to recognize revenue and thinking about all of the in-between moments of. Being on the marketplace, creating an offer, how does your sales team gonna get in touch with you when you need to send that offer out? [00:06:47] Louise Strandoo: And how are you making sure that an alliance person isn’t trying to find an outlet in a random corner of an airport to send a private offer to a customer? All of that structural stuff to make the, the motion scale. [00:07:00] Vince Menzione: So we’re talking product led growth versus. One off or [00:07:04] Louise Strandoo: all of it? All of it. Okay. No matter what kind of partner you are, you have to have operational excellence. [00:07:08] Louise Strandoo: Yeah. To make sure that your marketplace and your partnership motion has sustainability and scale. The next two, I’ll kind of go through fast. There is, yeah. Um, partner commitment to marketplace revenue. So what do you really want Drive from a revenue perspective, right. How do you get your leaders bought in on that, and how do you set a goal that dictates what you’re doing? [00:07:28] Louise Strandoo: And then how do you define sales alignment? From a structural perspective to say we’re gonna remove friction that could get in the way of the field selling this thing. We’re gonna remove things that are, um, negating reps from wanting to go through marketplace because it’s impacting their comp. Yeah. Or it’s really hard. [00:07:46] Louise Strandoo: All of that kind of structural stuff goes into the sales alliance. [00:07:49] Vince Menzione: So there’s, yeah. I wanted to take this apart a little bit too, if you don’t mind. No [00:07:52] Louise Strandoo: problem. [00:07:53] Vince Menzione: Because I think about this a lot. So when you start talking about an organization, you’re talking about what this, we’ll call it an ISV Sure. Or an si, but. [00:08:00] Vince Menzione: You know, ISPs primarily is where it all started. They need to get their internal operational excellence. Right, exactly. Which means their, their ops piece. Yep. And their sales execution. They’re gonna to market all those things. The sales alignment side. Is that their sales teams [00:08:18] Louise Strandoo: correct. [00:08:19] Vince Menzione: Are compensated properly so that they don’t go around the systems. [00:08:22] Vince Menzione: Exactly right. They’re aligned. They’re aligned to go drive the right results. [00:08:25] Louise Strandoo: Exactly. [00:08:26] Vince Menzione: Because they’ve made commitments as well. [00:08:28] Louise Strandoo: Yeah. [00:08:28] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:08:29] Louise Strandoo: And I always talk about marketplace, like it is transformation. It’s different. It’s not what you’re doing today. [00:08:35] Vince Menzione: That’s right. [00:08:35] Louise Strandoo: Salespeople, rightly so. They don’t wanna introduce something that’s gonna add a complexity to the deal. [00:08:43] Louise Strandoo: They’re like, why would AWS wanna be involved? Stay away. So if that is already there and then on top of that Mm, they don’t get paid as much when they go direct. [00:08:53] Vince Menzione: Right? Right. [00:08:54] Louise Strandoo: They’re not gonna go through the market nice. [00:08:55] Vince Menzione: No, they’re not. [00:08:55] Louise Strandoo: They’re not gonna bring anything to you and the partnership team saying like, Hey, we really wanna figure out how to make this engine work with AWS So we have to do as much as we can to remove that friction from the experience. [00:09:06] Vince Menzione: So, you know, you mentioned private offers, which made me think about like product-led growth versus private offers. ’cause it’s, it feels like marketplace from the beginning. It’s changed. It [00:09:15] Louise Strandoo: has, [00:09:16] Vince Menzione: you’ve been doing this for a number of years. You were first to market with a marketplace. There was, I’ll call a lot of friction because there was channels and other, other routes to market direct selling. [00:09:27] Vince Menzione: Tell us, take us through some of those experiences. Yeah, yeah. Like what was that like? And then obviously you built cos because you had a lot of field engagement with these organizations trying to get them to go do it the right way. [00:09:38] Louise Strandoo: Right? [00:09:39] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:09:39] Louise Strandoo: So it’s interesting actually, when we built the marketplace. [00:09:42] Louise Strandoo: It was completely like a product-led growth motion, as in let’s just figure out a way to let AWS customers find amis in the marketplace. Developers are gonna go get it, and they’re just gonna buy it without any additional push from the field or like co-sell. That doesn’t need to happen. Then we heard from customers, Hey, this is great. [00:10:02] Louise Strandoo: But what we really want is also to be able to buy bigger contracts. We wanna customize our contracts, we wanna negotiate price when we’re buying this on behalf of, you know, large organizations. We’re not just buying what’s on the shelf. We need something more custom. So we introduced this concept of private offers to make sure that we could bring all of that customization into the process. [00:10:23] Louise Strandoo: And then we heard from customers saying, uh, we want to purchase from our preferred channel partners. We really wanna make sure that we’re, you know, not losing that source of, um, engagement with our really critical partners. So we had to figure out, hey, how can we make it so that we’re not competing with the channel? [00:10:41] Louise Strandoo: ’cause we’re not really a channel at all. Right. So we had to go and build our platform that allowed for channel partners to sell through the marketplace and augment that private offer piece to say, Hey, if you want, you can have a channel partner resell your product through the marketplace. So today we kind of see all of those as just different routes to market and different ISVs are gonna embrace different routes to market. [00:11:04] Louise Strandoo: First, the really important thing about costs is that it’s. Pushing partners to think about bringing their go to market strategy that works outside of the partnership to the marketplace. Mm-hmm. So if you’re an ISV that doesn’t sell with channel today, don’t start with channel partners on the marketplace. [00:11:21] Louise Strandoo: Right. If you don’t do product-led growth today, probably figure that out before you start doing it on the marketplace. Yeah. But if you’re doing those things, if you’re not doing those things, you should look at why not, and could we be doing those things and then we have the ways to bring it into your strategy with AWS marketplace. [00:11:38] Vince Menzione: So what separates the partners who kind of build this flywheel of success that you describe from those who treat it maybe as a side project? And do you, do you see less and less of that today too? I wanna, I wanna ask you. [00:11:50] Louise Strandoo: No, I think, um, the more mature the marketplace gets [00:11:57] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:11:58] Louise Strandoo: The more obvious some of the, uh, characteristics of success become and the more important. [00:12:06] Louise Strandoo: Embodying that framework becomes for partners as they grow to become the next billion dollar seller, right? And become the next a hundred million dollar seller. Um, I think a couple things come to mind for me. The first thing is that like at AWS overall, we talk a lot about like resilient architecture. We talk a lot about what does it look like to drive successful transformation. [00:12:29] Louise Strandoo: All of that has to happen in the partnership. Partners that have really strong marketplace motions with AWS, they do not have single points of failure. They are not expecting an alliance lead to manage everything and then have the business collapse if they leave. [00:12:46] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:12:46] Louise Strandoo: They figure out how to delegate and get buy-in from leadership so that they have multiple folks invested in the strategy for multiple angles so that there’s scalability and sustainability. [00:12:58] Louise Strandoo: Without that. You could do all the things right with costs and if there’s res, if there’s no resiliency, if there’s, if there’s a single point of failure, it doesn’t scale and it doesn’t last. [00:13:09] Vince Menzione: It’s so funny ’cause you haven’t seen my seven principles of, of successful partnering, but we talk about growth mindset, we talk about executive commitment and then clarity on your vision and what you’re hoping to achieve. [00:13:21] Louise Strandoo: Yeah. [00:13:22] Vince Menzione: Like that’s your internal victory. You’ve gotta get those things right. That’s exactly what you just said. A hundred [00:13:26] percent. [00:13:26] Louise Strandoo: And you can’t, you, you know, like if you don’t have that executive sponsorship, [00:13:30] Vince Menzione: yeah, [00:13:32] Louise Strandoo: great. You’ve done the cost framework, but where are you gonna go with it? [00:13:35] Vince Menzione: And it’s not just the sponsorship, it’s. [00:13:38] Vince Menzione: Up in, from the top of the organization all the way down to the selling floor. Completely. Right? [00:13:42] Louise Strandoo: Completely. [00:13:42] Vince Menzione: Everybody has to be aligned. Resources, investments all need to be aligned to this. Mm-hmm. [00:13:47] Louise Strandoo: Mm-hmm. [00:13:47] Vince Menzione: We’re speaking the same language earlier. A hundred percent. I love it. I love it. I love it. Um, so what does, we talked about product-led growth, but I want to maybe jump in here a little bit more. [00:13:58] Vince Menzione: Because I think it’s, it’s becoming more prevalent today, isn’t it? Yeah. It’s like, you know, we talked about private offer. It was really private offers, at least my perspective was a few years ago, I wanna buy something from you. Oh, you have a cloud commitment. I can access the cloud commitment. [00:14:13] Louise Strandoo: Yeah. [00:14:14] Vince Menzione: And so it was always the private offer thing that was going on behind the scenes, which required a lot of internal resources to go drive. [00:14:19] Louise Strandoo: Yep. [00:14:20] Vince Menzione: Let’s talk about product led growth. ’cause that becomes a fly more of a flywheel that’s automated Yeah. And allows you to sell while you’re sleeping kind of thing, you know? [00:14:28] Louise Strandoo: Totally. [00:14:29] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:14:30] Louise Strandoo: So I think, um, we have heard a lot from customers saying, okay, when we really need to negotiate and we need something custom, we wanna be able to do that. [00:14:40] Louise Strandoo: But we also wanna be able to purchase things quickly. We don’t wanna have to go out to dinner every time we need to upgrade, uh, like our licenses and get a new contract. We wanna be able to experiment and pick the things that resonate best with the line of business users that are, you know, increasingly taking some of that buying power. [00:14:59] Louise Strandoo: And I think especially now that we’re entering into, you know, the unprecedented, unprecedented times, it’s everything is AI like. There is more, um, pressure than ever to have users quickly figure out, does something add value to me and my business right now? And if it does, then I’m gonna keep using it, and if it doesn’t, I’m gonna go to the next thing. [00:15:22] Guest: Right. [00:15:22] Louise Strandoo: Product led growth is really about eliminating some of that I would say. Paperwork at the start of the process and putting the power in the hands of the user to say, can this product solve your challenge? And as more and more buyers are looking at Agen solutions, they wanna be able to try something, see if it works, and then quickly buy it without having to go through a whole bunch of steps because they have work that needs to be done right now. [00:15:54] Louise Strandoo: So the marketplace, that was our roots, like we started with this PLG motion. So we have all of that foundation to do it, and we’ve spent a lot of time over the last two, three years, like really investing in that from our engineering and roadmap perspective to build a whole bunch of features and capabilities that support product-led growth. [00:16:11] Louise Strandoo: We have things like free trials request, demo request, a private offer if you want to. Um, we introduced something, you know, last year that was an express private offer experience. Hey, you know, you want custom pricing. Request it and we’re gonna give it to you right away because the vendor has populated rate cards. [00:16:26] Louise Strandoo: Right? So all of those things I think are really important right now to say, yeah, when your customers like, wanna get going, now let’s stop. Putting barriers in the way and let your product actually show its value immediately. [00:16:38] Vince Menzione: And you were actually putting buttons or making buttons available Yeah. For people’s websites. [00:16:42] Vince Menzione: Exactly. So they could just say, click here and [00:16:43] Louise Strandoo: buy. Absolutely. We buy with a Ws. You can click from your own website, your own marketing pages to route them to the marketplace. If that’s the preferred way to transact, [00:16:50] Vince Menzione: yeah, why not? [00:16:51] Louise Strandoo: Yeah. [00:16:52] Vince Menzione: So you mentioned ai. We talked a little bit, I call it the tectonic shifts. [00:16:56] Vince Menzione: We, we’ve seen this incredible transformation happening so fast. And now we’re talking about agents. Right. And, uh, John Yo was over here from, uh, earlier from Sugar talking about like, what happens if the buyer is an agent? [00:17:08] Louise Strandoo: Totally. [00:17:09] Vince Menzione: Let’s talk about that. [00:17:10] Louise Strandoo: Yeah. I mean, I think that PLG and like is the right thing to enable a agentic procurement. [00:17:18] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:17:19] Louise Strandoo: If, um, you know, like in the, uh. 2019 when private offers were like, that was the big boom. We were like getting people to sign up on the marketplace. All we were focused on was private offers. So many sellers would have products on the marketplace where you’d click and purchase it and it would just say, thanks for buying, and it’d be like, we’ll get in touch with you and like a 24 hours and then we’ll figure it out. [00:17:42] Louise Strandoo: No worries. Thanks for buying. If that doesn’t work. If you’re an agent, it doesn’t work. An agent would be like, okay, this is like a dead end, right? Yeah. Agents are gonna look for products that they can purchase and begin using instantaneously. So yeah, product-led growth is like a really good, um, strategy that ISVs can use to future proof their business and make sure that they’re not just catering to an evolved. [00:18:06] Louise Strandoo: You know, procurement persona who maybe is looking for that faster transaction, but also preparing for that agent persona. Yeah. That is gonna be helping make software procurement scale. [00:18:17] Vince Menzione: So what do the partners in the room need to do to rethink how they think about this? [00:18:22] Louise Strandoo: I think there’s a couple things. I think you know, number one, you can look at the cost framework and start to use it as a jumping off point to evaluate your business. [00:18:31] Louise Strandoo: You can look through a bunch of resources that we’ve put out around costs, and one of the first blogs that I wrote has a Buzzfeed style quiz. You can go through and be like, where are we at? And if you realize after you run through that exercise that you’re farther away from where you wanna be in terms of partnering with AWS, it’s a really good dump like starting point to be like, great, here’s the challenges. [00:18:56] Louise Strandoo: But the biggest message I would relay to the partners is. Do not wait to try to go build this and then bring it to your executives and say, look what I built. It’s not gonna go anywhere. You need to go and use that as the cry to your leadership team. Like escalate. Now here’s the opportunity that we have with AWS. [00:19:17] Louise Strandoo: Let’s look at all of the awesome studies that we and our partners have put out over the years. Look at your competitors that are in the marketplace, your competitors that are partnering with AWS, and start there by saying, we’re. Behind or we’re missing in these areas. We could be doing, you know this, to make our product more a ag agentic ready. [00:19:37] Louise Strandoo: We could be doing more in marketplace to ensure that we’re capitalizing on the private offer business, and we need to figure out how we’re gonna drive commitment now so we can go and build this if you try to build it. Then show the value later. It’s gonna be really hard to then be pushing that boulder up the hill. [00:19:55] Louise Strandoo: So the more that you can lean into getting the sponsorship early on, you’re gonna have a much easier time then navigating, you know, all the hard work that comes with partnership co-sell, um, and, and everything kind of fun that we get to do once we get to go to market with our partners. [00:20:10] Vince Menzione: Do you have one piece of advice for each one of the. [00:20:13] Vince Menzione: Conditions or characteristics for, for, for this group to follow or [00:20:17] Louise Strandoo: think about? I think that, um, the, we didn’t talk about the last one, which is a good one to end on, which is enablement. [00:20:22] Vince Menzione: Yes. [00:20:23] Louise Strandoo: Enablement starts with like most of the time, ISVs in particular, and this, it goes for channel partners as well. [00:20:30] Louise Strandoo: They’re like, we gotta enable the field go and enable all the salespeople why they should do all this stuff. You have to do these things like in some sequence though. So if you go and enable the field, everybody do marketplace and they’re like, how? Where do we go, right? Do we send you the leads? Are we slacking you? [00:20:47] Louise Strandoo: Like are we emailing? Like what do we do? You have to then go back and be like, actually, our operational excellence isn’t sorted out. We need to do that first. And who needs to be enabled from that side of the house? Like don’t forget to enable your rev ops teams, your deal desk teams, all of the teams that are kind of essential to making your partnership with AWS Hum need to be enabled in the way that is relevant for their business. [00:21:10] Louise Strandoo: So when you, you know, think about like what do you need to do across all the pillars? It’s gonna be different depending on what your go-to-market focus is. If you’re a hundred percent focused on selling through SIS today and through channel, maybe product-led growth is not the top priority, but then you need to go and figure out, okay, so how have we. [00:21:28] Louise Strandoo: Figured out which partners we wanna work with on AWS and how have we enabled them and have we communicated that enablement to our salespeople? Are we removing unnecessary barriers to them transacting? That’s what you really gotta figure out. So it’s really about looking at how you execute outside of marketplace, outside AWS, figuring out what that, what are the strongest pieces that you do in your business today, across those pillars, and then asking to replicate that with your partnership with AWS. [00:21:56] Vince Menzione: Nice. So to the room here is, um, if someone in this room doesn’t, does one thing differently on the marketplace, what should it be? [00:22:08] Louise Strandoo: There’s so many things I can think about. I think like first [00:22:12] Vince Menzione: you’re coaching ’em [00:22:13] Louise Strandoo: individually, [00:22:13] Vince Menzione: by the way. Just think about it that way. [00:22:15] Louise Strandoo: One of the first things like, it depends on where you’re like, where you’re at in your journey. [00:22:18] Louise Strandoo: So like, quick show of hands, who is, um, a partner that is like using the marketplace today? [00:22:26] Vince Menzione: There’s quite a few actually. [00:22:27] Louise Strandoo: Okay. Awesome. Thank you for helping drive the marketplace. So for those of you that raised your hands, like my sentiment to you all would be figure out how you are incorporating marketplace as the center of your strategy with AWS. [00:22:44] Louise Strandoo: We are increasingly using marketplace as the point of scale for all things about partnership. All things funding are like increasingly requiring some hook into marketplace. So we can actually provide more funding and scale increase like more. So think about like how do you use marketplaces that like center of your partnership, um, for those of you that are not on the marketplace today and are thinking like, is this something that is valuable to me? [00:23:15] Louise Strandoo: Is this something that I should think about and do? You should absolutely. Go look at who are your competitors? Who are the folks that are already out there on the marketplace and, and why aren’t you there? And then you should start to look at what are the characteristics of successful sellers to map out What could we do and what’s the kind of order of operations that we should take to figure out like, how do we get there? [00:23:40] Louise Strandoo: How do we have a plan from the beginning to get buy-in for our partnership with AWS so that we’re not going about it, expecting that it’s gonna just like drive a bunch of leads to the business. It’s not what it does well, but it is gonna help accelerate the way that you co-sell with AWS, which can be a tremendous value add when done appropriately. [00:23:58] Louise Strandoo: So I think, yeah, like figure out the right way that it’s gonna unlock business value depending on what’s most important to your priority. Um. Today [00:24:08] Vince Menzione: we have about three and a half minutes, and I, I’m eager to see if there’s any questions. I, I, um, I, John’s right here with the mic and I love that. I love the, want to get the interaction here in the room. [00:24:19] Louise Strandoo: Yeah, [00:24:20] Vince Menzione: it’s a great group. [00:24:25] Guest: Oh, [00:24:29] Vince Menzione: can they light up that mic? Maybe [00:24:33] Louise Strandoo: Good. [00:24:37] Vince Menzione: There you go. That’s fine. There you go. It’s working. Alright. [00:24:41] Guest: Thank you so much. This is a really great presentation, first of all. I love it. Um, I’m actually part of the, uh, the GSI, so I work cognizant. My name is Ana Hill, um, and I’m manage alliances with ServiceNow. Um, our goal is in the really near future to really engage with all the hyperscalers in sell. [00:25:00] Guest: So that’s one thing. But my interesting, my question is how do you, how, how does AWS measure success? Of the partners who are on your platform, what are the metrics? How do you determine which partners are actually successful and what other partners can use to learn from that? [00:25:19] Louise Strandoo: Yeah, that’s such a great question. [00:25:21] Louise Strandoo: So, um, something that I think is like super helpful that you bring up is cost is not a, um, a scorecard that says everybody that does all these things is a good partner. It’s basically inputs that we have come up with that are supposed to help with the partnership outcomes. Um, so partners, we measure a whole bunch of different things. [00:25:47] Louise Strandoo: I think PDMs and my team carry goals across like seven different categories. There’s a couple of big things that we look at. We look at the revenue that you drive through the marketplace, so whether that’s through private offers or through your self-service business or through. Selling through a reseller, or if you are the reseller, like what is that resell business or driving? [00:26:05] Louise Strandoo: Um, we look at what are the opportunities that you’re bringing and sharing with AWS and that you’re launching. So through our lead sharing mechanism. Not only what are you launching, but what are you sharing with us that is qualified that you’re bringing the field into? Um, we look at things like migrations and migration, realized revenue. [00:26:25] Louise Strandoo: How are you helping drive customers to the cloud? And how are you helping customers not just get everything set up, but you start actually using it. Um, so we really are gonna look across like a multitude of those metrics and when we look at like which partners are kind of leading the way. We’re gonna start to look at the revenue in those buckets, right? [00:26:44] Louise Strandoo: Like who’s sharing and bringing and growing with us? Who’s bringing more opportunities to engage before it happens on the marketplace? Who’s actually completing that transaction? And then who are helping who, who are the partners? Kind of like leading those big types of transformations, migrations, and, and realize revenue. [00:27:00] Louise Strandoo: This is really great. Yeah. Yeah. [00:27:04] Vince Menzione: Thank you. Any other questions? Come on. We’ve got 30 seconds left. We have time for that one last question. Run over there. John. Come on. [00:27:17] Guest: Thank you again, a great, uh, presentation. One question I had is, uh, this morning, right Jay from, uh, oia, right? He identified a whole bunch of, uh, companies that are doing. [00:27:28] Guest: More than a billion dollars in revenue with AWS. [00:27:30] Louise Strandoo: Mm-hmm. [00:27:31] Guest: What would you say are one or two top qualities among these companies that help some drive? I can give [00:27:36] Louise Strandoo: six. And they’re all of these. Yes. [00:27:39] Vince Menzione: The cost, [00:27:40] Louise Strandoo: but like, I think, um, so I love it. Yeah. My, my team we’re working on some content to better capture, like Yeah. [00:27:48] Louise Strandoo: You, you’ve gotten there, you’ve done the six basic things. Now what happens when you’re a billion dollar business? What does it look like there? It’s a lot of the same stuff, right? Like billion dollar billers on the marketplace. They embody that resilience, for example, in their operational mechanisms. [00:28:03] Louise Strandoo: They’re moving beyond the point of there being like one person that creates private offers and they’re like just part of the partnership team. They activate their, um, their deal desk to really manage private offers and marketplace business at scale. They’re integrating their pipeline to share deals proactively through their CRM system and they have really targeted enablement that is. [00:28:24] Louise Strandoo: Really pushing to the field to make sure that every person in their team understands the value of cloud value of AWS and how marketplace accelerates the pipeline. So the more mature that you become as a marketplace seller, like the more that cost is relevant to help keep you on track and be that kind of north star to say like, you could do a cool bunch of stuff with us, but here’s really where you wanna check and see, like what can you do to evolve the business to the next stage? [00:28:49] Vince Menzione: What you’ve said is so like impactful and we have some experts in the room that do this. They help these organizations better understand it’s really getting into your field organization to help them understand how to. How to show up for meetings with AWS re, like how to, how to, uh, co-sell together, how to think about going after these opportunities. [00:29:09] Vince Menzione: What, when you’re, when you’re talking to customers, potential customers about their cloud commitments, like what are the right questions to ask in the pro? There’s so many things, like I’m sure the costs six has like 150 each [00:29:21] Louise Strandoo: Easily [00:29:21] Vince Menzione: steps. Yeah. You know, to it. [00:29:24] Louise Strandoo: Yeah. And I think like, just to follow on that. [00:29:26] Louise Strandoo: Um, we have partners who have gone and they’ve been like, okay, we’re getting a strategic collaboration agreement with AWS. We’re getting funding, and if they don’t have this, it doesn’t work. It doesn’t work. It fails. So this is really like, yeah, it’s about building that resilient architecture to say, if we go big, do we have the execution plan to succeed? [00:29:47] Louise Strandoo: You can’t start with a plan to say, give us a bunch of funding and we’ll go do it. Your salespeople will say. Know what that is. Don’t care. Yeah. So you have to put all of that, you know, all of those building blocks in first to make sure that we can actually execute. [00:30:01] Vince Menzione: You need alignment from the executive suite down to the selling floor. [00:30:05] Louise Strandoo: A hundred percent. [00:30:06] Vince Menzione: Yeah. [00:30:06] Louise Strandoo: Yep. [00:30:06] Vince Menzione: That’s really what it’s all about. [00:30:07] Louise Strandoo: Yep. [00:30:08] Vince Menzione: Louise, thank you so much. It’s been incredible. So great to have you join us. Thank you [00:30:15] so [00:30:15] Louise Strandoo: much. Yes, thank [00:30:16] Vince Menzione: you. [00:30:16] Louise Strandoo: Thank you, [00:30:16] Vince Menzione: thank you. Thanks for listening to The Ultimate Partner Podcast. If today’s conversation resonated. Share it with a partner leader in your network. [00:30:26] Vince Menzione: Subscribe where you listen, and head over to the Ultimate partner.com for show notes related content and the resources for this episode. And if you haven’t already, now’s the time to register for the Ultimate Partner Live event in Reston, Virginia, October 26th through October 28th. Until next time, keep showing up in the rooms that matter because being in the room changes everything.

Jeff Dudan went from a broke college athlete earning $250 a week to building, scaling, and leading franchise brands responsible for more than $1 billion in systemwide sales. In this episode of Fuel Your Drive, Jeff sits down with Josh York to share how he turned adversity into opportunity, risked everything to build his first company, and spent decades creating businesses that have empowered hundreds of franchise owners. Jeff opens up about the sacrifices behind his success, the importance of setting wildly ambitious goals, and what it truly takes to build something that lasts. From launching a business in the aftermath of Hurricane Andrew to appearing on Undercover Boss and building a nationwide franchise empire, his journey is a masterclass in resilience, leadership, and long-term thinking. In this episode, you'll discover: How Jeff went from earning $250 a week to building a franchise empire Why ambitious goals can completely change the direction of your life The sacrifices required to build a successful business How to turn difficult circumstances into major opportunities What Jeff learned from more than 25 years of entrepreneurship Why empowering other business owners became central to his mission The mindset required to keep growing after a major exit If you're an entrepreneur, franchise owner, or aspiring business leader, this conversation will challenge you to think bigger, stay in the fight, and build a legacy that extends far beyond revenue. Subscribe to Fuel Your Drive for more honest conversations with elite entrepreneurs, leaders, and high performers.

We are now recording an audio version of written posts that we will upload to Apple, Spotify, and YouTube, which you can listen to by clicking the play button above.We conclude our month long series on Strait of Hormuz (SoH) Crisis takeaways with a look at what this conflict means for the related topics of sustainability, climate, and the environment.Three key messages this week:* Many proponents and opponents of “Net Zero” are drawing the wrong conclusions about what this war means for different energy sources and technologies. Energy's natural hierarchy of needs applied at the country level mean the optimal mix of various energy sources and technologies will vary for any given country—a reality the crisis reinforces.* The topic of Sustainability needs to be right-sized and recognized for where it fits into corporate level strategies. Companies exist to generate growth and profitability for investors. Certain sustainability objectives are core to being successful over the long run. Sustainability is not a strategy in and of itself.* We shall offer free advice on what hyperscalers can learn from the oil & gas industry.We are going to do our best to not rehash our now well-known pushbacks on the excesses of the 2020-23 “Net Zero” era. The madness of that period we don't think ever returns, no matter who wins the US presidency in 2028. But we do get the question—and we are appreciative of those of you that ask—how does sustainability, climate, and the environment factor into our outlook for the energy sector, public policy, and corporate strategy and how does the SoH Crisis change or impact the views we have been articulating?We will start with a grounding on how we think about environmental and climate considerations. Our title gives it away: increasing global prosperity is our centering point, both for countries and companies. In terms of our concern level around the need to address climate change, we would characterize our specific climate opinions as broadly consistent with US Energy Secretary Chris Wright and former University of Colorado professor and Substack author (here) Roger Pielke Jr.At the country level, energy's natural hierarchy of needs that we frequently discuss is observably all any country cares about at all times (Exhibit 1). Abundant and reliable energy is a 24/7/365 pre-requisite. It needs to be affordable the vast bulk of the time. Country leaders care about geopolitical security in order to protect reliability and affordability. Clean air and clean water are 100% correlated with societal wealth. Addressing carbon emissions goes hand-in-hand with a maximum prosperity scenario where billion person-scale economies like China and India are highly motivated to crack the code on new energy technologies that are de facto lower in carbon intensity. Pretending that society and companies can be forced onto prescriptive “Paris-aligned Net Zero by 2050 pathways” was the fatal flaw of the 2020-2023 era.For companies, the only goal is to generate competitive returns and growth for shareholders. Sustainability exists at the level of community engagement, license to operate, and as a possible alternative to government regulation. It is a component of running a company similar to many other functions; it is not a strategy in its own right (e.g., pressuring oil & gas companies to transition business models in the name of addressing climate change never made sense).With that grounding, we are going to use a Q&A styled format to address how we think the related topics of sustainability, climate, and the environment will be impacted by the Strait of Hormuz Crisis.Exhibit 1: Energy's natural hierarch of needsSource: Veriten.Subscribe to Super-Spiked to receive all content via email. Also available on https://veriten.com.Q1: Does the SoH Crisis mean that the core tenet of Net Zero by 2050—which was to switch out of crude oil, natural gas, and coal into renewables, EVs, and other new tech—was correct after all?No. It does not. Our issue with Net Zero by 2050, or any other year for that matter, is that it incorrectly treats carbon emissions as the organizing principle for economic activity. It is not nor will it ever be, irrespective of how much (or little) concern any specific leader or group of citizens has about climate. There is nothing about the Strait of Hormuz Crisis that suddenly makes Net Zero pathways more relevant.Q2: So the opponents to Net Zero are correct that renewables and other new technologies are a boondoggle that plays on climate alarmism?No. It does not mean that either. The focus on non-oil, natural gas, and coal technologies will be driven by the massive unmet energy needs of the other 7 billion people on Earth that seek their own version of the prosperous lifestyles The Lucky 1 Billion of us take for granted. A specific view on climate is largely irrelevant to technology development. Reliability, affordability, and geopolitical security are the motivations to figure out new technologies. We are seeing this in real time in places like China and other Asian countries.Q3: Are there examples of countries that are adjusting away from a prior emphasis on Net Zero pathways as a result of geopolitical turmoil?We are optimistic about Norway and Canada, as two countries that are showing signs of appropriate course corrections. In the case of Norway, as a small, wealthy country, de facto mandating 100% EVs in order to not burn gasoline for consumer transportation is a choice they are free to make. More importantly, Norway is remembering that increasing oil and natural gas supply from the Norwegian North Sea is critically important to the geopolitical security and economic health of Norway, Europe, and its allies. Norway is also the home to a vibrant community of new technology companies. More oil, more natural gas, and investing in new technologies—yes!Canada's post Trudeau pivot away from Net Zero zealotry seems as much of a reaction to unfavorable rhetoric toward the country from President Trump than necessarily a recognition of how little sense it made for Canada to pursue energy policies that sought to limit the development of its massive oil sands and natural gas resources. Still, we will accept the directional improvement under PM Carney, irrespective of the apparent motivations.Long-time Super-Spiked subscribers know how critically important we believe energy and power integration between the United States and Canada is, making the recent political schism deeply unfortunate, even as it has seemingly improved energy policy decision making in Canada. The United States is economically and geopolitically stronger thanks to our close energy integration with Canada. The same is true for Canada. We credit our friend, former colleague, and current Deputy Secretary of Commerce Paul Dabbar for the idea that US + Canada + Norway would make for an outstanding trans-Atlantic alliance of energy and technology super powers (here).Q4: What else does geopolitical turmoil reveal about where the Net Zero mindset went wrong?The practical application of Net Zero by 2050 policies in many rich-world countries, states, and provinces has been to restrict domestic oil, natural gas, and coal production, mandate the use of new technologies, all while losing competitiveness in manufacturing and business more broadly. Restricting domestic energy supply, making energy prices uncompetitive, and offshoring industrial manufacturing should not be the objective of any country, state, or province. It is without question bad for geopolitical security, bad for domestic economic growth, and bad for the environment.Rather, we recommend a play on the George Castanza (Seinfeld) line (here): Show me an energy policy strategy that does the opposite. The litmus test is which country's energy and environmental policies come with competitive energy prices and business and manufacturing growth?The United Kingdom versus China is case in point. U.K. leaders have spoken glowingly about eliminating coal from their power sector and all but ending viability of the U.K. North Sea for oil and gas exploration. Yet, the country also faces the outsourcing and offshoring of its refining, petrochemical, and broader industrial base. To be clear, the U.K.'s policy challenges are not limited solely to its energy and climate policies, but those are foundational and almost certainly a meaningful contributing factor.We contrast the U.K. with China which has dramatically increased coal-fired power generation, renewables, nuclear, natural gas, and grown its domestic oil supply while building a massive strategic petroleum reserve. China is now manufacturer to the world with improving living standards for its citizens. The U.K. being on-track, or not, for domestic Net Zero is completely irrelevant to global emissions and, if anything, has been net negative for the climate given China's higher emissions profile. It has certainly been a negative for the economic competitiveness of the U.K.Q5: What are the takeaways from the Strait of Hormuz Crisis for corporate sustainability objectives?Our biggest takeaway is that sustainability is a component of running a successful company, but not a defining objective. It has generally been overstated in importance, especially by a segment of the finance world in Europe and the United States that has pushed for these objectives to gain in prominence. Companies don't exist for “sustainability.” It never made any sense to pressure oil & gas companies, as an example, to aggressively transition to low-carbon technologies in the name of Net Zero and sustainability. Companies exist to generate competitive profitability and growth for investors. Full stop.In order to generate long-term profitability and growth, various sustainability objectives (industry and company specific) for sure need to be met. Employee health and safety is at the top of the list along with ensuring the surrounding community to a given asset is also not harmed. Community engagement is core to any company's license to operate, especially when new growth plans are being pursued. The ultimate list is longer than what is mentioned here, but the point is that this area broadly does not separately merit high profile attention any more than do other critical corporate functions like human resources, legal, cybersecurity, treasury, and so forth. They all contribute to running a successful company.Q6: What are some contemporary examples of “sustainability” objectives you believe need to be addressed?Examples of current sustainability issues that we believe should be proactively addressed (not intended to be an exhaustive list):* Water disposal in the Permian Basin and water usage by AI datacenters are hot button issues that communities understandably want answers to.* We have long supported and continue to support near zero methane flaring/venting objectives for the oil & gas industry. This is a topic we have been pleasantly surprised to see the environmental community focus on globally rather than more narrowly just in the United States, Canada, or Europe, as is often the case with activists. We were also pleased to see the progress US companies have made in recent years per the World Bank (Exhibit 1).Exhibit 2: US producers have reduced flaring intensitySource: World Bank* We believe oil & gas, power sector, and hyperscaler/data center companies all have room for improvement in proactively engaging with the public on their industries, how they contribute to jobs, taxes, and economic development. It is the rare executive that is capable of speaking in normal, human, non-corporate speak language.In contrast, we do not believe a company's carbon emissions profile is relevant to its “license to operate” in a given community—a point often pushed by those advocating most loudly for Net Zero policies. No normal human being anywhere spends any time thinking about this. Putting activists aside, no regular person is protesting an oilfield or data center due to its carbon emissions intensity. Water impacts? Yes. Noise? Yes. Particulate pollution? Yes. Traffic? Yes. Carbon emissions? Give me a break.Q7: What should companies do with previously articulated Net Zero objectives?Pragmatically speaking, we recognize the significant pressure companies around the world were under during 2020-2023 to articulate company-specific “Net Zero by 2050” objectives. That said, very few if any could possibly have met those goals, since the wider world has never been even remotely on track for Net Zero be it by 2050 or any other year. The Strait of Hormuz Crisis and general geopolitical turmoil is helping more politicians and policy makers recognize that healthy energy policy starts and stops with reliability and affordability. In the interest of being transparent and sincere, companies should be truthful about whether sticking with prior Net Zero aspirations is something they actually think is (1) in the best interest of their companies and (2) is possible on any time horizon that can be modeled today.Q8: What can hyperscalers learn from the oil & gas industry?Key lessons:* You will never appease climate activists. Focus on optimizing for growth and profitability.* Your prior Net Zero objectives never had a chance of being achieved, especially if including so-called scope 3 emissions. Net Zero does not make sense at the individual company level.* Economic development, of which the technology sector today is a huge driver, is 100% correlated with clean air and clean water. Richer societies are better equipped than poorer regions to adapt to a broad range of environmental and climate issues. Americans and the wider world is overall better off that our leading technology companies exist in a similar way that we are fortunate to have healthy, vibrant, and profitable energy and power companies.* Speak sincerely and directly to the general public and the communities where you are investing about the actual impacts of your projects. You can't outsource this function. It starts with the CEO and then filters down. Skip the corporate speak and language of appeasement.* Vocally push back on policies that weaken domestic energy development opportunities in any region in which you are investing.⚡️On A Personal Note: Gone Shootin'The last time I shot a gun was in the 4th grade in what was then called Indian Guides. That almost certainly is not the name today; I think in New Jersey it is now called “Adventure Guides” which frankly is kind of lame. I believe we appropriately remembered and honored Native Americans under the original name, but society apparently disagrees with that perspective. Credit to my wife's brother's wife, who hails from the Golden State of all places, for the brilliant idea to go clay pigeon shooting during our vacation last week to The Cotswolds, about 2 hours west of London.Boy was that fun!!! We had a great instructor, Patrick I think was his name—not a fan of London or Londoners apparently; a country guy that was local to the area. There were six in our group. My brother-in-law, his wife and son, and my two daughters. All first timers. All of us successfully hit those crazy clay pigeons popping up in the field. Great job Patrick! Great job in-laws and daughters!I definitely need to practice. I had some beginners luck on the initial six shells, I want to say with five successful strikes on the ones going straight up in the air. But the ones that were flying away from us gave me more trouble and I was consistently low-left and a bit early. It was oddly tiring. A shot gun is definitely heavier than a golf club. As a second hobby, it's a keeper. Seems safter than pickleball as a golf complement.⚖️ DisclaimerI certify that these are my personal, strongly held views at the time of this post. My views are my own and not attributable to any affiliation, past or present. This is not an investment newsletter and there is no financial advice explicitly or implicitly provided here. My views can and will change in the future as warranted by updated analyses and developments. Some of my comments are made in jest for entertainment purposes; I sincerely mean no offense to anyone that takes issue. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit arjunmurti.substack.com

This week's briefing covers three things that are already changing the shape of construction, one of them from a dirt road in Texas at 4am.Bedrock Robotics was founded by the team behind Waymo's driverless technology. They do not build new excavators. They take the ones contractors already own, fit them with sensors and a computer, and the machine digs on its own. This week we filmed a full documentary with them at Proto Town, a 12 acre test site near Austin where some of the most advanced hard tech companies on earth go to build things they cannot build anywhere else. The operator who has spent his career inside these machines watched one run without him and his answer was relief. The people closest to autonomous equipment are not the ones campaigning against it. The contractor running them on live sites across Texas today says productivity is up, revenue is up, and his crews are happier.Then BlackRock. On Tuesday Meta and BlackRock announced a $14 billion data centre campus in El Paso. BlackRock owns 80%. Meta leases its own building back, operates it, and manages the construction. Roughly 90 cents in every dollar is borrowed. Wall Street used to lend money to these builds. It is now the one that owns them. That changes who your actual client is on the biggest programmes in the market.And then the numbers behind the whole cycle. Over the past fortnight the four biggest data centre customers on earth all opened their books. Moody's tallied what six technology companies will spend on this build this year. $785 billion, heading for a trillion next year. Their word for it was unprecedented. When a ratings agency uses that word, it means they have never had to grade anything like it.The question is no longer whether the work can be built. It is who is paying for it, and whether they can keep on paying.Drop your answer in the comments of this week's LinkedIn post.

Titans On Tomorrow Ep. 1 with guest Anson Frericks Presented by Ethos: https://ethos.com/titans In a new show on business and finance at this transformative time for the global economy, Ben Shapiro talks directly with the founders, CEOs, and investors building the next decade.   Anson Frericks spent 11 years climbing to the top of Anheuser-Busch, becoming President of Sales and Distribution.  He watched in horror as the company he loved traded its relationship with customers for an elitist stakeholder capitalism scorecard.  Anson saw the Bud Light collapse coming before it cost the company $30 billion in market value, writing the definitive account of it in his bestseller Last Call for Bud Light. Ben and Anson break down: • What really happened inside Anheuser-Busch before the Dylan Mulvaney fiasco • Why BlackRock, State Street, and Vanguard have outsized power over corporate America, and how Strive is fighting back • Whether corporate neutrality is enough, or if conservatives need to push harder • Why he left the culture wars behind to build an AI company tackling serious mental illness • What's next as AI, biotech, and capital markets reshape the American economy - - - Today's Sponsors: Ethos - Protect your family with life insurance from Ethos. Get up to $3 million in coverage in as little as 10 minutes at https://ethos.com/titans. Application times may vary. Rates may vary. VCX - VCX, by Fundrise, gives everyone the opportunity to invest in the next generation of innovation, including the companies leading the AI revolution, space exploration, defense tech, and more. Visit https://getVCX.com for more info. Cardiff - If you've been in business for at least a year, and are pulling in $20,000 a month in revenue, apply now for up to $500,000 in same day business funding at https://Cardiff.co/ben. Real growth. Fast funding. Cardiff—Borrow better. ZipRecruiter - 4 out of 5 employers who post on ZipRecruiter get a quality candidate within the first day. Try it for FREE today at https://ZipRecruiter.com/DAILYWIRE - - - DailyWire+ Become a Daily Wire Member and watch all of our content ad-free: https://www.dailywire.com/subscribe

You are probably already doing the same things the people on the cover of Success magazine do. In this episode of DarrenDaily On-Demand, Darren Hardy argues that what actually separates the highest achievers is not what they do, but what they refuse to do, and that the real master skill of success is the ability to say no. He draws on a candid answer Warren Buffett gave him about the one key to his fortune, a principle the late Steve Jobs lived by, and the blunt advice Jobs once handed the incoming CEO of Nike. This episode dives into why saying no to good, tempting, ego-flattering commitments is the true separating factor, and leaves you with a simple audit of your own calendar. Focus, it turns out, is mostly subtraction. Get more details on the INSANE PRODUCTIVITY program mentioned at the end of the episode at https://insaneproductivity.com/ Get more personal mentoring from Darren each day. Go to DarrenDaily at http://darrendaily.com/join to learn more.

Episode 4193 │ July 31, 2026 $700 billion into AI data centers. Zero measurable GDP growth outside the spending itself. Wall Street is starting to notice. The people already knew. WHAT THIS EPISODE COVERS  Scott Kesterson closes out July — and a 26-day fast — with the most complete economic deconstruction of the AI hyperscaler model yet: a $700 billion annual capital expenditure cycle producing zero detectable macroeconomic productivity gain outside the tech sector itself, a circular financing structure Bloomberg mapped as Microsoft, OpenAI, and Nvidia essentially paying each other in a Ponzi loop, and AI stocks now representing 35% of the S&P 500 against a hollowed-out industrial base — making the current vulnerability structurally worse than the 1999 dot-com collapse, when America still made things. The episode then delivers the counter-narrative the hyperscalers did not see coming: consumer trust in AI as a decision-maker collapsed 28 points in 12 months, 50% of Gen Z is blocking AI-generated content, and what is actually emerging is not AI dependence but AI-assisted human discernment — people using the tool as a librarian rather than an oracle, making their own decisions better while refusing to let the machine make decisions for them, which is precisely why the profit model is breaking. Scott closes with the local sovereignty frame that underlies every episode — the real fight is land and water, not the building; the Community Sovereignty Framework v1.2 is free under every episode; and the people walking in the authority of Christ without fear of the tool are already winning, because the numbers confirm it. KEY QUESTIONS ADDRESSED What does the Deutsche Bank analysis of AI capital expenditure reveal — and why does $700 billion in annual hyperscaler spending producing zero measurable GDP growth outside the spending itself mean the AI economic model is structurally identical to the 1999 dot-com bubble, except with far less underneath it when it falls? What is the difference between AI as oracle and AI as librarian — and why does the collapse of consumer trust in AI decision-making alongside rising AI usage actually represent the most positive possible sign about human discernment and the people's capacity to use a tool without being used by it? Why does Scott argue that the real target in the fight against AI data centers is not the building or the company but the land and water rights that Wall Street will retain when the Ponzi loop collapses — and what does the Community Sovereignty Framework v1.2 give communities to fight that specific battle? ABOUT BARDSFM BardsFM is a daily independent podcast covering faith, liberty, history, and information warfare. Hosted by Scott Kesterson — combat veteran, documentary filmmaker, and rancher. Over 4,100 episodes and 50 million lifetime downloads. New episodes every weekday. bards.fm This episode was researched and produced under the Spatial Terra Intelligence Methodology (STIM v5) — the analytical framework built by Scott Kesterson — with AI-assisted research synthesis at a 70/30 human/AI authorship ratio, fully disclosed. All analysis, conclusions, and editorial judgments are those of Scott Kesterson. BardsFM's archive includes hundreds of episodes on prayer, scripture, and walking the Way of Christ — available free in the full episode catalog. DOWNLOADS Community Sovereignty Framework: click here AFFILIATE LINKS Bards Nation Health Store: www.bardsnationhealth.com MYPillow promo code: BARDS >> Go to https://www.mypillow.com/bards and use the promo code BARDS or... Call 1-800-975-2939.  EMPShield protect your vehicles and home. Promo code BARDS: Click here Treadlite Broadforks...best garden tool EVER. Promo code BARDS26: TreadliteBroadforks.com EnviroKlenz Air Purification, promo code BARDS to save 10%: www.enviroklenz.com Morning Intro Music Provided by Brian Kahanek: www.briankahanek.com Founders Bible 20% discount code: BARDS >>> TheFoundersBible.com Windblown Media 20% Discount with promo code BARDS: windblownmedia.com White Oak Pastures Grassfed Meats, Get $20 off any order $150 or more. Promo Code BARDS: www.whiteoakpastures.com/BARDS Mission Darkness Faraday Bags and RF Shielding. Promo code BARDS: Click here DONATIONS: If you wish to support this podcast directly you can donate here... DONATE: Click here MAILING ADDRESS: Xpedition Cafe, LLC Attn. Scott Kesterson 591 E Central Ave, #740

Sonder is back — sort of. Eight months after going bankrupt and stranding guests mid-stay, the brand name has been bought by a Vancouver affiliate firm that paid for one thing: search equity. The buildings are gone. The trademarks and 70+ domains remain. And because large language models still route travelers to Sonder's optimized pages, that name is now targeting $100M in gross booking value over the next year. We get into what it means when a dead brand outlives the company that built it. Then: Fora's $1B valuation. The travel advisor platform keeps scaling the human-agent model — but the team digs into the product it hasn't built yet, and why the “ShopMy for travel” affiliate layer is still wide open for creators who aren't full-time advisors. We also break down Google's AI travel play. Fresh off its Q2 earnings call, Google is using travel to sell Wall Street its AI ad story — Direct Offers, IHG partnerships, AI Mode crossing a billion users, and checkout infrastructure that could let travelers book without ever leaving the search box. The question for operators: is Google becoming rented land, and a direct-booking competitor, at the same time? Plus, The Odyssey effect. From Petra to the “White Lotus Four Seasons” to Bangkok's Hangover Hotel, we get into how films turn destinations into demand — and what hoteliers should actually do about it. Hosted by Zach Busekrus with Ben Wolff, Scott Eddy, and Edwin Kramer. Like, subscribe, and let us know which story you'd unpack further. — This Week in Hospitality is presented to you by Journey. Journey is a loyalty platform built specifically for independent boutique hotels and high-touch hospitality brands. Our mission is to give operators the same powerful rewards engine, data intelligence, and guest insights that major chains rely on — without asking them to give up the individuality, soul, or story that makes their property extraordinary. If you're an owner or operator of an extraordinary, independently owned and operated hotel or residence — and you want to see whether your property is a fit for the Journey Alliance — you can learn more and apply at https://www.journey.com/alliance — Key Topics & Timestamps 00:00 — Intro 06:02 — Story #1: Sonder's Brand Gets a Second Life Through AI Search 17:51 — Story #2: Google Wants to Own the Entire Hotel Booking Journey 32:16 — Story #3: The Odyssey Is Creating the Next Travel Boom 45:11 — Story #4: Is Fora Really Worth $1 Billion? 59:22 — Spice of the Week — Your Hosts: Zach Busekrus — Journey LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/zachbusekrus/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/behindthestays/   Scott Eddy — Global Travel & Hospitality Expert @MrScottEddy LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mrscotteddy/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/mrscotteddy/   Ben Wolff — Founder of Onera & Oasi LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ben-wolff/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iambenwolff/   Edwin Kramer — Luxury Hotelier Consultant & Former GM LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/edwinckramer/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/edwinkramer/

This week, we discuss how normal people use AI, Alphabet's Anthropic-fueled earnings, and skills vs. agents. Plus, catching AI-cheating students with a hidden prompt. Watch the YouTube Live Recording of Episode 583 Runner-up Titles “Do you think they named them red delicious because they knew they were delicious?” I thought they were First World Steal your Alpha-tier Cory uses only 100% free-range, organic AI. Copy, paste, go. Stolen fruit from the poisoned tree all the way down. It's a different kind of cold. It's a dry cold. Rundown AI IRL How people use AI in 2026: TV, homework, the DMV Professor's invisible prompt trap catches 32 students cheating on their midterm with AI Amazon confirms it's closing key AI site in San Francisco but says work on its top models continues Google Cloud is killing it Skill vs. Agents Atlas: Wiz's autonomous AI Agent for vulnerability research Don't Build Agents, Build Skills Instead Relevant to your Interests Alphabet Quadruples Profit to $112 Billion, Fueled by A.I. Investments Palo Alto Networks to Acquire Embrace, Adding Real User Monitoring to Its Observability Platform IBM CEO Says Company Culture Was Too Slow to Change Domo Announces Agreement to Sell Substantially All Assets and Certain Liabilities to Progress Software for $400 Million Google Cloud is killing it ChatGPT chats are showing up in Google Search — how to find and delete yours [Update] 2026 State of infrastructure in the agentic AI era Stripe in Talks to Buy Buzzy AI-Model Marketplace OpenRouter Sponsors Signadot: making sure AI-written code actually works. Conferences AI Connect, Aug 22nd, 2026 - Riga, Latvia, Coté speaking. DevOpsDays Graz, Sept 4-5, 2026 Cloud Foundry Summit, Sept. 21st to 22nd, Heidelberg, Coté speaking. DevOpsDays Rockies, Sept. 22 – 23, 2026, Discount Code: 26DODSWEDEFTALK WeAreDevelopers NA, Sept 23-25, 2026, Discount Code: DEVPOD26 25 Free Tickets DevOpsDays Dallas, Sept 28-29, 2026 DevOpsDays Vilnius, Sep 30 - Oct 1, 2006 DevOpsDays Istanbul, Oct 24th, 2026, Coté keynoting. VMware User Group, Orlando, Oct 20-22, 2026 Cloud Native Denmark, Nov 19th, 2026, Copenhagen, Coté keynoting. SDT News & Community Join our Slack community Email the show: questions@softwaredefinedtalk.com Free stickers: Email your address to stickers@softwaredefinedtalk.com Follow us on social media: Twitter, Threads, Mastodon, LinkedIn, BlueSky Watch us on: Twitch, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok Book offer: Use code SDT for $20 off "Digital WTF" by Coté Sponsor the show Sponsor more podcasts with Failover Media Recommendations Brandon: Silo Season 3 Matt: Hyperion Coté: Cooking with Claude

Fri, 31 Jul 2026 03:00:00 GMT http://relay.fm/material/578 http://relay.fm/material/578 Andy Ihnatko and Florence Ion Google made a ton of money last quarter on AI, which is good, because now it owes the EU $1 Billion for violating the Digital Markets Act. Google made a ton of money last quarter on AI, which is good, because now it owes the EU $1 Billion for violating the Digital Markets Act. clean 3528 Google made a ton of money last quarter on AI, which is good, because now it owes the EU $1 Billion for violating the Digital Markets Act. Links and Show Notes: Full transcript of Alphabet earnings call Google hit with $1 billion EU fine, in 'constructive' talks to avoid more penalties Trump threatens new tariffs against EU over Google fine Our expanded partnership with NBCUniversal: Redefining the modern entertainment subscription Support Mate

Signal vs Noise: Jackson Mikalic, Michael Tanguma, Brian Cubellis, and Liam Nelson put four stories on the shot clock. They break down Leopold Aschenbrenner's Situational Awareness fund blowing up and getting scooped by Citadel as South Korea's market sheds roughly $2 trillion in 40 days, Elizabeth Warren and Donald Trump agreeing to scrap the debt ceiling, Fauci pleading the fifth before Rand Paul, and open source tools like Granola and Whoop getting reverse engineered overnight. Where's the signal, and where's the noise?---

What really happens after you sell your beauty brand for $1.45 billion? Too Faced co-founder Jerrod Blandino joins us to unpack the emotional and logistical reality of handing over one of the industry's biggest brands, why he thinks so many acquisitions lose their magic, and his reaction to Estée Lauder Companies' decision to restructure Too Faced instead of selling it. We also get into why he came back to launch Polite Society, how TikTok-worthy transformations shape product development, the innovation behind the brand's newest mascara, and his unfiltered advice for founders and beauty conglomerates alike. Shop Jerrod's picks Watch our episodes!Shop our episodesInstagram: @glossangelspod | TikTok: @glossangelespodEmail: glossangelespodcast@gmail.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Church of England is sitting on an £11.6 billion endowment — yet parish churches are being closed, merged, and left without clergy or cash.In this hard-hitting episode, Jamie Franklin interviews the Rev. Marcus Walker, rector of St Bartholomew the Great in the City of London and one of the key voices behind the Save the Parish movement.They dig into:

Fri, 31 Jul 2026 03:00:00 GMT http://relay.fm/material/578 http://relay.fm/material/578 Flim Flam 578 Andy Ihnatko and Florence Ion Google made a ton of money last quarter on AI, which is good, because now it owes the EU $1 Billion for violating the Digital Markets Act. Google made a ton of money last quarter on AI, which is good, because now it owes the EU $1 Billion for violating the Digital Markets Act. clean 3528 Google made a ton of money last quarter on AI, which is good, because now it owes the EU $1 Billion for violating the Digital Markets Act. Links and Show Notes: Full transcript of Alphabet earnings call Google hit with $1 billion EU fine, in 'constructive' talks to avoid more penalties Trump threatens new tariffs against EU over Google fine Our expanded partnership with NBCUniversal: Redefining the modern entertainment subscription Support Material with

A new dispute has emerged over the problem-plagued Fulton County Jail. Months ago, the Fulton County Board of Commissioners – by a majority – voted on a resolution to commit approximately $1.3 Billion towards a new jail. Now, Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens sent a harshly worded letter to the county lawmakers on Thursday. In the letter, Mayor Dickens criticized the commission for paying for a new jail and not supporting his tax extension proposal. He acknowledged Fulton County "desperately needs humane detention facilities,” but says the $1.3 Billion for a new jail is “the wrong answer.” Dickens also argued it would drain tax revenue away from local communities, and he threatened to stop housing 700 Fulton County detainees in the city’s detention center. Fulton County Commissioner District 5 Commissioner Marvin Arrington, Jr. joined “Closer Look” to respond to the mayor’s letter, saying he immediately reached out to Dickens. Arrington believes the letter is mostly critical of the board's vote to not support Atlanta’s plan to extend its tax allocation district needed for the Mayor's Neighborhood Reinvestment Initiative. Arrington did not agree with fellow commissioners and wanted to table the vote in lieu of more time to fully understand the NRI. Arrington also points out why he disagrees with Dickens’ assessment of how the county chooses to spend its tax dollars – calling the mayor’s comments, “side seat driving.” On today’s program, Arrington gave Host Rose Scott further insight into the process and reason of the county’s decision to replace the “inhumane” Fulton County Jail. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Mark Zuckerberg's net worth declined by nearly $18 billion on Thursday as Meta's stock paced an 11-day losing streak, with Wall Street souring on the Facebook parent's plans to accelerate spending on AI. Shares of Meta plunged 9% as of Thursday afternoon, pacing what would be the stock's worst single-day loss this year so far and a 21.7% slide over the last 11 trading sessions. The latest dip in Meta's shares cut $17.8 billion from Zuckerberg's net worth, valued at $183.3 billion, ranking him the sixth-richest person in the world directly ahead of Nvidia's Jensen Huang ($167.2 billion) and behind Michael Dell ($228.9 billion). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

India just carved its name into the history of space.In this episode of SparX by Mukesh Bansal, we sit down with Pawan Chandana, Co-founder & CEO of Skyroot Aerospace, just days after the company achieved a historic milestone - becoming the first private Indian company to successfully launch a satellite into orbit on its very first attempt.Chapters0:00 - Introduction 0:59 – History, Made in India06:14 – The Cold Message That Started It All 09:34 – The Lowest Point: COVID and the Investors Who Believed 12:38 – Building Rockets Was Illegal? 15:10 – The 20-Something Team launching rockets in space17:44 – Advice for Deep Tech Founders & India's New Funding Ecosystem20:01 – Inside Mission Control: Pre-Launch Checks to the 5-Minute Hold 24:53 – Stage-by-Stage: Liftoff Through the 15-Minute Journey to Orbit 29:32 – The Self-Destruct System, and Everything That Could Go Wrong33:56 – Stage Separations Explained: The Riskiest Moments of the Flight 47:30 – The Failure That Almost Derailed Everything52:20 – What's Next for Skyroot? 59:15 – Lessons From ISRO's Failures 1:02:20 – Skyroot's Ripple Effect on Startups1:04:56 – India's Next Deep Tech Bets & Opportunities1:09:06 – "This Is India's Skyroot Moment" Pawan shares the untold story behind Skyroot's remarkable journey—from a LinkedIn message that led to Mukesh Bansal becoming one of Skyroot's earliest believers, to raising capital during the toughest days of the pandemic, building one of the world's most advanced private rocket programs, and the emotional moments inside mission control during launch. There was no revenue, no roadmap, no guarantee — just conviction that these founders wouldn't quit. That was enough for Mukesh Bansal to back them back in 2018, and today that conviction has made history. The conversation goes deep into entrepreneurship, deep-tech investing, India's emerging innovation ecosystem, and the future of private space exploration.Whether you're a founder, engineer, investor, student, or simply fascinated by rockets and innovation, this episode offers a rare behind-the-scenes look at one of the most important milestones in India's startup history.If you enjoyed this conversation, don't forget to Like, Subscribe, and share the episode with someone passionate about entrepreneurship, science, innovation, or space technology.

Der Hedgefonds des 25-Jährigen Leopold Aschenbrenner, war vierfach gehebelt auf die KI-Rally gesetzt, lag im ersten Halbjahr 450 Prozent im Plus und musste dann innerhalb von Stunden fast alles verkaufen. Ken Griffins Citadel hat die Reste eingesammelt. Pip erklärt, wie Margin Calls funktionieren, warum so ein Blocktrade für den Käufer beinahe risikofreies Geld ist und welche drei Erklärungen es für Aschenbrenners Aufstieg gibt. Danach senkt OpenAI die Preise um bis zu 80 Prozent, was zu der Frage führt, ob es je eine Softwarekategorie gab, die so schnell billiger wurde. Es folgt die große Earnings-Runde mit Apple, Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, Reddit und Robinhood, und die Beobachtung, dass zwei Konzerne für denselben Capex völlig unterschiedlich behandelt werden. In der Schmuddelecke will Josh Kushner Anteile an der Weltmeisterschaft kaufen, und Google Earth lässt jeden ein Atomkraftwerk in den Iran setzen. Unterstütze unseren Podcast und entdecke die Angebote unserer Werbepartner auf ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠doppelgaenger.io/werbung⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Vielen Dank!  Philipp Glöckler und Philipp Klöckner sprechen heute über: (00:00:00) Aschenbrenner und Citadel (00:20:11) OpenAI senkt Preise (00:30:00) Anthropic-Modelle hacken (00:32:55) OpenAI-Umsatz (00:36:00) Tesla und SpaceX (00:39:35) Apple (00:43:58) Microsoft (00:46:18) Meta (00:54:23) Amazon (01:08:25) Reddit (01:09:24) Robinhood (01:12:50) FIFA-Ultimatum (01:15:12) Gefälschte Satellitenbilder (01:17:43) LinkedIn-Slop-Button (01:23:46) Pentagon gegen Anthropic (01:26:25) Durow Shownotes Situational Awareness sucht Kapital nach KI-Ausverkauf - ft.com Citadel kauft Aschenbrenners Aktienportfolio - ft.com OpenAI senkt GPT-5.6-Preise um bis zu 80 Prozent - axios.com Anthropics Modelle hackten drei Firmen im Test - wsj.com Juli-Umsatz uebertrifft das ganze zweite Quartal - cnbc.com Tesla erwaegt Verkauf des China-Geschaefts - wsj.com Apple-Quartalszahlen im Liveticker - cnbc.com Apple bremst wegen Engpaessen in der Lieferkette - ft.com Microsoft-Quartalszahlen, Azure knackt 100 Milliarden - cnbc.com Groesster Kurssprung der Firmengeschichte - finance.yahoo.com Meta-Aktie faellt nach Zuckerbergs Agenten-Vision - ft.com Amazon erhoeht KI-Investitionen auf 220 Milliarden - ft.com Amazon-Quartalszahlen, AWS waechst 37 Prozent - cnbc.com Big Tech investiert mehr als eine Billion in KI - ft.com Reddit-Quartalszahlen, Umsatz plus 61 Prozent - cnbc.com Robinhood mit Rekordumsatz durch Volatilitaet - marketwatch.com Infantino setzt FIFA-Verbaenden eine Frist von 53 Tagen - telegraph.co.uk Wie man ein Atomkraftwerk in den Iran faelscht - digitaldigging.org LinkedIn fuehrt einen Melde-Button fuer KI-Schrott ein - 404media.co Richterin zerlegt den Pentagon-Fall gegen Anthropic - axios.com Durows Reaktion auf den russischen Haftbefehl - xcancel.com

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Patrick Bet-David and the Home Team break down Palmer Luckey's plan to turn auto factories into missile plants as Anduril targets a $100 billion valuation. Can the Oculus founder build weapons faster and cheaper than defense giants, deter China, and solve America's dangerous interceptor shortage now?

Rob Ward exited Quad Lock last year for half a billion dollars. He never took a cent of outside investment to build it, was profitable every single month from day one, and ran the business with a skeleton team for years while competitors burned cash chasing scale. His first product got ripped off. His second became the thing everybody with a phone mount on their bike, car, motorcycle, or desk knows by name. This is his third appearance on the Foundr Podcast across a decade, and the first since the exit. In this interview, Rob breaks down the three-gate model he now uses to diagnose why DTC brands break, why he deliberately pulled his own face out of Quad Lock's content years before selling, and the single biggest myth he says destroyed a generation of e-commerce companies. What you'll learn in this interview: • Why "scale will fix our unit economics" is the biggest myth in DTC - and what it actually does instead • The three-gate model: first-order profitability, cash-back time, and LTV ratio - and how to know which gate you're failing • Why he built an ecosystem instead of a hero product - and how $200 of mounts creates real lock-in • How hiring painfully slowly kept Quad Lock profitable every single month it existed • Why he deliberately stopped putting his face in the brand's content - and how that decision protected the half-billion exit • The gross margin number he'd insist on if he started again today • Why the customer with the higher AOV today isn't always the one worth acquiring • How they used retail to extend reach without breaking the DTC model • What the private equity deal actually changed - and why the money never even entered the business • The three separate emotional hits of exiting: the first sell-down, the full sale, and the last day If you're bootstrapping a DTC brand, trying to fix unit economics that don't quite work, or thinking about what makes a business actually sellable one day, this conversation will fundamentally change how you think about lock-in, margins, and building something bigger than yourself. SAVE 50% ON OMNISEND FOR 3 MONTHS Get 50% off your first 3 months of email and SMS marketing with Omnisend with the code FOUNDR50. Just head to ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://your.omnisend.com/foundr⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ to get started. WANT TO GROW YOUR BRAND WITH META ADS? Join the Foundr Operators Waitlist → ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://foundr.com/operators⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ HOW WE CAN HELP YOU SCALE YOUR BUSINESS FASTER Learn directly from 7, 8 & 9-figure founders inside Foundr+ Start your $1 trial → ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.foundr.com/startdollartrial⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ PREFER A CUSTOM ROADMAP AND 1-ON-1 COACHING? → Starting from scratch? Apply here → ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://foundr.com/pages/coaching-start-application⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ → Already have a store? Apply here → ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://foundr.com/pages/coaching-growth-application⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ CONNECT WITH NATHAN CHAN Instagram → ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/nathanchan⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ LinkedIn → ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/nathanhchan/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ CONNECT WITH ROB WARD Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/robyward/ LinkedIn → ⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/in/robwardau/ Website → https://www.quadlockcase.com FOLLOW FOUNDR FOR MORE BUSINESS GROWTH STRATEGIES YouTube → ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://bit.ly/2uyvzdt⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Website → ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.foundr.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Instagram → ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/foundr/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Facebook → ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.facebook.com/foundr⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Twitter → ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.twitter.com/foundr⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ LinkedIn → ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.linkedin.com/company/foundr/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Podcast → ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.foundr.com/podcast⁠

SUMMARY: One ordinary Tuesday in the summer of 2001, Jeff sold a $200 television to a couple in a minivan — and only found out afterward that they were worth $5.5 billion and ranked 57th on the Forbes list. His unawareness didn't change their wealth by a dollar. It only changed how he treated them. In this chapter from the DadAwesome book, Jeff makes the case that most dads are doing the same thing with their own identity: parenting from poverty while holding access to infinite resources, working to earn what's already been freely given. TAKEAWAYS Your unawareness doesn't change your position. Not knowing who those customers were didn't subtract a dollar from their net worth — and forgetting you're God's son doesn't change that you are one. It only changes how you show up. The clipboard teaches conditional love. When affection gets tracked point by point, kids learn love is something they earn. Most of us carry that invisible scoreboard straight into adulthood and into our relationship with God. God set the scoreboard to infinity. Not a clipboard with changing numbers — a gymnasium scoreboard with the infinity symbol permanently displayed. You can't add to it with your wins or subtract from it with your failures. (It's why the DA logo looks the way it does.) Employee mindset and son mindset produce two different fathers. One strives, fears mistakes, measures worth by performance, and competes for attention. The other rests, lives from security, measures worth by belonging, and celebrates other people's wins. Position changes the daily stuff. Instead of managing behavior, you cultivate hearts. Instead of panicking about finances, you remember your Father owns everything. Instead of shame spirals, you experience conviction that leads to growth. QUOTES "My ignorance of their position didn't change their actual wealth. It only affected how I interacted with them." "Over time, that clipboard became a symbol of conditional love. I learned that affection was something I earned — point by point, performance by performance." "My heavenly Father has set the scoreboard to infinity. It can't increase with my successes or decrease with my failures. I can't add to infinity. I can't subtract from it." "We parent from poverty when we have access to infinite resources — striving for acceptance we already possess and working for approval that's already been given." "You're not God's employee, you're His son. And sonship is where fatherhood begins." Bonus — Jamie Winship: "Parenting is very much about the identity of the dad. The greatest gift you can give to your kids is the truth of who you are." ACTION STEPS 1. Reflection Name your clipboard. Every one of us has an area — points, grades, obedience, success, output — where we experienced conditional love. Name it, and name what pushed you toward living like an employee instead of an heir. Do the two-column audit. Am I living like an employee, or like a loved son and heir? Scarcity or abundance? (Downloadable PDF in the show notes.) Ask the two questions. Borrowed from Jamie Winship: sit alone with God, settle down, and ask, "What are the things I believe about myself that hurt me?" Name the disappointments, the failures, the places you feel like you're not enough. Then ask the follow-up: "Jesus, what do you say about me?" 2. Multiplication Send a couple of texts. Invite other dads into episode 445 and grow a circle of men who are growing alongside you. Join the prayer team. Team DadAwesome — 55 men — rides this Saturday to fuel fatherhood ministry. Give 20 minutes of prayer sometime Saturday morning, August 1st. Let's multiply in prayer. 3. Activation Start tomorrow with a declaration. Before you check your phone, before your to-do list starts talking, answer whose you are — and say it out loud, don't just think it: "I am a loved son of God." Remind your kids the scoreboard is set to infinity. Tell them, "I love you because you're mine," not because of what they accomplished. Try, "I'm so glad I get to be your dad. I'm so thankful you're my son." Take the holy pause. When you feel a critique or a scorecard-based thought forming, catch it before it comes out. Notice the moments you'd communicate more love if they performed. Ask your spouse. "Are there ways or times I communicate a lack of love because of a performance or a mistake?"     

MRKT Matrix - Thursday, July 30th Dow rallies 600 points, Nasdaq soars nearly 3% in tech-fueled recovery (CNBC) Microsoft adds record $480bn in market cap as results cheer investors (FT) Meta Reports Almost $700 Billion in Future Spending Commitments (Bloomberg) Banks in Talks to Lend $15 Billion for Anthropic Data Center Backed by Google (WSJ) DeepSeek Is Developing Massive AI Data Center in Inner Mongolia (Bloomberg) AI investor Leopold Aschenbrenner forced to unwind all public stock positions after steep losses, sources say (CNBC) ‘Talk Is Cheap': Wall Street Delivers Harsh Verdict on Warsh Fed (Bloomberg) Mortgage Rates Jump to a One-Year High (WSJ) --- Subscribe to our newsletter: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠http://riskreversal.substack.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ MRKT Matrix by RiskReversal Media is a daily AI powered podcast bringing you the top stories moving financial markets Story curation by RiskReversal, scripts by Perplexity Pro, voice by ElevenLabs

Join us as we explore the journey of Dave Van Horn, CEO of PPR Capital Management, who shares insights on building a resilient real estate investment firm, navigating market headwinds, and leveraging mortgage note investing for passive income. This episode offers valuable lessons for investors looking to scale and diversify their portfolios.   Professional Real Estate Investors - How we can help you: Investor Fuel Mastermind:  Learn more about the Investor Fuel Mastermind, including 100% deal financing, massive discounts from vendors and sponsors you're already using, our world class community of over 150 members, and SO much more here: http://www.investorfuel.com/apply   Investor Machine Marketing Partnership:  Are you looking for consistent, high quality lead generation? Investor Machine is America's #1 lead generation service professional investors. Investor Machine provides true 'white glove' support to help you build the perfect marketing plan, then we'll execute it for you…talking and working together on an ongoing basis to help you hit YOUR goals! Learn more here: http://www.investormachine.com   Coaching with Mike Hambright:  Interested in 1 on 1 coaching with Mike Hambright? Mike coaches entrepreneurs looking to level up, build coaching or service based businesses (Mike runs multiple 7 and 8 figure a year businesses), building a coaching program and more. Learn more here: https://investorfuel.com/coachingwithmike   Attend a Vacation/Mastermind Retreat with Mike Hambright: Interested in joining a "mini-mastermind" with Mike and his private clients on an upcoming "Retreat", either at locations like Cabo San Lucas, Napa, Park City ski trip, Yellowstone, or even at Mike's East Texas "Big H Ranch"? Learn more here: http://www.investorfuel.com/retreat   Property Insurance: Join the largest and most investor friendly property insurance provider in 2 minutes. Free to join, and insure all your flips and rentals within minutes! There is NO easier insurance provider on the planet (turn insurance on or off in 1 minute without talking to anyone!), and there's no 15-30% agent mark up through this platform!  Register here: https://myinvestorinsurance.com/   New Real Estate Investors - How we can work together: Investor Fuel Club (Coaching and Deal Partner Community): Looking to kickstart your real estate investing career? Join our one of a kind Coaching Community, Investor Fuel Club, where you'll get trained by some of the best real estate investors in America, and partner with them on deals! You don't need $ for deals…we'll partner with you and hold your hand along the way! Learn More here: http://www.investorfuel.com/club   —--------------------

Danny Bay details how he helped take a Korean skincare giant—which generated over $2 billion in South Korea alone—and scale its presence globally without relying on traditional paid advertising. He discusses navigating cross-border business culture, structuring direct sales teams across 16 countries, and building an active network of over 260,000 distributors through word-of-mouth marketing and localized leadership training.

How much runway does the world's energy market still have? Our Head of Commodity Research Martijn Rats joins our Global Head of Fixed Income Research Andrew Sheets to explain what's causing pressure beyond renewed tensions in the Middle East.Read more insights from Morgan Stanley.----- Transcript -----Andrew Sheets: Welcome to Thoughts on the Market. I'm Andrew Sheets, Global Head of Fixed Income Research at Morgan Stanley.Martijn Rats: And I'm Martijn Rats, Head of Commodity Research at Morgan Stanley.Andrew Sheets: Today – talking about the recent volatility and the direction ahead for oil.It's Wednesday, July 29th at 2pm in London.Martijn, it's great to talk to you again. We haven't talked for a little while on this program. But oil is once again back in the headlines and it's moving around.So maybe to just jump right into things, as you look at the lay of the land in global energy markets at the moment, what's been happening? What are you telling clients?Martijn Rats: Okay. Well, we've had a large amount of volatility, over the last couple of weeks. If you roll the clock back, sort of, to the beginning of June. In the beginning of June, it started to become clear that already some more oil was leaking out of the Strait of Hormuz than perhaps, many of us anticipated at the time.But that data has been confirmed since then. And then, of course, in the middle of June, we got the memorandum of understanding. And after that, roughly 100-150 million barrels a day or so that was behind the Strait of Hormuz got cleared. And that…Andrew Sheets: These were tankers that were stuck there during the conflict, all came out.Martijn Rats: Absolutely. Laden tankers that were there; had just basically turned into floating storage for a good couple of months. They all cleared out, and that actually created a bit of a glut, in the sense that all of a sudden, the refiners of this world had a lot of crude to absorb. And we saw many indications of physical looseness in the market, physical differentials, calendar spreads.All sorts of indicators pointed that physically there was a lot of oil, temporarily to be absorbed. And the spot price of Brent fell to $70. And that looked to be the new direction of travel. In principle, the world is not short of oil if you take the geopolitics out of it.So, for a while it, it looked bearish. But then a new set of disruptions came, and the military conflict restarted, and we've had 13 days of overnight bombing. And with that also the flow through the Strait of Hormuz diminished again. And we are back in the last, sort of, week, 10 days to very, very low levels. The same levels we had in March.The flow through the strait is not exactly zero. But it's sort of 2-3 million barrels a day, sort of, down 80 percent to 90 percent of what it was before the conflict. And with that, prices have rallied. But on top of that, last week it looked like the military activity could really scale up. And for a couple of days, the markets priced that in.But then we have other choke points to take into account now. Not only Hormuz, but the Bab el-Mandeb, the CPC terminal, the issues in global refining. Altogether, it's been a tremendously volatile period. So, we're on the whole leaning towards the constructive side because there are so many disruptions in the system. But it's a very hard one to call at the moment.Andrew Sheets: So Martijn, let's talk about those other disruptions besides just the Strait of Hormuz. Because yeah, it's not just the Strait of Hormuz anymore. We have issues in the Red Sea. You have ongoing issues with Russian energy infrastructure that's being attacked by Ukraine. Just what are these other factors that are out there? And how much do they matter relative to, you know, how many ships are passing through the Strait of Hormuz?Martijn Rats: Yeah. They matter a lot, and you can see that expressed in the price of refined product more than the price of crude. If you look at the main global benchmark for the price of diesel, which is arguably the ICE gas-oil contract, which are diesel barges delivered in Rotterdam or in the wider ARA area, it's trading at about $1,200 a ton, which is sort of $150-$160 per barrel.That's where you see the tightness. And so out of the total end user price, the refiners are capturing more at the moment than the crude suppliers. But what end users pay is not $85 per barrel for Brent crude oil, it's $1,200 a ton for diesel. And that is a very high price. Now, that is a result effectively of four major issues that the oil market has to deal with.One of them is Hormuz, as just discussed. But then we come to these other three. And these other three are the Bab el-Mandeb, which is the strait on the other side of the Arabian Peninsula that provides entry and exit to the Red Sea. That strait has gained in importance because Saudi Arabia has been redirecting about 4 million barrels a day of crude oil supply that was previously exported via Hormuz. Now through the East-West Pipeline to a terminal near a city called Yanbu, from where it is loaded and mostly sails down south through the Bab el-Mandab to refineries in Asia.The Bab el-Mandab is a strait that is effectively controlled by the Houthis, which is an Iran-aligned group that controls much of Yemen. And already in [20]24, earlier in [20]25, they've been very effective, controlling tanker traffic through that strait. And in the last sort of week or so, they have said that they will no longer allow Saudi tankers to sail out. And also, that group has executed drone attacks on Saudi oil infrastructure near the Jazan refinery, near the Yanbu terminal, and overnight also the Abqaiq facility, which is a large oil processing plant.So, this whole Red Sea situation puts at risk something like an incremental 3.5 million barrels a day of crude.Then we've had to deal with issues at the CPC terminal, which is again, also a very large oil export terminal. About 1.5-2 million barrels a day of crude is exported from CPC, which is a terminal near the Russian city of Novorossiysk.Ukraine has been executing drone attacks on tankers that have been trying to load from the CPC terminal. Much of last week, the CPC terminal was out. Over the last 24 hours, a few tankers have loaded again, but it's very unreliable. It's on again, off again. It's a very disrupted flow. In and of itself, a single terminal loading 1.5-2 million barrels a day is very, very large. So, we care.And then the third issue that the oil market has been dealing with, and this also comes back to this issue about these refined product prices, is very severe tightness in the global refining system. That is an issue of some refineries can't export because they're behind the Strait of Hormuz again.So, you can say, "Well, isn't that; that's sort of the same problem?" But nevertheless, it expresses it somewhere else. It's partly a problem of, sort of, the Chinese refinery system running very low. But it's recently mostly been driven by Ukrainian drone attacks on Russian refineries. And by now, something like 60 percent of the Russian refining system is out.And with that, exports of refined products have declined very significantly. There's a gasoline export ban. There's a diesel export ban from Russia. Russia used to be a very large diesel exporter. That is now down to practically zero. And with that, refined product markets have rallied severely on top of the price of crude.Andrew Sheets: And I think that's interesting [be]cause when we think about the economic impact of oil, while, you know, the price of oil per barrel is often the most kind of visible marker that we have – it's often the refined product that we actually use. You know, a truck is running on diesel. It's not running on crude oil.And, you know, that cost of diesel, of jet fuel, of gasoline, you know, that is the thing that can often really affect business margins. And the ability to operate and move product around. So, I mean, just give a sense like how much have those diesel prices gone up? And how much further could they rise if you're operating, you know, a trucking company in Europe?Martijn Rats: Yeah. Look, when supply is inherently scarce, we often ask the question – what is the demand destruction price, right? If you can't supply the stuff quick enough, the physical oil market, be it crude or refined product, must balance.There are a finite number of molecules in the system, and we can store them for a bit. We can take them out of storage. But when you take storage into account, molecules can't disappear out of nowhere. And they can't create it out of nowhere either. So, the system must balance. And if you can't supply it quick enough, the only way to balance sometimes is through demand destruction.And then we ask the question, what is the price that effectively causes that to happen? And if you look historically, that is often expressed in crude, something like $140-$150 a barrel. We've seen that before. But those were occasions where refining was not an issue. And then crude needs to do the heavy lifting to drive prices higher.What we're having at the moment is that refined products need to do it. And so, from experience earlier in the year, back in 2022, some other occasions, the price that destroys diesel demand is probably in the order of $1,400 a ton. In the diesel market, we use tons rather than barrels for historical reasons. Just to make it easy.But it's about $1,400 a ton, which is about sort of, you know, like $180-$190 per barrel. That really stops diesel demand in its track. At the moment, we're $1,230-$1,240, that sort of level. And so, we are getting close. There is probably a little bit more to go, like another 5 percent, 10 percent, that sort of thing, before you really hit some exceptionally high levels.But the diesel price, I would argue, is doing exactly that. It's searching for this demand destruction price. It's just if you then take that sort of $160 diesel that we have at the moment, how much do the refiners get versus how much do the crude producers get?At the moment, the refiners are getting $65- $70 out of that, leaving comparatively little for the crude supplier. But the refined product price is the channel by which the economy is impacted and ultimately also by which demand is eroded.Andrew Sheets: When we're talking about demand destruction, we're talking about at what price does a trucking company not operate, does not drive as much, you know, does not, you know... We're talking about less activity. And inherently that is, I think a risk to growth. But especially risk to growth in Europe where the starting point for growth is already pretty weak.Martijn Rats: Yes. So, we are watching as much, how the Ukrainian drone attacks on Russian refiners are playing out as we are watching, sort of, the Strait of Hormuz.Andrew Sheets: Martijn, the last thing I wanted to talk to you about is, you know, we've been talking about the Iran conflict since late February. And, you know, we're sitting here in late July. And it's clear that, you know, there was a small normalization in flows as you talked about. But we're back to a place where those flows are nowhere near normal.And I think the question on everybody's mind is how much longer can this go on before there's a much larger shock to energy prices?Now, again, you've mentioned we're already seeing some of that shock to diesel, but, you know, a much bigger disruption. What's your current thinking on how much runway the energy system still has?Martijn Rats: Yeah. It's an excellent question, and it's turned out to be fiendishly hard to answer. My gut feel based on how the data is behaving, based on what we know from history: If this lasts another, sort of, month or two, three, then it's hard to argue that by then the buffers in the system will not have been completely exhausted.The reason why I think oil analysts have lost a degree of confidence in forecasting this accurately is that there's a lot of unexplained oil that does require some explanation. If you look at the cumulative amount of supply loss from the Middle East since the start of this conflict, easily over 1.5 billion barrels. 1.5 billion barrels in 150 days is an enormous amount.And yet, the inventory draws that we can find in observable data, they are at best a third of that, maybe 0.5 billion barrels. And so, there's another billion barrels where you say, "Yeah, we had that last year, but we don't have this this year.”How did we solve that billion-barrel problem? And you can say, "Well, we were a bit oversupplied going into it," and a few other things. But you, sort of, have to conclude, and I think this is also, you know, talking to clients and investors, other market participants. I think this is sort of collectively we're discovering this is that this system of, like, unobservable inventories has to be way bigger.That is either inventories like in the supply chain, inventories at customers end, or in countries where we generally just have very little data anyway, like in China. And so, the system has been behaving as if already in [20]24 and [20]25 actually, we were putting a lot of oil into these, in storages that are hard to observe – because in that period we had the opposite problem.We were forecasting large inventory builds, and we couldn't find them all. And now we're forecasting large draws, and we haven't been able to find them all. And so, the system has been behaving as this; the unobservable part of the inventories are way larger.And… But at some point, they also run out. But because they're hard to observe, we don't know when. And I would guess if we're getting towards the end of the summer by August-September, and we're still in this situation? Yeah, then we're going into the winter. Like, you know, German households objectively have little storage of heating oil.Andrew Sheets: Mm-hmm.Martijn Rats: And they need to be rebuilt. And there are a few examples where we do know what customers are doing with their inventories, and they point to a picture where, yeah, by the end of the summer, like, we're running on fumes. And so, look, this – we've been able to patch this up. But it can't go on forever.Andrew Sheets: Well, Martijn, always a pleasure to, to catch up with you and talk energy markets.Martijn Rats: Nice to talk to you.Andrew Sheets: And thank you for listening. If you enjoy Thoughts on the Market, please take a moment to rate and review us.And please share with a friend or colleague today.

We explore the expected size of AI-related debt, which vehicles hold it, what could go wrong, and how to protect yourself.Topics covered include:How AI capex boom compares to other large booms and bustsWhat fixed income vehicles hold AI-linked debtWhat mechanisms are being used to transfer AI-debt risk.How circular finance is contributing to the AI infrastructure buildoutWhat could go wrong with the AI infrastructure buildout that could lead to losses on AI-related debtHow to tell what exposure you have to AI debtSponsorsDelete Me – Use code David20 to get 20% offNetSuite Insiders Guide Email NewsletterGet our free Investors' Checklist when you sign up for the free Money for the Rest of Us email newsletterOur Premium ProductsAsset CampMoney for the Rest of Us PlusShow NotesAI debt slide deck used for episodeRBC Weighs $2 Billion Risk Transfer to Hedge Data Center-Linked Loans by Esteban Duarte and Paula Sambo—BloombergHyperscalers Tap External Financing as AI Capex Outruns Cash Flow—FactSet InsightWhat History Tells Us About The AI Investment Boom by Larry Swedroe—Financial AdvisorGoldman Sachs Warns on AI's Debt Tsunami — Is This the End of the AI Boom? by Rich Duprey—Yahoo! FinanceProgress and peril by Pablo Hernández de Cos—BISThe Opportunities and Risks AI Presents for the Economy and Financial System by Governor Lisa D. Cook—The Federal ReserveFinancial Stability Report by The Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System—The Federal ReserveFinancing the AI infrastructure boom: on- and off-balance sheet borrowing by Egemen Eren, Ingomar Krohn and Karamfil Todorov—BISHow AI debt financing impacts duration supply and interest rates by Hugo De Vere, Srini Ramaswamy and Seth Searls—Federal Reserve Bank of DallasUS Life Insurers Held $807 Billion of Hard-to-Sell Credit by Alexandre Rajbhandari—BloombergInsurers are funding AI infrastructure – NAIC wants to know if the ratings hold up by Paul Lucas—Insurance BusinessUS Corporate Bonds Statistics—sifmaSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This week we dug into the Maduro kidnapping as the entry point for something much bigger—the Cold War racism and corporate vengeance that has driven U.S. Policy toward Venezuela for decades, why there has never actually been a socialist government anywhere on earth, and why the American left needs to get its definitions straight before the right keeps winning that argument by default. Then we checked back in on AI concentration risk, where the hyperscalers are now issuing long-dated debt at spreads approaching junk bond territory, which tells you what the market actually thinks about pinning the entire economy on a technology nobody has fully defined yet. Chapters Intro: 00:00:38 Quick Takes: 00:01:49 Max Notes: 00:09:36 Killer Left Take of the Week: 00:28:31 Chart of the Week: 00:31:25 Headlines: 00:33:28 Resources The Economist: An interview with Elon Musk The Economist: Elon Musk on AI: humans will no longer be in control in ten years LastWeekTonight: Trump & Crypto Molly White Diario AS: Trump’s Top 10 Jokes at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner CNBC Television: ‘Big Short’ investor Steve Eisman: Market will have ‘a big correction’ if AI doesn’t succeed Amnesty International: Facts and figures: Regularization and protection of Venezuelan nationals in Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Chile Migration Policy Institute: Venezuelan Immigrants in the United States USA Today: Harris’ border work was on ‘root causes’ of migration; she wasn’t in charge | Fact check GDN Online: Venezuela to sell up to 10% of shares in some state companies - Maduro Reuters: Exxon awarded $908 million in Venezuela dispute The New York Times: How Marco Rubio Is Running Venezuela From Afar The Real News Network: US provides $300 million in earthquake recovery money to Venezuela while sitting on $8 billion in stolen oil wealth The New York Times: With $8 Billion in Venezuelan Oil Money, U.S. Gives $300 Million in Quake Aid Euro News: Venezuela calls for release of frozen assets to help earthquake recovery efforts Current Affairs: Socialists Humiliate Clueless NewsNation Host Bloomberg: Big Tech Debt Flood Is Taking Over Risk In Market: Credit Weekly Jacobin: The Cockroach Protests Are Reviving India’s Ailing Democracy The Progressive: Heat Waves Show Climate Change Is Here Truthdig: The Monty Python Election: Binface vs. Mr. Brexit Book Love Anderson M Bean: Venezuela in Crisis: Socialist Perspectives UNFTR Resources Video: On The Record 7-28-26 (Crushing Venezuela | Trump Bombs | Elon Blows | Socialism.) Essay: Socialism. -- If you like #UNFTR, please leave us a rating and review on Apple Podcasts and Spotify: unftr.com/rate and follow us on Facebook, Bluesky, and Instagram at @UNFTRpod. Visit us online at unftr.com. Become a member at unftr.com/memberships. Buy yourself some Unf*cking Coffee at shop.unftr.com. Visit our bookshop.org page at bookshop.org/shop/UNFTRpod to find the full UNFTR book list, and find book recommendations from our Unf*ckers at bookshop.org/lists/unf-cker-book-recommendations. Access the UNFTR Musicless feed by following the instructions at unftr.com/accessibilitySupport the show: https://www.unftr.com/membershipsSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Treasury's new working paper puts a hard number on the first seven years of Opportunity Zones: $112 billion of Opportunity Zone investments through the end of 2024, reaching more than 6,000 census tracts. Catherine Lyons of the Economic Innovation Group joins the show to unpack the data, including the finding that rural Opportunity Zones matched urban ones in reach at 77 percent, even as rural deals came in far smaller. Plus, Catherine explains what separates a 96 percent hit rate from a 23 percent one as governors finalize their OZ 2.0 nominations, why only 3,000 new investors entered the market between 2021 and 2024, and where the EIG Opportunity Zones Coalition is pushing Treasury to change transition guidance issued in IRS Notice 2026-40. Show notes & summary: https://opportunityzones.com/2026/07/catherine-lyons-390/

Claim your tariff refund at realtariffs.com   This episode was sponsored by Cardiff  LightSpeed VT: https://www.lightspeedvt.com/ Dropping Bombs Podcast: https://www.droppingbombs.com/ "Nobody talks about the $80 billion the government still owes small businesses."   Today's Dropping Bombs episode delivers a wake-up call with Trevor Hall, the CPA and Certified Fraud Examiner who's spent two decades untangling the tax code — and now leads the charge helping businesses claim tariff refunds most don't even know they're owed.   Trevor breaks down the three-phase refund process and the 180-day clock most business owners don't realize is ticking. He exposes the six-figure filing mistakes he's personally caught before they cost real companies real money. Plus, he reveals the little-known buyout option that pays out 70–95% of your refund upfront, no strings attached.   The government is sitting on billions it's legally required to hand back — and banking on the fact that most people never find out. This episode pulls back the curtain on exactly how that game works.  

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Tickets for our live show in New York are on sale now! Get yours here. The Trump administration is imposing tariffs ranging from 10% to 12.5% on its major trading partners as part of a new set of duties that the White House says are designed to combat forced labor. The White House has also proposed new tariffs for fining U.S. tech companies. WSJ's Gavin Bade walks us through the new levies and explores the architect behind them and how he built them to last. Jessica Mendoza hosts. Further Listening: - How Do You Refund $166 Billion? - Trump's Tariffs Are Illegal. He's Got a Plan B. - Trump's Tariff Whiplash. Sign up for WSJ's free What's News newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices