Sean Frank says ads eat everything, Bieber announced he's going hardware with Skylrk, and Meta shed $115B in a single day. Plus four guest interviews on premium menswear, hybrid performance beverages, ad-industry media, and the mental-performance brand chasing 4,000 retail doors.

ON TODAY'S EPISODE OF ECOMM COWBOY

Steven Borrelli (Founder and CEO, Cuts) — Founder of the LA-based premium fitted tees and basics brand. We get into the post that lit up the timeline ("Fire CFO, 3x marketing") and what's on his mind running a category-defining DTC business right now.

Jack Westerkamp (Co-Founder, Breaking and Entering Media) — Co-founded the NYC ad-industry media company with Geno Schellenberger during the pandemic. Raised $50K friends-and-family and built it into a podcast at ~150K listeners with daily content and The Vault Substack. We get into how much of the $50K was gone by month six, what putting his name on a creator podcast cost him, the biggest revenue day in BAE history, and what TBPN has that they don't.

William Hicks (Co-Founder and CEO, Magic Mind) — Scaled the Venice-based "mental performance elixir" from DTC-only to ~1,000 retail doors with 24,000 monthly subscribers after 67 investor rejections. Targets 4,000 doors by end of 2025 fueled by a late-2024 round led by Rocana. Runs $1M/month in digital ad spend driving 60M brand impressions, plus a 25-agent offshore influencer team closing 100+ deals a month. We dig into where they landed vs. the 4,000-door target, the advisor whose pitch flip turned the 67th no into a yes, velocities per door at Sprouts and Central Market, defending $1M/month against a $6M total category, and whether the Magic Spoon flywheel comp holds up.

ALSO ON THE SHOW

- Eli Lilly's obesity drug now cuts sleep apnea 60%

- Half of restaurants' orders come from just 7% of guests

- The longest line witnessed in NYC

- US fertility rate hits 1.57 children per woman in 2025

- Lock your fun apps until you get home

- Watch and react: Life with Claude

- Watch and react: What is X in 2026?

- She ate the profit margin and ran

- The bait-and-switch of the day

- Moment of zen: SpaceX welder's $10K stock became nearly $1M

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Welcome to DTC's daily — what's now and next in ecommerce so founders, marketers, and operators can survive and thrive.

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