May 9th: What I’m Reading, Saving, and Rethinking

Happy Friday! Every week, I save dozens of posts, articles, and newsletters that challenge my thinking. Here's what stood out this week and why I think it's worth your time too.

🔥 This Week's Saves

🔗 The Age of the Double Sell-Out

Summary
W. David Marx explores the evolution of the concept of "selling out" in youth culture. He introduces the idea of the "double sell-out," where creators first produce market-friendly content to gain fame and then leverage that fame for further commercial endeavors, often at the expense of artistic integrity.

Why It Matters

• Cultural Shift: The article highlights a significant shift from valuing artistic authenticity to embracing commercial success as the primary goal.

• Impact on Creativity: This trend may lead to a homogenization of culture, where commercial viability overshadows innovation and genuine expression.

• Consumer Awareness: Understanding this shift can help consumers critically evaluate the content they engage with and support creators who prioritize artistic value.

My Take

The "double sell-out" phenomenon reflects a broader cultural trend where commercial success is often prioritized over creative integrity. This isn’t culture. It’s capitalism with a ring light. Influence used to mean something. Now it’s just a pipeline:

Audience → Merch → Exit.

I’m not asking creators to be broke.
I’m asking them to give a damn.

Bottom line
If you’re going to build a platform, use it for something other than another white-label SKU with your name on it. Be more than a personal QVC channel.

Make. Something. Worth. Following.

🔗 Building a Consumer AI Tech Company

Summary
Sam Altman reflects on OpenAI’s unexpected evolution from a nonprofit research lab to a consumer tech company with one of the fastest-growing products in history. He discusses the origin story of ChatGPT, the shift toward bundling AI products, tensions with commercialization, and what it means to build for billions, all while navigating philosophical and regulatory unknowns.

Why It Matters

• OpenAI didn’t plan to be a product company: ChatGPT’s virality forced it to scale consumer infrastructure fast, transforming OpenAI’s DNA.

• Consumer AI is now the strategic battleground: Altman sees long-term value in owning distribution (e.g., daily active users), not just having the best models.

• OpenAI’s future may look more like Apple or Google: Bundling services, controlling logins, owning the identity layer as more than a pure AI lab.

• Altman hints at open source models and GPT-5: Infrastructure, product execution, and user relationships will be the real differentiators.

My Take

ChatGPT is not-so-quietly positioning itself as Google’s first real threat in 20 years.

• ChatGPT started as a research preview. It’s now the default search behavior for an entire generation, especially Gen Z.

• Google’s advantage was always distribution. But if you use ChatGPT for answers, tasks, shopping, and coding, you’re skipping search entirely.

• Altman knows this. That’s why OpenAI is bundling products, building persistent identity, and expanding memory to lock in users before Google can catch up.

The shift from search-based discovery to agent-based execution is underway.
Google indexes the internet. ChatGPT starts doing it for you.

Bottom line

Whoever owns the first touch (the question, the command, the default behavior) owns the future. The question we’ll be asking is “Do you start with ChatGPT or Google?”

🔗 Ahref’s radical generosity engine

Summary
Ahrefs has built a $100M+ business by giving away what most SaaS companies would paywall. From free tools to full-on SEO education, their “generosity engine” turns trust into traffic, and traffic into customers. No growth hacks here.

Why It Matters

• Instead of spending millions on paid ads, Ahrefs invests in user value first and lets word-of-mouth and content do the compounding.

• Their freemium approach is a brand moat, a durable competitive advantage that protects a company from competitors.

• It’s a playbook for earning attention in a high-churn, low-trust market.

My Take

Most SaaS companies gate value. Ahrefs gives it away and ends up owning the conversation.

• They’re engineering goodwill at scale.

• It works because it’s real: the content’s useful, the tools are free, and the product backs it all up.

• This is strategic generosity that compounds over time. This generosity builds trust and goodwill. And over time:

  • People link to them

  • Recommend them

  • Start with their tools when they become buyers

  That’s the compounding part: every act of generosity today plants a seed for future traffic, brand equity, and customers

Bottom line
Ahrefs proves that the most powerful funnel is the one people choose to enter.

This newsletter is for you. What marketing challenges are you facing in your startup journey? Reply directly to this email with your questions or topics you'd like to see covered in future issues.

Until next week,

Adam

P.S. Found this helpful? Forward it to another founder who might benefit—we're all in this together.