July 31, 2026 · 9 min read
The Store Is Becoming an Answer
Retailers are entering AI assistants to preserve their taste, but every successful integration teaches shoppers to begin somewhere other than the store.
HAAM Notes / Topic
Platforms
6 notes follow this idea through the HAAM archive.
July 31, 2026 · 11 min read
The Business of Making People Compete to Work
Vibe Jam, ETHGlobal, Kaggle, Topcoder, InnoCentive, HeroX and XPRIZE all turn uncertain problems into competitions where the crowd absorbs much of the risk of experimentation.
July 30, 2026 · 6 min read
The Product Is a Decoy
Many businesses make money from something slightly different from what they appear to sell. The visible product is often the mechanism that accumulates the real asset.
July 29, 2026 · 8 min read
AI Slop Is the Factory. Brainrot Is the Product.
Brainrot is an attention format. AI slop is a production system. Generative AI did not invent our appetite for repetitive nonsense, but it industrialized the supply and gave recommendation algorithms an infinite field of cultural experiments.
July 27, 2026 · 8 min read
The Influencer Who Became the Gym
Growingannanas looks like a fitness creator. Look closer and she is a vertically integrated global gym whose building, instructor, billboard and membership funnel have been compressed into one person.
July 26, 2026 · 13 min read
The Product Died. The Growth Hacker Won.
Nikita Bier built two apps that reached number one, sold them to Facebook and Discord, and watched both disappear within months. The more interesting product may have been the public proof that he could manufacture growth.