R to @pzakin: I see, so as like an integration that you can use as a step in Zapier

R to @RealKevinYang: I dont think they have a web-based editor for defining templates. Also - I'm not their market - but i don't currently operate a domain I can prove ownership of.

R to @pzakin: resend?

R to @mathemagic1an: Dope

R to @vibhu: Thank you for sharing. I used to love going and taking people to the b8ta stores. Sad how it ended but you created a beautiful experience and people will always remember that

RT by @RealKevinYang: In March 2020, I was running a fast growing global retail business called b8ta, on track to do well over $30 million in revenue and as much in GMV. Our last private valuation was near $200 million. We had just expanded our business to Japan, to EMEA, launched 3 new categories, signed software deals with major retailers like Macy's and Nike, and won a deal with Toys R Us that stunned the retail industry to revive their stores out of bankruptcy. I used to describe that time as having reached Basecamp 3 on Everest and prepping to make the ascent to the Summit. We had won multiple retail awards, and I was one of 50 invitees in 2022 to the Goldman Sachs Builders & Innovators summit, the most prestigious conference for pre-IPO founders. I return to March 2020 often because it's the beginning of what led me on a path to where I am today, and frankly I still deal with startup founder PTSD from that month and the ensuing events. On March 9th, 2020, I was at Starbucks HQ in Seattle meeting with Andy Adams, SVP of Store Development. We met to follow-up on a partnership whereby b8ta would place products in Starbucks locations, partner on co-locating stores together, and add their new kiosk module to some of our existing locations (they called it Starbucks Cloud). It was going to be another huge win for us. Although COVID-19 seemed quite serious, it wasn't obvious what was going to happen next. Our stores were still open but traffic had begun to die out in our urban locations. Just 11 days later, on March 20, we were forced by government order to close all of our stores, and we laid off half of our corporate team overnight including my co-founder and head of business, and furloughed all 250 retail employees. It was the beginning of the end for the business in the US. For the next 20 months, we operated in five-alarm fire mode at all times. The corp team, which started at 85, eventually was down to 40, and then 25, and then 15. We lost 95% of our revenue. What made navigating this situation particularly difficult was that we never knew how long closures were going to last, and neither did landlords. So we were always operating with a degree of optionality, and landlords weren't forgiving. In time, we re-engineered the business completely. We built a new model based on commissions instead of SaaS-like contracts, and an ingenious attribution product called Ark. We built film studios directly into our stores, so we could offer live shopping through our website. We aggressively shifted our model from physical to online, building out new warehouse capabilities and a new e-commerce site. We renegotiated almost every single one of our leases & contracts, and bought out of our failing stores. We sold back Toys R Us to our joint venture partner, wholesaled inventory, sold a $2m ARR software business that we had acquired 2 months prior to March 2020. Sold anything we could to raise capital. We did multiple pay-to-play rounds, in the process restructuring our cap table. In total we were able to find around $16 million in cash during the pandemic. The problem of course was that traffic never returned to our stores, and even after restructuring we were still on the hook to pay millions in rent and store payroll. Plus, we had growing debt from locations we abandoned but hadn't finalized buyouts with. Ultimately, although we made miracles happen to keep the business alive as long as we did, we couldn't reach a deal with our investors and landlords to keep it going, and we had no choice but to take the company into a bankruptcy process in November 2021. A PR firm I hired near the end of b8ta's life told me that nobody wanted to hear my COVID sob story. I never forgot that. And some investors have told me that it shows weakness to talk about the "difficult journey." So I've never really written about it or talked about it to this day. I sometimes feel grief for what was taken from us, and you'll see that it comes out subtly in my posts here from time-to-time, but I never want this story to be lost because it is part of me. And I've always loved to write, it's therapeutic and grounding. 2020-2022 was an incredible time of learning that very few people will ever have. This experience forged in me and my team an unmatched amount of discipline, resilience, and creativity. We bring that to work every day and night. I still think about the metaphor of climbing Everest, because even though we descended back to Basecamp 1, I know the route to Basecamp 3 like the back of my hand, and we have all the best equipment. So at this point, it's just a matter of time.

R to @frantzfries: LOL

R to @jakexia27: oh no :(

R to @kadokaelan: im ok!

R to @AntWilson: duplicating a project

R to @pzakin: Yeah, fwiw I lean much more positive than dystopian

R to @RealKevinYang: I do think LLMs are going to enable all kinds of new technologies for kids. Some will be dystopian, some will be amazing.

R to @pzakin: huge opportunity

R to @RealKevinYang: Future gen talking Elmo will 100% have access to an llm.

R to @RealKevinYang: Here's another slightly dystopian thought Parents will code the values they want their child to have into their stuffed animal (think 1996 talking Elmo) "I want my kid to be Christian and moderate leaning right"

So is anyone working on Ads for ChatGPT? 😯 I imagine there's a lot of science around detecting when someone is receptive to being sold and figuring out what to say to subtly nudge them to buy Probably closer to inception than display ads

R to @rahulvohra: Is there a way around this one? Running into this same issue where I want drafts created via the Gmail API (or just, in gmail) to show up in @Superhuman.