The $0 CAC Launch (And Why You Can't Buy It)

📔 Jeff’s Diary (yes, I’ll let you read it)

“Why cant you?” – that’s what a friend told me this week on my 40^th birthday trip. He said it was the thing I would always say to him after he’d share his ideas with me. And it reminded me of something I somehow forgot;

Impossible has many options.

Business is good, family is healthy, but deep down inside, like an Eeyor cloud hovering over me wherever I went, something was compounding to a point of near collapse.

I had set a bar for myself that made me feel like I wasn’t living up to my potential. That every rung on the ladder I climbed, for some reason I always looked up to see what was next, when I should’ve been looking down to remember what I had accomplished.

There are levels to life. And if you’re always reaching, you’ll never enjoy what you’re standing on. To take a moment and realize everything you have is earned, yet the imposter syndrome I’d been feeling was both pushing me forward yet also holding me back. I simply could not find satisfaction in where I was, and it was eating me alive.

I’d been hoping for a little Jiminy Cricket to pop out and tell me everything’s going to be ok, but thankfully, I got something better.

A friend willing to share how I made him feel. That when he was down in the dumps and thought he can’t, he would think of me asking him “why cant you”.

In all my recent searching for purpose and reason, that brought tears to my eyes.

How I made someone else feel. How my way of thinking and living gave someone hope and optimism. And it was the exact thing I needed to hear to break me from the chaos I had created for myself.

So here I am, flying home with a resurgence of life and the pursuit to accomplish what I want to accomplish in these final days of the year.

And in 2026, I wanted to share my goals so you can set yours:

1. We will own the infrastructure for every creator powered brand. The inbound from creators and founders who want to build together is growing faster than I expected. We’ll raise our seed round in Jan!

2. We will build a Content to Commerce team to leverage the creators we’re putting inside businesses and scale their brand storytelling and customer acquisition funnels.

3. We will launch a venture studio, incubating and accelerating creator ideas into reality with the best operators in their category.

So as 2025 comes to a close, what are you reaching for?

Set your goals. Dream big. And remember, the destination will always seem too far into the distance if you don’t enjoy the journey there.

If you want to join me on my journey, as investor, partner or employee, or want to simply talk about life or work struggles, I’m always down to chat with good people doing hard things.

Replies go right to my email.

Happy New Year y’all.

– Jeff

📆 WHAT WE WILL HIT ON THIS WEEK:

→ Every founder must know: Sahil Bloom just generated 1M+ free impressions for his new skincare line. Here is why "Distribution First" is the only strategy that matters.

→ The DraftKings Pivot: Why a sports betting billionaire is launching a company to "build empires" for creators (and what it means for your cap table).

→ Instagram Surrenders: The new "Your Algorithm" feature proves the platforms are terrified of losing users to closed communities.

🚀 Sahil Bloom Just Proved The "Distribution First" Thesis

Sahil Bloom launched his own skincare line this week, Wild Roman. He didn’t hire an agency. He didn’t run a Super Bowl ad. He tweeted.

That single announcement generated 1M+ impressions on his exact target audience (health-conscious, high-performing men) for free.

Why this matters: If you tried to launch a skincare brand today, you would be fighting a bloody war on Meta, paying $40-$60 just to acquire a single customer. Sahil spent years building the distribution (audience) first, so now the product (skincare) has a highway to run on.

But here is the reality for you: Most founders don't have 5 years to build an audience of 1M+ people before they launch. You have burn rates and board meetings now.

If you don't own the distribution, you need to partner with someone who does—and I don't mean paying them for a sponsored post.

Use your Cap Table, not your Marketing Budget. Find the "Sahil Bloom" of your specific niche. Don't offer them a CPM fee. Offer them Equity.

• You Provide: The Infrastructure (Product, Ops, Logistics).

• They Provide: The Distribution (Audience, Trust, $0 CAC).

When you give a creator ownership, you aren't "renting" their feed for a day. You are aligning their net worth with your growth. That is how you get Sahil-level leverage without spending 5 years on Twitter.

But finding the right partner is usually a nightmare. So we fixed that, too. We built the discovery tool to help you identify the high-signal creators in your specific niche who are actually worth the equity.

🎰 The "Moneyball" Era of Creators is Here

Matt Kalish, the billionaire co-founder of DraftKings, just launched a new company called HardScope. The pitch? They don't just "manage" creators; they "build empires."

He is bringing the same aggressive, data-heavy infrastructure that built a sports betting giant and applying it to creators. He’s explicitly targeting independent talent to build "C-Suite" capabilities around them—strategy, production, and equity-based ventures.

Why this matters: 

When sports betting founders enter a market, it’s because they see arbitrage. They know that creators are currently undervalued assets because they lack the infrastructure to capture their own value.

The "Middleman Agency" model is dead. The new model is equity partnership. HardScope isn't trying to take 20% of a brand deal; they are trying to build the next MrBeast-sized conglomerate.

If you are a founder, this is your signal. The smartest capital in the world isn't just buying ads anymore; they are building infrastructure around creators. This validates the asset class. You have the agility to move faster than a holding company. Stop treating creators like gig workers and start treating them like the business partners this deal proves they are.

🤖 Instagram Finally Lets You Drive the Robot

Instagram just rolled out a new feature called "Your Algorithm" in the US. It allows users to see exactly what topics the AI thinks they like—and manually edit them to reset their feed.

Why this matters: 

For years, the algorithm was a black box. Founders and creators had to "guess" what the machine wanted. This move is a surrender. Instagram realizes that if they keep force-feeding users content they don't want, those users will leave for closed communities.

The Operator Take: 

Stop trying to "hack" the algorithm with trending audio and engagement bait. The platforms are moving toward active user curation.

The best growth strategy in 2025 isn't tricking the robot; it's being so valuable that your audience manually adds you to their "Must See" list.

Build for the human, and the code will follow.

Found this valuable? Don't hoard the knowledge.

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➡️ Need 1:1 guidance? Block time with me any Friday here. No pitches, just real talk.