Thinks 1556

Mark Chen: “I have a different framing around scaling. So when it comes to unsupervised learning, you want to put more ingredients like compute, algorithmic efficiencies and more data. And GPT 4.5 really is proof that we can continue the scaling paradigm. And this paradigm is not the antithesis of reasoning. You need knowledge to build reasoning on top of. A model can’t go in blind and just learn reasoning from scratch. So we find these two paradigms to be fairly complimentary, and we think they have feedback loops on each other. GPT 4.5 is smart in different ways from the ways that reasoning models are smart. When you look at the model today, it has a lot more world knowledge. When we look at comparisons against GPT 4o, you see that for everyday use cases people prefer [4.5] by a margin of 60%. For productivity and knowledge work against GPT 4-0, there’s almost like a 70% preference rate. So people are really responding to this model, and it’s this knowledge that we can leverage for our reasoning models in the future.”

Jaspreet Bindra: “Agentic AI is the thinker and planner, with autonomy to act within set parameters. This is where AI steps into roles that require context-awareness, such as virtual assistants that understand user preferences or customer support bots that resolve complex issues. Imagine Agentic AI like an intern—it anticipates needs, solves problems before they arise and collaborates with humans on strategic tasks. This phase represents the emergence of AI as a cognitive partner, influencing how we work, learn and live.”

WSJ: “As global demand for new kinds of robots has shot up, mass manufacturing and falling costs for components are making them cheaper to produce. Just as important, new kinds of AI—some close kin to the kind that has upended the priorities of tech companies and governments since the debut of ChatGPT—are animating robot bodies in ways that simply weren’t possible even a few years ago. While purpose-built robots continue to proliferate, be they wheeled conveyances or dog-shaped machines carrying guns, the advantages of a body plan like ours are beginning to carve out a niche for humanoid robots. The world, after all, is built for things that look and move like we do. It’s full of stairs, gangways, shelves at shoulder height and sightlines at eye level, so hewing to the humanoid form makes it easier to slot robots into existing roles. Then there are the more subtle advantages of the human form—we can pick up heavy loads by cantilevering them over bent legs. By contrast, a robot with wheels and arms would have to have a much wider and heavier base to keep from tipping over. More than a dozen startups worldwide are now offering humanoid robots.”

Bloomberg: “Almost a decade ago, Walmart trailed not only Amazon, but also eBay and Apple in online sales. Under McMillon, it’s become the world’s second-largest e-commerce company, with online sales this year expected to reach $115 billion, according to eMarketer. That’s not even a quarter of Amazon’s expected $531 billion, but Walmart is catching up. Higher-income shoppers also seem to be giving it another look; the company says 75% of last fall’s market-share gain came from those with an annual income of more than $100,000. More store employees are staying at the company, a result of its recent investments in higher wages and better benefits, with some of its most successful store managers earning more than $600,000 each year. It’s wooed executives from Google and Amazon. And last year, Walmart’s shares rose by an astonishing 72%, outpacing those of Costco, Kroger and Target.”

Business Standard: “A vast majority of Indians — nearly 1 billion, or 90 per cent of the population — lack the financial flexibility for discretionary spending, according to a recent study by venture capital firm Blume Ventures.  The Indus Valley Annual Report 2025, published by venture capital firm Blume Ventures, highlights that India’s top 10 per cent, roughly equal to Mexico’s population of 130-140 million, plays a dominant role in driving consumption and economic growth. Despite the country’s expanding economy, this affluent segment is not broadening but consolidating its wealth. Additionally, around 30 million people fall into the ‘emerging’ or ‘aspirant’ consumer category. These individuals have only recently begun spending more but remain cautious in their financial choices.”

NEON: How Emails can Print and Save Money (Part 5)

NeoMails Use Cases

“Rest” customers—those who last engaged 30 to 90 days ago—represent a delicate tipping point in a customer journey. They’re not entirely disengaged, yet their interest in the brand may be waning. Traditional email strategy often stumbles here: “batch-and-blast” campaigns deliver generic content with little relevance, inadvertently driving recipients even further away. When these Rest customers slip beyond 90 days of inactivity, brands frequently resort to expensive reacquisition efforts. In other words, a missed opportunity to nurture mild interest before it becomes outright dormancy.

Why Traditional Email Falls Short

Despite longstanding popularity, “TradMails” have several inescapable limitations:

  • Static Content: Typically, they’re poster-like images or text, offering minimal interactivity. Readers see no compelling reason to click through or spend more than a second skimming the message.
  • Generic Targeting: Even modest personalisation (“Hi, [Name]”) rarely addresses each individual’s current interests or browsing history, leaving emails feeling mass-produced and easy to ignore.
  • Low Open Rates: In a crowded inbox, emails lacking immediate relevance or value are swiftly deleted or ignored. Persistently low engagement can hurt deliverability over time.
  • Zero Monetisation: Outside of conversions that come directly from a click or two, most brand emails remain pure cost centres, incurring design and sending fees without creating offsetting revenue streams.

NeoMails: The Innovation Stack

NeoMails address these challenges by layering three foundational elements—Atomic Rewards, Microns, and ActionAds—into every email, transforming them from basic communications into high-engagement, revenue-generating touchpoints.

  1. Atomic Rewards (Mu)
    • Gamified Subject Lines: Emails carry small nudges like point accrual or prize drawings, which incentivise customers to open just to see what they might gain.
    • Habit Formation: Recipients begin checking these emails daily or weekly, creating a pattern of consistent opens rather than sporadic engagement.
    • Network Effects: As recipients learn the value of these rewards (e.g., real discounts, sweepstakes entries), word-of-mouth can boost open rates and overall interest.
  1. Microns
    • 15–60 Second “Brain Gain”: Tiny games, puzzles, quizzes, riddles, or interactive tips turn what was once a broadcast message into a mini source of entertainment or learning.
    • Continued Engagement: Customers enjoy these bite-sized experiences, looking forward to seeing “What’s new today?”
    • Personalisation: Microns can adapt based on what each individual has engaged with before—further increasing relevance and attention.
  1. ActionAds
    • Seamless Integration: Unlike loud banners, ActionAds sit organically within the email, aligned with a reader’s context or expressed interests.
    • Interactive Elements: Users can explore offers, add items to carts, or even complete purchases without leaving their inbox.
    • Revenue Generation: The brand not only saves on reacquisition expenses but can also earn incremental revenue as advertisers pay for these prime placements.

Comprehensive Customer Strategy

NeoMails integrate perfectly with a segmented approach, targeting Best, Rest, and Test customers according to their activity levels:

  • Best Customers: Already active in the past 30 days. They’ll appreciate premium experiences—more exclusive Atomic Rewards, limited-time deals, and contextual ads that align with their high-value relationship.
  • Rest Customers: These are the central focus for NeoMails, as micro-incentives, playful microns, and relevant ads can keep them from drifting into total dormancy. Instead of feeling “spammed,” they get fresh daily or weekly interactions they might look forward to.
  • Test Customers: Should some slip past 90 days of inactivity, the NEON network makes targeted reacquisition possible—reconnecting through another brand’s emails or channels without incurring massive adtech fees.

Email as the AdWaste Antidote

Crucially, NeoMails recast email from a cost burden to a multi-purpose engagement and monetisation channel. Instead of merely blasting promotions, brands can:

  • Retain: Keep Rest customers engaged with incentivised, meaningful content.
  • Monetise: Use ActionAds to offset sending costs or even turn a profit on each campaign.
  • Delight: Replace dull campaigns with interactive microns that genuinely reward attention.

By embracing NeoMails, brands build better relationships, preventing the costly slide of Rest customers into the dormant category. Rather than paying exorbitant reacquisition fees, marketers can devote resources to deeper engagement and creative experiences. Over time, this approach not only elevates open and clickthrough rates but also helps restore email’s original promise: a direct, trusted line of communication with customers—one that can now sustain itself through innovative features, playful rewards, and built-in monetisation.

**

In the battle against AdWaste, NEON and NeoMails recast email as the cornerstone of sustainable marketing. By delivering genuine customer value while enabling precise, privacy-conscious targeting and monetisation, this reimagined ecosystem offers brands a path to profitable growth without the usual acquisition tax. Ultimately, email evolves from an underleveraged cost centre into a dynamic profit engine, positioning marketers to thrive in an era that rewards true engagement and long-term customer relationships.

Thinks 1555

Tyler Cowen: “Due to the Baumol-Bowen cost disease, less productive sectors tend to become a larger share of the economy over time.  This already has been happening since the American economy originated.  A big chunk of current gdp already is slow to respond, highly inefficient, governmental or government-subsidized sectors.  They just won’t adopt AI, or use it effectively, all that quickly.  As I said to an AI guy a few days ago “The way I can convince you is to have you sit in on a Faculty Senate meeting.”  And the more effiicient AI becomes, the more this trend is likely to continue, which slows the prospective measured growth gains from AI…Human bottlenecks become more important, the more productive is AI.  Let’s say AI increases the rate of good pharma ideas by 10x.  Well, until the FDA gets its act together, the relevant constraint is the rate of drug approval, not the rate of drug discovery.”

FT: “A new study led by Arianna Salazar-Miranda of Yale, involving Carlo Ratti of MIT, Harvard’s Edward Glaeser and others, tracks the changes in public spaces between 1980 and 2010 in New York (outside Bryant Park and the Metropolitan Museum), on Boston’s Downtown Crossing and in Philadelphia’s Chestnut Street…Today’s researchers used “computer vision and deep learning techniques” to compare behaviour in those same places between 1980 and 2008-2010. They found: “In all four locations, the share of lingerers decreased by 14 per cent, and walking speeds increased by 15 per cent, which suggests that urbanites are using streets more as walkways than as social spaces.” There were fewer spontaneous encounters. In short, hanging out was dying out…The authors suggest one possible culprit: increasing urban incomes. Time is money, and so the opportunity cost of hanging-out rose. Then there’s the smartphone. Our potential companions are no longer unselected people on the street, but the people we interact with online. That reduces streets to mere thoroughfares.”

WSJ: “In “Uncertainty and Enterprise: Venturing Beyond the Known,” Amar Bhidé takes up the challenge of formalizing what makes managing new businesses different. Mr. Bhidé, a professor of health policy at Columbia University, focuses on the central role of Knightian uncertainty in shaping the way businesses behave and structure their activities, governance and funding. Named for Frank Knight, the University of Chicago economist, Knightian uncertainty refers to situations in which the probability of success is unknowable due to the novelty of an enterprise’s product, service or strategy for producing and distributing it. Mr. Bhidé shows that uncertainty in the Knightian sense elicits unique human capacities. Most importantly, it provokes imaginative responses rather than simply calculations. Framing the issue this way has a major advantage: It shows the practical importance of the distinction between uncertainty and risk. If dealing with uncertainty elicits fundamentally different kinds of human behavior than dealing with risk, then uncertainty clearly is different from risk in an important way.”

Economist: “Work hard, children are told, and you will succeed. In recent decades this advice served the talented and the diligent well. Many have made their own fortunes and live comfortably, regardless of how much money they inherited. Now, however, the importance of hereditary wealth is rising around the rich world, and that is a problem. People in advanced economies stand to inherit around $6trn this year—about 10% of GDP, up from around 5% on average in a selection of rich countries during the middle of the 20th century. As a share of output, annual inheritance flows have doubled in France since the 1960s, and nearly trebled in Germany since the 1970s. Whether a young person can afford to buy a house and live in relative comfort is determined by inherited wealth nearly as much as it is by their own success at work. This shift has alarming economic and social consequences, because it imperils not just the meritocratic ideal, but capitalism itself.”

David Perell on lessons from Dana Gioia, who “is one of the world’s greatest living poets.”. “1. What is poetry? Here’s a definition: “Poetry is a way of remembering what it would impoverish us to forget.” 2. And who is the mother of the muses? Mnemosyne, the goddess of memory. 3. You can’t understand poetry until you start learning it by heart. Yes, memorizing it. The metaphor of knowing something by heart means storing a piece of wisdom in the center of your being and making it a part of you. 4. Poetry exists in the body before it exists in language. For him, great writing is about putting form to felt sensations.”

NEON: How Emails can Print and Save Money (Part 4)

NEON Use Cases

NEON’s power lies in its ability to deliver precise, authenticated targeting for two critical customer segments: dormant (Test) customers requiring reacquisition and semi-active (Rest) customers needing retargeting. In both scenarios, brands know exactly whom they want to reach—they just need a more efficient, cost-effective channel than traditional adtech platforms.

Reacquisition (Test Customers)

Consider a once-loyal customer who hasn’t engaged with a brand for 90+ days. Traditional email marketing faces a dilemma:

  • Continue sending emails, risking domain reputation due to non-opens
  • Stop sending and lose the connection entirely
  • Resort to expensive adtech platforms that treat them as new acquisitions

NEON offers a superior alternative:

  • Target these customers through ActionAds in emails they actively engage with (e.g. brands where they are Best customers)
  • Leverage trusted channels from non-competing brands
  • Maintain connection without damaging sender reputation
  • Achieve lower costs than traditional adtech
  • Create new revenue streams for publishing brands
  • Enable real-time identity matching in a privacy-compliant way

Example: A fashion brand uses NEON to target dormant customers through ActionAds in emails from a trusted travel brand. The ad offers a personalised discount on travel-friendly clothing, re-engaging the customer without damaging the fashion brand’s email reputation.

Retargeting (Rest Customers)

For semi-active customers who’ve grown unresponsive to direct communications, NEON provides an alternative pathway for re-engagement:

  • Reach cart abandoners through fresh channels
  • Prompt subscription renewals via trusted partners
  • Deliver special offers through engaging emails
  • Enable one-click transactions using stored information
  • Create seamless purchasing experiences

Example: A subscription-based service uses NEON to reach semi-active customers through a partner brand’s email, offering a limited-time discount to renew their subscription. The ad is personalised based on the customer’s past usage, increasing the likelihood of conversion.

The power lies in combining authenticated identity with contextual relevance. Because NEON knows both who to target and their relationship history with the brand, it can deliver highly personalised messages that feel like recommendations rather than interruptions.

The NEON Advantage

NEON functions as a sophisticated advertising cooperative:

  • Brands pool information through secure “clean room” technology
  • Double-blind system protects privacy
    • Advertisers don’t see which emails carried their ads
    • Publishers don’t know which brands’ ads were shown
  • Both parties maintain control through targeting criteria
  • All interactions respect user privacy preferences

This creates multiple benefits:

  • Precise targeting without data leakage
  • Lower costs than traditional platforms
  • New revenue streams for publishers
  • Better user experience for customers
  • Improved campaign performance
  • Sustainable engagement model

The Revenue Opportunity

With trillions of marketing emails sent monthly, NEON’s potential impact is enormous:

  • Transform email from cost centre to profit driver
  • Create new monetisation channels for brands
  • Reduce dependency on expensive adtech
  • Enable direct brand-to-brand collaboration
  • Build sustainable revenue streams

Every brand plays both roles: as an advertiser seeking to reach customers, and as a publisher monetising attention. This creates dual revenue opportunities and leads to network effects as scale grows.

The key to NEON’s success lies in its ability to maximise relevance. When ads leverage authenticated identity and relationship history, they transcend traditional interruption marketing to become valuable content. This creates a virtuous cycle where better targeting leads to higher engagement, which attracts more brands and creates more opportunities for precise, profitable customer connections.

Thinks 1554

Rich Lesser (newsletter): “In a world of limitless distractions, CEOs need to simplify. Deborah Ellinger, a seasoned CEO, uses a “Now, Next, Never” framework to set priorities. Saying yes to too much dilutes impact. Creating focus means having the discipline to say no to initiatives that may seem attractive but don’t align with core objectives. It’s about ensuring the entire organization is channeling its energy toward high-impact areas rather than getting bogged down by less strategic pursuits.” [More.]

WSJ: “The internet ushered in a new era of shopping nirvana, in which we could order whatever we wanted from the comfort of our couch. It also has siphoned money and merchandise away from bricks-and-mortar stores, turning buzzy emporiums into dilapidated mausoleums. Retailers have vastly expanded the breadth of products they sell online to better compete with Amazon.com, making the offerings in their physical stores feel paltry by comparison.  Retail CEOs like to say they want customers to shop however they want—either online, in stores or a combination of the two. The reality is that they make more money when customers buy from physical stores because packing and shipping expenses eat into online profits…But when it comes to the stockroom, even the best stores can’t keep up with the internet.”

FT: “Estonia is teaming up with OpenAI and Anthropic to launch a nationwide drive to teach artificial intelligence skills to high school students, aiming to help prepare them for jobs of the future. The initiative, known as AI Leap, draws on the Baltic country’s public digital infrastructure built over the past 30 years and its strong educational culture. Estonia is ranked top among European countries in the international Pisa education tests. Estonia’s President Alar Karis said the initiative was not intended to replace teachers in the classroom but to develop critical thinking among students and awareness of AI. “We have to learn how to use it,” he told the Financial Times. “AI is everywhere.””

Niall Ferguson: “What I call Ferguson’s Law states that any great power that spends more on debt service than on defense risks ceasing to be a great power. The insight is not mine but originates with the Scottish political theorist Adam Ferguson, whose “Essay on the History of Civil Society” (1767) brilliantly identified the perils of excessive public debt. Ferguson understood what modern economists call the “tax-smoothing” properties of public debt: By borrowing to pay for a war or some other emergency, a government can spread the cost over multiple generations of taxpayers. But he also saw the catch. “The growing burden,” he observed, is “gradually laid,” and though a nation may “sink in some future age, every minister hopes it may still keep afloat in his own.” For this reason, public debt is “extremely dangerous…in the hands of a precipitant and ambitious administration.” His conclusion was prophetic: “An expense, whether sustained at home or abroad, whether a waste of the present, or an anticipation of future, revenue, if it bring no proper return, is to be reckoned among the causes of national ruin.””

SaaStr on the US IPO bar: “At least $400M in ARR – that’s right, nearly half a billion in recurring revenue. Growth of 30% or higher year-over-year (though 50-60% is even better). A valuation between $3-5B. Net revenue retention of 110-120% (and trending up). Strong SaaS gross margins. A clear path to profitability (though you don’t need to be FCF positive yet).”

NEON: How Emails can Print and Save Money (Part 3)

Digital Ads

This section has been written with inputs from Claude and ChatGPT.

Digital advertising began with a simple banner ad on HotWired in 1994. Early digital marketers treated the web much like print media—placing static images and hoping for clicks. Yet even then, the potential was clear: for the first time, advertisers could measure engagement in real-time, gaining insights impossible with traditional media like television or magazines.

The introduction of cookies in the late 1990s transformed this landscape. Originally designed for practical tasks like remembering shopping cart contents, these small text files became the foundation of targeted advertising. Suddenly, marketers could follow users across different sites, building increasingly detailed behavioural profiles. This spawned an entire ecosystem:

  • Third-party cookies enabling cross-site tracking
  • Data management platforms (DMPs) aggregating user profiles
  • Ad exchanges facilitating real-time bidding
  • Retargeting platforms chasing abandoned carts
  • Look-alike audiences expanding reach

While some users appreciated more relevant promotions, many found it unsettling to be “chased” around the web by products they’d merely glanced at. That pair of shoes viewed on one website would haunt the next ten pages of browsing, creating an uncomfortable sense of surveillance. Privacy advocates began sounding the alarm about personal data being collected and sold without clear consent.

The backlash manifested in multiple ways:

  • Rising ad blocker adoption
  • Privacy legislation (GDPR, CCPA)
  • Browser restrictions on tracking
  • Apple’s App Tracking Transparency
  • Google’s planned phase-out of third-party cookies

Simultaneously, programmatic advertising emerged through automated exchanges and real-time bidding. While this drove unprecedented efficiency and scale, it also created a black box where many brands couldn’t be certain if their ads were reaching real people or bots.

Today’s digital advertising landscape is dominated by three major forces:

  1. Search advertising (Google) – intent-based targeting
  2. Social media advertising (Meta) – interest and behaviour-based targeting
  3. Retail media (Amazon, Walmart) – purchase history-based targeting

While these platforms offer powerful targeting capabilities, they create several problems:

  • High costs through auction-based pricing
  • Dependency on platform algorithms
  • Limited transparency
  • Increasing privacy restrictions
  • Growing consumer distrust

Enter NEON’s vision of PII-based advertising. Unlike traditional targeting that relies on shadowy tracking or inferred behaviour, NEON uses authenticated identity—email addresses that customers have willingly shared with brands they trust. When properly handled—with explicit consent and strong privacy protections—this creates several advantages:

  • Precise targeting without privacy concerns
  • Direct brand-to-brand collaboration
  • Guaranteed audience reach
  • Transparent performance measurement
  • Cost-effective distribution

Most importantly, this shift from cookies to authenticated identity transforms advertising from interruption to value-add. Consider the difference:

Traditional targeting: “This shoe ad follows you everywhere because you once viewed similar shoes.”

NEON targeting: ” That premium luggage brand you once bought from now reconnects with you through the travel portal’s email newsletter you still open regularly.”

By tying ads directly to verified identity rather than probabilistic tracking, NEON helps ensure messages reach only the correct audience. This isn’t just better for privacy—it’s better for business, enabling precise targeting without the creepy factor or platform tax. The result? Ads can finally fulfil their original promise: delivering the right message, to the right person, at the right time, in a way that users genuinely welcome.

Thinks 1553

WSJ interviews Douglas Murray: “America’s “great resilience,” he believes, keeps decline at bay. “The country can be stress-tested very, very badly and it still keeps going.” He admires the American character, offering an unexpected example of its strength. “There’s a specific thing which Americans may not notice about themselves but which I can assure you an outsider notices. Which is that—unless you have a horrible social circle—if you do well, your friends are pleased for you.” This isn’t true in Britain, or Europe generally. “Strong negative instincts kick in. ‘Don’t get above yourself.’ ‘Who do you think you are?’” America resists decline, also, because it has “very good foundations.” Mr. Murray says he is “forever railing against Americans who do down the founders of this country. Because I don’t think the ones who do that realize how lucky Americans are to have had the founders you had.””

Economist: “The most recent survey, which covers the year to July, shows that only 1% of India’s households fell below the international poverty line in 2024, according to an analysis of the data by Surjit Bhalla, a former executive director of the IMF, and Karan Bhasin of the State University of New York, Albany. Heir to the famous “dollar a day” poverty line, the international poverty line now stands at $2.15 a day at purchasing-power parity. India has, therefore, all but eliminated the most extreme forms of poverty. This is wonderful news in its own right. But India’s success also calls into question a common assumption about development: that the eradication of poverty requires a manufacturing miracle, drawing masses of peasants out of the farms and into the factories. More than 40% of India’s workers are still employed in agriculture. Perhaps people can leave poverty without leaving the land. That is also one conclusion of a new paper by Vincent Armentano, Paul Niehaus and Tom Vogl, all of the University of California, San Diego, which examines some of the paths out of poverty taken by five big emerging economies—China, Indonesia, Mexico and South Africa, as well as India—from 1984 to 2017.”

Ishan Bakshi: “For India to reach a per capita income in excess of $10,000, the current growth structure necessarily requires western and southern states to have higher levels of per capita income, attaining high-income status years before. Put differently, these states will have to avoid the middle-income trap that has bogged down many countries. This is a tall order. Even China, after achieving spectacular growth over several decades, is yet to join the ranks of high-income economies. The ability or inability of these states to do so will perhaps become apparent by the middle of the next decade.”

The Athletic: “There is an easy answer for why [Michael] Phelps, the most decorated and accomplished Olympian of all time, knows these idiosyncrasies about himself: He writes down even the most minuscule details of his day in a journal, then reads over his entries later on, viewing it as a tool to better understand himself. “I have to be the best version of myself and give myself that chance,” he told me.”

NEON: How Emails can Print and Save Money (Part 2)

Building Blocks

Among all push channels, email remains unrivalled for its near-universal reach, portability, and cost-effectiveness. Unlike SMS, RCS, or WhatsApp, it isn’t constrained by carrier fees or third-party gatekeepers. Unlike push notifications, it accommodates rich, long-form content without risking instant dismissal or customer blocking. A single email address travels with customers through device changes and platform shifts, providing a stable, persistent line of communication.

Despite these advantages, traditional email has failed to fulfil its potential as a true engagement channel. Now, three fundamental innovations promise to transform email from a static communication medium into an interactive revenue engine: AMP technology, NEON advertising network, and NeoMails engagement platform. Together, these create a robust framework for eliminating AdWaste whilst generating new value.

AMP: The Technology Foundation

Google’s AMP for email represents a breakthrough in inbox functionality. Unlike traditional HTML emails that serve as mere digital letters, AMP enables dynamic, app-like experiences directly within email clients. This means customers can:

  • Complete transactions without leaving their inbox
  • Interact with live content and real-time data
  • Participate in surveys and provide feedback
  • Update preferences and settings seamlessly
  • Engage with interactive elements like games and quizzes

NEON: The Monetisation Engine

NEON (New Engaged and Open Network) reimagines email advertising through authenticated identity. Unlike traditional digital advertising that relies on cookies and probabilistic matching, NEON enables precise targeting through verified customer identity (PII). Key features include:

  • Direct brand-to-brand collaboration
  • Guaranteed audience reach
  • Zero waste in targeting
  • Performance-based pricing
  • Privacy-compliant data usage

This creates a powerful alternative to expensive adtech platforms, allowing brands to reach their customers through trusted partner channels rather than paying Google and Meta’s advertising tax.

NeoMails: The Engagement Platform

NeoMails transforms traditional emails (TradMails) through three innovative interventions:

  1. Atomic Rewards (Mu)
  • Micro-incentives that encourage opens and clicks
  • Gamification elements in subject lines
  • Habit-forming daily rituals
  • Network-effect gains as more recipients participate
  1. Microns
  • 15-60 second “brain gain” experiences
  • Daily value-adding content
  • Personalised learning moments
  • A consistent hook for regular attention
  1. ActionAds

 

  • Interactive, in-email ad units
  • One-click transactions within the inbox
  • Contextual targeting based on user preferences
  • Direct revenue generation with no intermediary fees

Best-Rest-Test: Strategic Segmentation

This framework enables targeted engagement strategies based on customer activity:

  • Best Customers (Active in last 30 days) – Monetise through ads and encourage advocacy/referrals.
  • Rest Customers (31–90 days active) – Rebuild engagement, remind them of value, stave off complete churn.
  • Test Customers (90+ days inactive) – Deploy cost-efficient win-back campaigns that prioritise ROI.

This segmentation ensures resources are allocated efficiently, with different engagement and monetisation strategies for each group.

**

Together, these building blocks create a comprehensive system for transforming email from a cost centre into a profit engine. By combining interactive technology (AMP), precise targeting (NEON), and engaging experiences (NeoMails), brands can finally break free from the costly cycle of continuous reacquisition while creating new revenue streams through authenticated advertising.

Thinks 1552

WSJ: “‘All In’ is no recipe for success…In sports, business and other fields, single-minded focus is often the path to burnout and disappointment. To achieve ambitious goals, well-roundedness is a better bet…To be sure: The more we care, and the more our job or pursuit feels like a part of who we are, the harder we’ll work. That’s helpful to a certain point. Research looking at everything from getting people to vote to taking care of the environment to eating healthier tells us that when we identify closely with something, we’re more likely to make sure our actions and identity align.  But such narrowing comes with a downside. As we shed other parts of ourselves, and that one activity becomes an ever bigger presence, fear starts to take over. We don’t just want to succeed. We have to. We’re not just playing a game—it’s our self on the line. Fear of failure rises and moves from “I failed” to “I am a failure.””

WaPo: “The message of “The Technological Republic” is as clear and bracing as reveille: Tech bros, who have spent the boom years of the Silicon Valley revolution perfecting the home delivery of chicken fingers, better grow up. They need to refocus their engineering genius on helping America to defend Western values by developing weapons to kill our enemies before our enemies develop weapons to kill us. That means getting over any aversion they have to working with the Pentagon. The atomic age is over; we’re in the software century. The emergence of artificial intelligence, and its fathomless array of potential military uses, only adds urgency to the necessity of what ought to be a national project. “If a U.S. Marine asks for a better rifle, we should build it,” the authors write. “And the same goes for software.”” FT: “According to Alexander Karp and Nicholas Zamiska, two top executives from Palantir Technologies, a company intertwined with the national security state, Silicon Valley’s utopian tech thinking was always untethered from reality and it’s a good thing that it is now ending. Fixating on the fickle whims of consumers rather than the strategic needs of the public by providing photo-sharing platforms and chat apps, the founders of many technology companies have tried — and failed — to escape from the country that enabled their emergence…For too long, the authors claim, Silicon Valley directed its energies, talent and capital to the “trivial and ephemeral”. It must now rebuild its relationship with government and redirect its efforts to tackling the biggest challenges we face, such as healthcare, education and science. In particular, it must lean into the defence of the nation, as Palantir has done by providing intelligence analysis platforms for the military, and help preserve the “enduring yet fragile” geopolitical advantage of the west. In short, Silicon Valley must help the US win the technological arms race with China.”

SaaStr: “AI in GTM isn’t about replacing humans – it’s about massive leverage. The teams seeing success are treating AI as a core competency, not a side project. They’re starting focused, getting expert help, and relentlessly measuring impact. The key question for executives: Are you creating enough space and urgency for your teams to make this transition? Because as one panelist put it: “AI won’t replace your job, but the marketer or salesperson that uses AI will replace your job.””

Bloomberg on the Silicon Valley canon: “Seeing Like a State, by James Scott. The Diamond Age, by Neal Stephenson. Zero to One, by Peter Thiel. The Power Broker , by Robert A. Caro. The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt, by Edmund Morris. Elon Musk, by Ashlee Vance. The Sovereign Individual, by James Davidson and William Rees-Mogg’s. A Half-Built Garden, by Ruthanna Emrys. Uncanny Valley, by Anna Wiener…The tech ‘canon’ of books and ideas over-indexes on great men and celebrates small teams that changed the world.”

NEON: How Emails can Print and Save Money (Part 1)

AdWaste Crisis

Consumer businesses face an existential threat: skyrocketing customer acquisition costs (CAC). While performance marketing through adtech platforms promises quick results, it has created a toxic dependency. CAC increases 20-25% annually through auction-based platforms, straining marketing budgets and profitability. This upward spiral forces brands into an unsustainable cycle of spending more to maintain growth.

The spending breakdown reveals a troubling pattern that undermines business economics:

  • 10% on retention (existing customers)
  • 20% on genuine first-time acquisition
  • 70% on reacquisition – the true “AdWaste”

This reacquisition spend goes toward winning back lapsed, dormant, or inactive customers time and again. These second-, third-, or nth-time acquisitions are truly the “AdWaste,” because in a more ideal world, marketers should not have to pay repeatedly to reach their own customers. Repeatedly paying to reach customers already in the database represents marketing’s cardinal sin. When brands have customer email addresses, phone numbers, and purchase histories, why must they rent access to these same customers through expensive intermediaries?

This wasteful cycle stems from three fundamental failures in modern marketing:

  1. The “No Hotline” Problem: Despite having contact details, brands lack reliable engagement channels. Email open rates languish in single digits, push notifications get blocked, and SMS lacks depth. Without a dependable way to reach customers, brands resort to paid advertising for basic communications.
  2. The “Not for Me” Problem: Generic messaging ignores individual preferences, driving customers into dormancy. Mass communications feel irrelevant or intrusive. Without personalisation, even interested customers become unreachable without paid ads. This creates a vicious cycle where poor engagement forces more ad spending.
  3. The “No Alternative” Problem: Brands see no option besides expensive adtech platforms for reactivation, perpetuating their dependency on Google and Meta. The auction-based pricing of these platforms means costs only increase over time, yet brands feel trapped without viable alternatives.

The consequences of this broken system are severe and far-reaching:

  • Eroding profits as CAC outpaces revenue growth
  • Under-monetised customer relationships
  • Diminished lifetime value (LTV)
  • Weakened loyalty and advocacy
  • Reduced resources for product innovation and customer experience
  • Unsustainable unit economics

As Fred Reichheld notes, true loyalty comes from consistently positive experiences that make customers “come back for more and bring their friends.” By failing to nurture existing relationships, brands waste their most valuable asset—customers who already trust them enough to buy. Instead of investing in deeper engagement and better experiences, they pour resources into repeatedly reacquiring the same customers.

However, a revolution in email marketing promises to break this cycle. By transforming email from a one-way broadcast medium into an interactive engagement channel, brands can simultaneously generate new revenue streams (“print money”) and reduce reacquisition costs (“save money”). This paradigm shift could finally enable sustainable, profitable growth without the AdWaste tax.

The key lies in reimagining email as more than just a communication tool—it must become a robust platform for engagement, commerce, and monetisation. Through innovations in personalisation, interactivity, and authenticated advertising, emails can evolve into the primary hotline between brands and customers, eliminating the need for costly reacquisition while creating new opportunities for value creation.