⚠️ Matt Bertulli warns leaders about vibe coding’s dangers and AI’s upside

📺 Connor Rolain reveals how HexClad increased its iROAS on CTV by 60%

🥳 Cody Plofker invites you to hang out with 100 operators at YouTube HQ

💰 Taylor Holiday shares his full AI prompt to get people to buy right now

Plus, the top-five headlines in consumer. And in answer to your next question … yes, I’ll be sending out all the recordings + resources from last Thursday’s event later this week!

Connor Rolain Head of Global Growth, HexClad

How We Increased Our CTV iROAS 60%

The hardest part about CTV is tracking.

• Cross-device
• Incremental lift
• Delayed conversions

When we first started on the channel, we couldn’t separate CTV’s impact from our Meta and search spend. We couldn’t tell if the channel was incremental or just getting credit for revenue we’d have earned anyway.

Now we use NeonPixel.

It tracks conversions across devices without cookies and attributes them back to CTV. It also allows us to …

• Target by household
• Run incrementality tests
• Suppress existing customers

We improved our targeting, increased iROAS by 60%, and saved ~20 hours per week. Finally, we can grade CTV on its own.

We've used them for three years. We aren’t the only ones.

If you want to know if your CTV ads are incremental and improve your targeting, click below to find out.

Matt Bertulli CEO, Pela and Lomi

Leaders, Read This Before Vibe Coding Your Next Project

I’ve gone deep in the vibe-coding world.

I’ve built internal tools for my team. Hooked up APIs. Created dashboards that pull live data from our ad accounts.

It’s incredible.

But I’ve also wasted entire days debugging something that a real developer would have fixed in 20 minutes and shipped tools to my team that broke the next day.

If you’re a leader (especially a CEO), here are five reminders before you vibe code your next project.

1. The Prototype is Not The Product

This is the biggest trap.

You build something that works on your laptop. You show it to your team. Everyone gets excited.

Then real people start using it. With real data. In real situations you didn’t think of. And it falls apart.

The last 5-10% of making software work is where 90% of the real work lives. It’s boring stuff.

• Errors
• Security
• Logging
• Monitoring

Nobody posts about this on X because it’s not sexy. But it’s the difference between something I vibe coded versus a tool my business can rely on.

2. You Can, But You Probably Shouldn’t

Sure, you could build your own CRM. Your own analytics platform. Your own scheduling tool.

The question that changed my life as a CEO was simple.

What can only I do?

Building internal software tools is probably not the answer to that question.

My job is to find the people, systems, or partners who can do this better and faster than me — to describe what I want, hand off the spec, and go do CEO things.

3. But You Should Still Go Deep

Here’s where I’m gonna flip on you a little. I am not saying operators should avoid AI. Actually, I’m saying the opposite.

I think every operator should go as deep as possible right now.

• Learn these tools
• Play with them
• Break things

Understand what’s possible.

Not so you can become your team’s builder. But so you can know the game.

You don’t need to run the factory floor. But you better understand lead times, tooling costs, and minimum order quantities so you can ask the right questions and catch bad answers.

You’re not the media buyer. But if you can’t look at a campaign structure and know whether it makes sense, you’re flying blind.

AI is the same.

The operators who win over the next five years will be the ones who understand AI deeply enough to know the right questions to ask. What’s possible. What’s realistic. What should be a weekend prototype versus a six-month engineering project.

4. Use AI to Describe, Not Build

Here’s where I think this whole thing is headed.

The real superpower of a CEO isn’t building stuff, it’s being able to describe what you want with so much clarity that someone (or something) can build it.

• Writing clear specs
• Describing the problem
• Clarifying the vision

AI can help you with that. And in a leader’s hands, that’s a far more valuable use case.

You can even create a prototype if it helps you think. But only use it to communicate what you want to the people who are going to build a functioning version.

5. Protect Your Time

Every hour you spend debugging a broken API connection is an hour you’re not spending on the three or four things that move your business forward.

I catch myself doing this all the time.

I’ll sit down to “quickly fix” something and look up three hours later wondering where my morning went.

Go deep enough to understand. Communicate your vision clearly. Then hand the building to someone who knows what the hell they’re doing.

The best CEOs I know aren’t the ones who can code. They’re the ones who know enough about every part of their business to ask the right questions and make the right calls.

AI is just the newest part of your business you need to understand.

Cody Plofker CEO, Jones Road Beauty

Come Hang Out With Me July 23rd at Google HQ

Next month, I’m speaking at Scale With YouTube Ads at Google’s NYC HQ. It’s a one-day, invite-only event for 100+ founders and CMOs. YouTube and Google teams will be there, too.

• Six speakers
• Future of YT Ads
• No agencies
• Operator after-party

Myself, Bill Rom (Baseball Lifestyle 101), Ezra Firestone (Overtone), and a bunch of other brands will share the tactics that are working right now.

Then Google’s team will break down what incrementality tests reveal about YouTube and how you can measure it for yourself.

Not to mention, there’s an after-party! If you’re spending on YouTube, this is the room you want to be in.

Applications close July 10th

THE FEED

​How to 2x Your A/B Testing Output Without More Budget​

​What’s Working in Ecommerce & What Completely Blew Up​

The Trends

Curated by the editor of CPG Wire, the five top stories in commerce and DTC.

1. The Coconut Cult Secures $12.5M: Instagram​

The Coconut Cult secured $12.5M in equipment financing from Bridge Finance Group to expand its manufacturing footprint. The fast-growing yogurt maker currently self-manufactures but will open a larger 300,000-square-foot facility in Utah.

The Coconut Cult spent several years building its business in the natural channel before leaping into mass retail earlier this year, causing a spike in demand. The company grew over 140% in 2025 and will grow another 90% this year.

2. Unilever Explores Thorne Acquisition: Reuters​

Unilever is among several bidders exploring an acquisition of Thorne, a clinically backed supplement maker valued at $4B. Founded in 1984, Thorne is vertically integrated and renowned for its high-quality, research-backed supplement portfolio.

L Catterton purchased Thorne in 2023 for $680M when the company was doing ~$300M in annual revenue. In 2026, Thorne expects revenue to hit $650M, up from $500M in 2025.

3. Jams Adds Celebrity Investor: PR Newswire​

Former NFL player and current star broadcaster Pat McAfee just joined Jams as an investor. In addition to investing, McAfee will also provide the PB&J challenger brand with strategic guidance on creative direction, content, and partnerships.

Moving forward Jams will also be integrated across McAfee’s media empire. Several other athletes, including JJ Watt, Caleb Williams, and Alex Morgan, are also investors in Jams.

4. L Catterton Backs RŌZ: LinkedIn​

Pro-grade haircare brand RŌZ secured a significant minority investment from L Catterton. Founded in 2021 by celebrity hairstylist Mara Roszak, RŌZ has been on a roll and expects to quadruple revenue to $35M this year.

The company’s products are available online, in the professional salon channel, and at retailers like Sephora, Credo Beauty, and Nordstrom. Previous investors include Silas Capital, G9 Ventures, and Lily Collins.

5. De Soi Launches Functional Beverage Line: Instagram​

De Soi is going beyond non-alcoholic aperitifs with its new Social Spritz line. The lightly energizing beverage is formulated with 1000mg of adaptogens to provide a boost without the crash.

Other key active ingredients include L-Tyrosine, L-Theanine, Ginseng, and Vitamins B6 & B12. De Soi’s Social Spritz line debuted with three elevated flavors: Lemon Elderflower, Peach Ginger, and Blackberry Hibiscus.

The Resource

 Why Should I Buy, Right Now? 

That’s the question Taylor Holiday asked at our New DTC Playbook event last Thursday.

“You do not get to set the price of the Meta media auction. You do get to determine your ability to convert against that price.”

How? “By creating some impetus for purchase that moves conversion rate up disproportionately for some period of time.”

Specifically …

• Offer design
• Scarcity
• Charity
• Earned media

What Crocs does with Croctober, Ridge does with its sweepstakes, and Born Primitive with its Veterans Day sale.

You should do the same.

Start with copying this prompt, entering your brand info, and giving it to Claude (courtesy of Mr. Holiday).

The Prompt

I want you to help me design “peak moment” for my brand to run in September.

A peak moment is a planned, time-boxed window where our conversion rate spikes because we’ve given the customer a non-negotiable reason to act right now. We can’t control CPMs. We can control the conversion rate against that market price. That’s what we’re engineering for.

There are three levers that create a “why right now”:

1. A compelling offer (not a discount, a real reason: bundle, gift, exclusive product, access)
2. Scarcity (limited units, limited time, limited access)
3. PR / earned media (a cultural moment that pulls non-buyers into the funnel)

The best peak moments stack two or three of these at once.

== MY BRAND ==

Fill these in before you send. Be specific.

• Brand name:
• What we sell:
• Who our customer is (demographics, identity, what they care about):
• Average order value:
• Hero product or category:
• Brand voice in one sentence:
• Owned channels and rough size (email, SMS, IG, TikTok, etc.):
• Anything already on the September calendar (launches, partners, restocks):
• Past attempts at moments (what we tried, what worked, what didn’t):
• Hard constraints (margin floor, no sweepstakes, no discounting, etc.):

== REFERENCE EXAMPLES ==

Study these before answering. Each is a different shape of peak moment.

1. Born Primitive Veterans Day. Tactical apparel brand built a moment around giving back to veterans. The offer was a story, not a discount. The customer felt like a participant.

Lever: offer + earned trust.

2. The Ridge sweepstakes. Wallet brand turned paid ad spend into a content engine. Every ad dollar became a reason to enter, share, and act today instead of next week.

Lever: scarcity of opportunity + viral loop.

3. Baseball Lifestyle back-to-school launch. Apparel brand timed a product drop against a cultural calendar moment their customer was already emotionally locked into.

Lever: calendar alignment + drop scarcity.

4. Crocs “Croctober,” October 2025. Crocs ran TikTok Live 24 hours a day, 7 days a week for the entire month of October. 11M+ views, $1.5M+ in live sales. Croctober is not a real holiday. Crocs invented it.

Lever: manufactured cultural moment + live commerce + scarcity.

== WHAT I NEED ==

Step 1. If anything in MY BRAND is too thin to work with, ask me 3-5 clarifying questions before generating ideas. Don’t guess.

Step 2. Give me 10 distinct September peak moment ideas tailored to MY specific brand. Ambitious but executable in 60-90 days. No generic ideas any DTC brand could copy-paste. Push “run a sale.”

For each idea, give me:

• A name for the moment a customer would actually use
• The “why right now” sentence the customer would feel
• Which levers it pulls (offer, scarcity, PR)
• The core mechanic in 2-3 sentences (what actually happens)
• Owned channel activation (how email, SMS, and organic social play)
• Paid amplification angle (what the hook of the ad would say)
• One concrete risk or failure mode

Step 3. Rank the 10 from most to least confident pick for my specific brand and customer. End with a 2-sentence recommendation for which one I should actually build first.

 Did You Miss It? 

Mr. Holiday’s gift is only one five-minute tactic shared during the three-hour event with 20+ heavyweights.

I’ll be sending out all the recordings, slides, and free resources later this week to everyone who signed up.

It’s not too late!

With thanks and anticipation,
Aaron Orendorff
🤓 Chief Executive Officer

P.S. (Disclaimer): Special thanks to NeonPixel for sponsoring today’s newsletter.

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