Date: 2026-09-15 Time: 1:00 PM EDT Attendees: Blake Stewart (Founding Journey / Megaphone, note creator), Pierce Freeman (Freeman VC, client), Blake Emal (Megaphone)
Summary
Weekly content sync with Pierce Freeman. Pierce recapped a wild Monday: flew to LA to record a TBPN podcast with John Coogan, who cancelled last-minute due to illness. Pierce’s team sprinted through SFO in 9 minutes (Chelsea boots) and barely made the flight, flew back same day, and recorded a solo episode instead. Rescheduling with John Coogan; planned topic is “trust in new media.”
The call covered substantial discussion on: trust as a cross-cutting theme (data centers, TBPN/OpenAI acquisition, Elon’s public trust arc), Dario Amodei’s AI slowdown argument and its game-theoretic limits (China problem, chip export controls, distillation), Apple Duo reaction and iPhone price increases, and content/growth strategy for Pierce’s account.
Decisions
- Post schedule: Double up posting through October 8 (Pierce’s end date). Takes go stale quickly; more frequent is better.
- Pierce’s growth focus: Pierce to spend rest of September and October on reply-guy strategy targeting 1K-2K followers. Replies are too technical to outsource, must come from Pierce directly.
- TikTok: Pierce open to meeting Tatum (JOLT’s TikTok person); Blake to make the intro.
- John Coogan podcast: Rescheduling; trust in new media is the planned through-line.
- Political tone: Pierce does not want to take harder partisan stances. The AI/trust commentary stays within its existing factual-analytical scope, not Hasan Piker territory.
Action Items
- Blake: double up posting schedule through October 8
- Blake: make intro between Pierce and Tatum (TikTok growth)
- Pierce: reschedule John Coogan podcast; trust in new media is the theme
- Pierce: focus on reply-guy engagement on X through end of October
Notable Excerpts
On trust as the podcast theme (Pierce):
“How can you expect and how do you try to make an audience trust you in this new media landscape where it’s intentionally not serious? Tracing it back to the John Oliver era where you can have real news but you’re injecting comedy and brevity into it.”
On data center backlash (Pierce):
“Even with clean energy, stable utility rates, and no impact on water usage, 70-some percent still said they definitely don’t want to be anywhere near these data centers. That speaks to the trust question.”
On Dario’s slowdown and China (Pierce):
“It’s a prisoner’s dilemma. The fear is if we slow down and China keeps going forward, they can at will hack the US and we don’t have defenses good enough to stand up to them. The only solution at the limit is international cooperation.”
On Apple Duo:
“Matte is definitely the right call. The use case is mostly consumptive: movies, FaceTime, shopping. The cameras are worse than the top iPhone line despite the bigger display. It’ll sell well in media markets driven by early-adopter status signaling.”
On iPhone price increases (Pierce):
“Memory is just getting so expensive. Apple’s been eating the cost increases for a while because they could. A big part of it was AI chip demand driving memory costs.”
On the reply-guy growth strategy:
“My own internal goal is to spend the rest of this month and October doubling down on the reply thing. Getting to 1K, maybe 2K followers. If I’m there, these posts will slap a lot more.”
Full transcript in Granola. Reference ID: 7e888ed9-3a9c-4e71-8758-471a28867c2c