Great customer conversations don’t just answer questions—they create value. 👏 In this 2-minute video, explore how better listening, questioning, and responding can build trust and improve customer interactions. #CustomerValue# #CommunicationSkills#

THE BLOCK: Stablecoin-based remittance startup Félix Pago has raised $200 million, including an $87 million Series C equity round led by a16z crypto and a $113 million credit line from General Catalyst's Customer Value Fund. Félix plans to expand beyond remittances into lending, savings and yield products, while entering countries including Brazil and Venezuela.

Long Lake Co-Founder & CEO @alextaubman says AI is driving a convergence between services businesses and software companies. "What you typically see is even though these are really extraordinary businesses with incredible customer trust and decades or even centuries of operating history, the margin structures in these services businesses traditionally have been lower than software." "What we're seeing now is a convergence of services and software characteristics over time where if you can make your team 20%, 30%, or 40% more productive, then that allows you to deliver more customer value, more goods and services, and different products to customers, which has historically been more associated with software companies." "For example, Amex GBT is an over 111-year-old business, founded in 1915 to help American Express travelers customers get out of Europe during World War 1. They bought a business called Carlson Wagonlit Lee which is over 150 years-old. So in terms of managing tech transformations, Amex GBT literally was created around the time of the invention of the airline, so these businesses have already managed many of them."

The #MSIgnite# session catalog is live. Join us in San Francisco, November 17-20, for sessions on scaling AI solutions, driving profitability, sharpening go-to-market strategy, and creating new customer value. Explore the catalog and register: #MSPartner#

BREAKING $AMZN @amazon said AI models should only be released after rigorous testing and with strong safeguards in place, according to a Bloomberg report. Spokesperson Tom Parnell put it this way: Amazon does not see a choice between progress and safety. Models should go out when they are “ready and safe to use.” The company also warned that there are risks if the industry does not do this collectively, and said labs should work with governments on protections. It added that AI is already delivering real customer value, so getting the balance right matters. This was Amazon’s public entry into a debate that heated up after leading labs called for a more measured pace following safety lapses. Amazon stopped short of endorsing a broad industry slowdown. That is a slightly different stance from some of the frontier labs it partners with and invests in, including OpenAI and Anthropic.

If you're deciding what client work should become reusable, map it like this: High usefulness + high effort = premium custom work High usefulness + low effort = reusable workflow Low usefulness + high effort = rethink or stop Low usefulness + low effort = low priority The goal is to move down the high-usefulness side of the matrix. Keep the customer value high. Reduce the ongoing effort it takes to deliver. That’s the framework behind how we’re thinking about services as software. Here's the full article below 👇

10 Jev native products I’d build, ranked by how much fast, cheap decisions change the product: 1. Agent spend firewall Before every purchase, Jev returns approve/review/deny plus a confidence score based on price, vendor, user rules and purchase history. 2. Self-healing tool calls After an API error, Jev chooses retry, wait, change parameters, switch providers or escalate. So now you have agents that recover from failure in milliseconds instead of restarting the entire workflow. 3. Irreversible action detector Jev scores every step by reversibility before the agent sends an email, deletes a file, moves money or changes permissions. You get aggressive automation for safe actions and human approval for consequential ones. 4. Dynamic permission engine Instead of giving an agent permanent access, Jev decides which tool, data and spending limit it receives for each task. So now all of a sudden, you get temporary, task-level permissions for enterprise agents. 5. Agent branch pruning An agent generates 20 possible next steps. Jev scores them in parallel and kills weak branches before expensive reasoning begins. Deeper agent planning at a fraction of the cost! 6. Production incident controller Jev reads logs, deploy history, affected customers and service health, then chooses ignore, rollback, restart, page or investigate. Someone like pager duty should build this because it's automated incident response that reacts before an engineer opens Slack. 7. Live negotiation policy During a sales, procurement or collections conversation, Jev decides whether to discount, counter, hold firm, offer terms or escalate. Reminds me of Clulely. 8. Autonomous refund desk Jev evaluates order history, customer value, fraud signals, item cost and policy, then returns approve, reject or review. Finally, instant refunds for good customers and focused review for risky cases. Note: I'll be adding more Jev related ideas to and our agency builds the biggest agentic products 9. Realtime marketplace dispatch For every request, Jev chooses the provider using location, price, quality, availability, cancellation risk and customer preferences. Big problem is that marketplaces need to rematch supply continuously as conditions change. 10. Confidence based human queues Jev scores every agent decision and sends only uncertain, expensive or irreversible cases to a person. One person can now supervise thousands of autonomous workflows. LLMs generate possibilities. Jev chooses what happens next. The next generation of software will need both.

Some recent thoughts. ICL is useful. RL is useful. VLA, sim2real, world models, memory—all of these technologies can contribute to building general-purpose robots. But we should remember that a general-purpose robot is still a robot: a physical product that ultimately needs to be deployed and deliver real value to customers. Once you look at the actual challenges of deployment, it becomes clear that no single technique is enough. It requires a full system, with careful attention to detail across models, hardware, infrastructure, reliability, and operations. Even at the model level, it’s unlikely that any single idea will be the answer. VLA, RL, sim2real, world models, ICL, memory, and many other approaches will likely all play a role. The real challenge is combining them in the right way, so they complement each other and maximize the capability and utility of the overall system. So IMO, there’s no need to overhype any single technical term. This industry would benefit from staying calm and patient, and focusing on building the holistic system that can actually work reliably in the real world and create real customer value.

A TON OF THINGS HAPPENED IN THE STOCK MARKET TODAY. Here's a full recap: 1. Crypto markets saw their seventh-largest liquidation event on record, with $3.5B in leveraged positions wiped out over 24 hours. Despite the forced liquidations, the total crypto market cap added roughly $280B in the same period as $BTC Bitcoin crossed $72K and $ETH Ethereum moved above $2,300. The rally came alongside renewed optimism around the CLARITY Act and broader tokenization legislation. 2. Treasury Secretary Bessent said the U.S. Treasury will assess bond market conditions and take further action if needed, while focusing on fundamentals and keeping the market in equilibrium. He said U.S. yields do not reflect underlying fundamentals and that liquidity in the 30-year is “particularly poor,” while also arguing that rates had “nothing to do” with the buyback decision. Bessent reiterated that the U.S. continues to have a strong dollar policy, said 2026 tariff income should be similar to 2025, and added there is a “very good chance” the U.S. has already seen peak deficit. On Iran, he said the U.S. is pursuing “maximum pressure,” with coordinated economic isolation and action against countries doing business with Tehran, while adding that China and others want the Strait of Hormuz reopened. 3. Anthropic is reportedly adding Citigroup to its IPO bank lineup, joining Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, and JPMorgan among the lead banks working on the listing. The company is considering filing as soon as the end of August, with more banks expected to join the deal. Anthropic is expected to debut ahead of OpenAI and is also expanding a pre-IPO credit facility beyond its roughly $10B target. If Anthropic tries to raise more than SpaceX, it could become the largest IPO ever, underscoring how intense investor demand has become for frontier AI companies. 4. Deutsche Bank reiterated its Buy rating and $200 price target on Palantir $PLTR, saying the company continues to stand out in turning AI demand into measurable customer value while combining strong growth with profitability. The firm said Palantir’s Bootcamp reinforced its view that Ontology, AIP, and sovereign AI capabilities create durable differentiation as enterprises move AI into production. Deutsche Bank highlighted AIP Evolve as a key product for optimizing AI workflows across quality, cost, latency, and control, with the ability to test frontier, open-weight, and proprietary models, reroute workloads, rewrite prompts, or replace unnecessary model calls with deterministic code. The firm said this creates “model liquidity,” while AutoTune helps customers fine-tune models using governed workflow feedback, keeping proprietary knowledge inside their own environment and addressing major barriers to scaled enterprise AI. 5. Amazon $AMZN plans to invest more than $2B across Latin America from 2027–2030 through Prime Video, focused on original content and live sports. The company expects to more than double its Originals across 5 major markets, while also expanding NBA coverage and third-party streaming access. The push shows Amazon continuing to use Prime Video as both a content platform and a broader ecosystem driver across international markets. 6. Supermicro $SMCI said an independent investigation found no evidence that current senior management knew about the alleged export-diversion scheme involving two former employees and a contractor. The review also found no direct sales of restricted products to known restricted parties and no related issues with previously issued financial statements. Supermicro said it has terminated employees for policy violations, added new export-compliance measures, and continues to cooperate with government investigations. 7. Walmart $WMT fell 8% and posted its worst day since May 2022 after reporting its slowest U.S. comparable-sales growth in more than 6 years. Q2’27 revenue came in at $187.9B versus $186.7B expected, up 5.9% YoY, while adjusted EPS was $0.81 versus $0.74 expected. Net income reached $6.5B, above estimates of $5.91B, and global eCommerce sales grew 23%. But U.S. comps rose just 2.6%, missing the 3.7% estimate, while Q3 adjusted EPS guidance of $0.62–$0.64 came in below the $0.68 expected. Management said consumers remained stretched, especially by higher gas prices, while lower pharmacy pricing also weighed on sales. 8. SpaceX $SPCX and AST SpaceMobile $ASTS are reportedly interested in acquiring 800 MHz spectrum licenses valued around $6B. The licenses cover nearly the entire U.S. population and could support direct-to-device satellite voice services. Preliminary bids are due in early September, with the FCC aiming to complete the process by November 5. 9. The top 10 most active options today by contracts traded were $NVDA with 2.1M contracts, $TSLA with 1.7M contracts, $SPCX with 1.1M contracts, $AAPL with 1.0M contracts, $MSTR with 746K contracts, $INTC with 739K contracts, $MU with 679K contracts, $MRNA with 629K contracts, $WMT with 627K contracts, and $AMZN with 614K contracts. 10. The median value of U.S. consumers’ stock market investments has climbed to a record $350K, including holdings in individual stocks, mutual funds, 401(k)s, and IRAs, as per Schwab. That figure has more than doubled over the last two years and is up $150K, or 75%, since January alone. Before 2024, the median value had never meaningfully surpassed $150K. 11. Micron $MU is committing $10B over the next decade to build Micron Research Labs, a new long-term U.S. research hub based in Boise focused on advanced memory, compute architectures, chip packaging, and next-generation semiconductor manufacturing. The company expects to break ground in 2027, with the flagship facility designed to house hundreds of researchers. The investment is separate from the more than $250B Micron has already planned for U.S. manufacturing and R&D. 12. Broadcom $AVGO is reportedly seeking more than $60B in financing tied to its latest AI deal, with the full package potentially reaching nearly $100B. The structure could include $60B–$70B of senior secured debt plus roughly $30B of junior debt, while Broadcom is also discussing guaranteeing part of the senior-secured tranche. Apollo and Blackstone are in talks to participate, with the debt potentially issued through a special-purpose vehicle. The financing would help Anthropic and other AI companies secure Broadcom chips and infrastructure, and could be rolled out in stages rather than all at once. WALL STREET IS THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH.

Regarding the recent buzz around my profile picture changes and some feelings that the Base community isn’t being supported enough: I appreciate the feedback (even if tough to hear) and I realize you wouldn't take the time to respond unless you cared. It seems I wasn't clear enough setting expectations for all of you, so let me try and do that now: please don’t follow my personal X account for investment advice or signals around individual coins. I’m simply posting things I find interesting or funny on the internet. I may not even be aware if there is a coin or project attached to the content I'm posting (you should assume I'm not, to be safe). My posts and profile pics are also not endorsements or commitments to anything. Base is our shot at building foundational infrastructure for financial services where we can all innovate together. That includes tokenized stocks, borrow/lend protocols, stablecoin payments, etc and yes even meme coin trading. I believe in economic freedom, and support you trading whatever you want. Just realize that if you're treating my X account as alpha, you are doing so at your own risk, against my wishes. I would never recommend this. On the topic of “support” from the Base team or Coinbase, there seems to be confusion around this too. There are many tokens we would like to list on our centralized exchange, but can't for compliance and regulatory reasons. If you want Jesse or me to pump your bags or shill certain coins, we're also not going to do that. Here is what we are committed to on support: we run in-person Base Batches and issue grants to high potential builders, Coinbase Ventures and the Base Ecosystem Fund also invest in the most promising companies building on Base, and we periodically integrate promising Base defi protocols into our products at Coinbase which enhances distribution. I might even mention something on X if I think it's interesting, but again, this is not investment advice. In general, we bias toward supporting projects that we believe will create long term customer value. You may like this approach or you may not, but either way hopefully it creates clarity going forward, so you can decide what you want to do. I respect your choice, either way. P.S. I still might post memes if I think they are funny! It's still not investment advice.