Aaron McClendon

Finally decided to kickoff FaintFlex, my weekly newsletter covering new media & personality-driven startups ✍🏾 faintflex.substack.com/p/coming-soon?…

Fred Wilson is one of the greatest VCs of all time. He is also my new partner at @USV and I'm lucky to say that. We've known each other for years, but becoming partners felt like a reason to get to know him even better. So a few weeks ago, we walked around Union Square and caught up about what @fredwilson has learned over nearly 40 years of VC, how AI may be making the profession obsolete, how to build an investment thesis, why he believes the Knicks will win the NBA title this year, and a few of his long held grudges. Here's a video of that conversation, set at Union Square, Madman Espresso, the USV office, and Leon's on Broadway. Chapters: 3:22 - That time Fred wrecked Mike on Twitter 6:01 - Pre-Internet VC in NYC 9:50 - Early Internet Investing and Raising for Flatiron Partners 11:59 - The Dot-com Crash Killed Fred’s First Firm 14:28 - Fred’s Grudge Against Coffee Shop 16:35 - How to Pick the Right Team at Right Time 18:28 - AVC blog, Gawker’s Nick Denton, TypePad.com 20:44 - Jim Kramer invented Tweeting 21:46 - Why Fred Bet on Twitter Early 23:39 - Building Agents on Claude Code and Tasklet 26:20 - Claude Mythos and Doomerism 27:27 - The Original USV Thesis 29:19 - Network Effects and Brad’s Thesis 31:29 - Coinbase: Thesis, Investment, Outcome 33:18 - Investing in Decentralized AI 34:59 - Open Source AI 36:55 - AI Kill Zone: Legal AI is Dead, Energy Investments 42:37 - USV Agents Will Replace Its Partners 47:00 - Are VC’s building themselves out of a job? 48:30 - Leon’s, NYC’s New Tech Watering Hole 50:52 - Generative Art 53:18 - SOLIENNE: AI Artist trained by Kristi Coronado 54:25 - What About AI Scares Fred 55:40 - Societal Backlash to AI 58:10 - Advice to Early Career VCs: There’s More Risk in Not Doing Deals 1:00:48 - Fred’s Biggest Regrets: Saying No Because of Price 1:04:17 - Fred’s Bold Prediction for the Knicks and the Mets

I’m obsessed with this podcast where the guys look like they’re going to be debating acceptable body count for women but then they’re just talking about gardening

Listed as one of the New York Times “30 Greatest Songwriters’ alive, Jay-Z breaks down the art of writing in its purest form, where rhythm leads and the words follow. “The flow comes first… then I fill it with words.” From channeling jazz like Rakim to studying the unorthodox genius of The Notorious B.I.G., it’s a masterclass in making every word hit.

@theisaacmed Modern descendants of @sandwich

Theres this niche of agency that sprung in the last 2 years that focuses solely on x launch videos. This niche of agency has multiple entrants at $ 10m+ a year The videos aren’t organic. They are remarkably executed x influencer campaigns. I got 2-5 DMs a day now from these people all wanting me to help promote a launch. Playbook is simple but effective: 1. Make a video with a good hook. The video then goes to explain the product. Usually staffing 2-4 motion graphic artists on the videos to really push quality up. 2. Have influencer hires reach out to everyone on x that is within the niche and has decent reach / engagement 3. Offer them $ and then put them in a group chat. Use this to coordinate all posts and make reactions etc look organic. 4. Launch goes live and everyone quote tweets/reacts within 24 hours. 5. Views and attention It’s well executed. Kudos to the folks crushing this playbook. To be clear most of the launch videos you see on your feed getting reach all do this.

1. You need good content first. Most companies have very bad content. Clipping won't save you if your content team isn't putting out clippable moments. 2. Clipping is a junior marketing job. A brainrotted internet native kid with taste will outperform anyone at this gig. 3. Clipping works well with specific content types. Specifically personal brands, podcasts, and livestream. If you are trying to clip branded content/etc the ROI won't there or help move the needle.

reposting some fundraising advice....on memos. Memos: Thesis > Report I'm seeing more founders put together "investment memos" as fundraising material. It's a good idea. But too many of them read like book report summaries. Founders if you are going to write a memo, make sure it reads like a thesis: 1) How you developed your thesis: the way you uniquely connected datapoints to construct the argument for why your startup should exist. 2) Your unique vision of the future, what you see when you "live in the future", what the world will look like 3) Assumptions you're making that could be tested, how you disproved and gained conviction 4) Risks to your thesis and where you could be wrong. The questions you asked yourself late at night. Strategic analysis based on market knowledge. 5) The massive upside potential if you are right, and what sequence of products/strategies unfolding in future years that would create that future vision. As an investor when I'm doing due diligence and reading a memo, my goal is to understand the nuance of your thesis and strategy, something I can't get from a pitch deck. Investment memos provide the opportunity for rich, nuanced inferences and cause-and-effect relationships to shine. Please don't send me a book report!! Memos are a thesis.

One trend I’m watching closely in consumables right now: Beauty × CPG. Recently, Kylie Jenner expanded her canned cocktail brand Sprinter with a new product called k2o by Sprinter, positioned around hydration and wellness. It reinforces something I noticed after attending Expo West this year: CPG is starting to look a lot like the beauty industry. Historically, consumables competed on things like: • flavor • price • ingredients But today the winning brands are selling benefits and outcomes, similar to beauty. Instead of just a drink, it's now about: • glowing skin • better hydration • mood support • cognitive performance • recovery Beauty brands have long understood that people buy outcomes, not products. Now CPG is adopting the same playbook. And I think we’ll see a lot more beauty-style positioning applied to consumables — from functional drinks to gummies, supplements, and hydration products. The lines between beauty, wellness, and CPG are getting blurrier every year.

Rhode’s new pimple patch packaging reminds me of my all-time favorite packaging: Prada Skin, designed by Italian designer Karim Rashid. Cathy Horyn wrote about it in 2000 for The New York Times: “Cold cream packaged in what looks like a condom wrapper? If it’s novel, it must be Prada."

one of the most insane things is that Reid Miles, Blue Note’s graphic designer and creator of basically a whole visual vocabulary for music, didn’t like jazz and never listened to any of the records he worked on. just asked what the vibe was, flew blind and nailed it every time.

Program your mind with what you wish you were thinking all day (you DO have agency over what scripts run in your mind!! This is the ultimate unlock)

Bianca Censori spoke with AD Middle East about directing the music video for FATHER by Ye and Travis Scott 👀 “As my directorial debut, it felt like a natural extension of my background in architecture and performance art," she tells AD. The video's setting is the church. A centre of gravity for communities, where life's most important rituals take place; baptisms, deaths, weddings, confessions, holy communions and prayer. The world's stage. About the making of the video, Censori says that they "captured the video in a single shot, constructing a logic that could only exist within a dream, where unrelated characters, worlds and temporalities collide within one continuous space.” She explains that “because of this, the architecture of the set was critical. A single frame had to hold and give structure to everything unfolding within it. I approached the blocking architecturally, allowing multiple scenarios to be viewed simultaneously within the same space. Every element, line, perspective, colour and texture was composed to dissolve the boundary between reality and the surreal, creating a spatial language that mirrors the logic of dreams.”

Big Day for Create: - $20M investment round from Alliance Consumer Growth (ACG), Mike Repole (vitaminwater, BODYAMOR), and existing investor Unilever Ventures. - The round closed in August 2025. We've more than doubled revenue since, are run rating well above $100M, and have been profitable for nearly a year. We are continuing to grow aggressively across all channels. - Creatine + Electrolytes Launch: Listen, I am not going to sit here claiming that this is some major scientific breakthrough. People have been mixing creatine and electrolytes for about 30 years...and for good reason. They just work better together. But for whatever reason, no brand had really gone after this opportunity in a big, coherent way. Create is going after it. 5g of creatine monohydrate, 500mg of sodium, 250mg potassium, 50mg magnesium, 1000mg of taurine. Launching in 3 flavors (available in a variety pack) today and now available on our website and Amazon...and at all Targets nationwide in mid-April. I have personally been taking 2-4 of these per day. Passionfruit is my favorite flavor, but think we did a strong job on all of the flavors. Variety Pack should help you identify your daily driver. Bunch of other things we'll be sharing soon (brand refresh, new packaging form factors Target expansion, team growth, etc.) More to come...

FIRST-TIME OSCAR WINNERS Ryan Coogler and Paul Thomas Anderson

Michael B. Jordan's acceptance speech for his first-ever Oscar. “I know you guys want me to do well and I wanna do that cause you guys bet on me. Thank you for keeping betting on me and I’m gonna keep stepping up.”

Michael B. Jordan's reaction to winning his first ever Oscar. See the full winners list: bit.ly/OscarWins26

‘SINNERS’ won 4 Oscars tonight. • Best Actor (Michael B. Jordan) • Best Cinematography • Best Original Screenplay • Best Original Score See the full winners list: bit.ly/OscarWins26

Gatorade inventor Dr. Robert Cade was ahead of his time when he launched a beer with Gatorade in 1969. This week, Surfside joined Spiked Ade in the canned vodka + sports drink flavor space with Super Lyte.

Over the past few years I’ve had several execs rave about Crumbl Cookie’s social media, and asked how they can replicate it. What they all seem to miss is that their original success wasn’t a social media decision, it was a business decision based on a weekly revolving menu.

Ryan Petersen (@typesfast) has turned posting like he's tech's 'hurricane reporter' around all things shipping and trade into a big platform, with 310K followers on X. His lesson for startups: nobody cares. "In general, nobody cares about your startup," @flexport's CEO tells The Upstarts Podcast. "They care about things that are happening that are relevant in their world, and they're only gonna care about you to the extent that you are." Audiences are also wise to self-promotion, he adds. "You have to figure out, okay, what, what's the thing that we can provide unique insight into?" Catch the full episode 👇 YouTube: youtube.com/watch?v=SekUIw… Spotify: open.spotify.com/episode/1S1sx3… Apple: podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/fle…

i have bad news DTC twitter isn’t gonna like this, but i reviewed the data In the last 4 years (extent of my data), not one founder/ceo who has achieved a publicly disclosed 9 figure exit in consumer was a digital marketer by trade / spent most of their time on ads Mostly product (think dermatologist, influencer) or straight business people you’re focused on the wrong thing