steve michaelsen

Did you have “start a beverage brand with your younger brother” on your COVID lockdown bingo card? Of course you didn’t. But turns out that I did. We’ve been building @leisure_project since Summer 2020. Would appreciate you following along our journey. 👉 @leisure_project

Monitoring the situation

@maverickecom agent

Nano Banana + Kalodata + Kling = AI Content Factory No actors. No photo shoots. No ghost creators. No wasted samples. Just hundreds of shoppable TikTok videos going live every single day — automatically. And here’s the wild part: This system produces 300+ product-ready TikTok Shop ads per day from a single prompt. It feels exactly like running Facebook Ads in 2008… except the CPMs are even lower and the entire loop is organic Why this works • ultra low CPMs possible with our content templates • No paid ads needed • No delays, no bottlenecks • Hundreds of creator-style profiles all selling your product 24/7 • GMV compounds weekly because posting never stops • Cost per video: about $5-8 compared to $50-100 for human creator content and compared to $30+ with influencer ai software The traditional tiktok shop scale methods are broken: - influencers charge more than they actually make for the brands - influencer ai video softwares still charge too much per video to justify uploading 300 videos per day Those softwares are meant for meta ads, NOT for scaling on tiktok shop Plus there is no framework to script, edit, or post all those videos… All are things you need since tiktok shop requires massive volume. Your eCom CPG brand can actually make $1m+ on tiktok shop.. however it will require 10k+ videos with proper strategy behind them Here’s the simplest $300/month ai workflow that replaces a $50k+ monthly content budget for ecom brands: 1. kalodata: scrape for viral videos of similar or same products 2. manus → product research + viral hooks + influencer images 3. kling 2.6 motion control → full AI videos • reel farm/n8n → autoposting (testing now) How the full TikTok Shop AI agent system👇 1. Each Agent creates a TikTok Shop–ready profile + avatar Built to look like real creators — optimized for shoppable videos. 2. Agents research, clone, and rebuild winning TikTok Shop content They scrape your niche using a spyware tool like Fastmoss → extract the hooks/angles and upload the video to Manus. 3. Upload your new influencer avatar and the video inspo to Kling 2.6 Motion control, click generate Using n8n or reel farm, agents can post daily across hundreds of accounts Then we deploy the Multi-Platform Swarm (MPS) When a concept hits on TikTok Shop → instantly spin up AI Agents to blast variations across every platform. Everything links back to your TikTok Shop. GMV scales practically on autopilot. (obviously we manage this process, but ai can do the heavy lifting) Results • Thousands of organic views daily • 100–200 shoppable videos posted per day • Entire human creative teams replaced This is the AI Creator Agent Method — the fastest way to scale TikTok Shop in 2026. I packaged the full Agentic Influencer System for free. Every workflow. Every prompt. Every tool. Plug-and-play. Comment “Agent” and I’ll send it to you. (Must be connected) PS: Repost for early access to the full Agentic TikTok Shop stack.

Stillcore Capital @stillcorecap is proud to release our STATE OF TAO: January 2026 Report. It is aimed primarily at people who know nothing about Bittensor. It explains, in simple-speak, what Bittensor $TAO is and how it works, and then characterizes where the ecosystem is at today. Hope you enjoy it! Download PDF: stillcorecapital.com/wp-content/upl…

We’re making our first full-time marketing hire at @drinkleisure If you or someone you know love building modern CPG brands and want to join a fast growing beverage brand, we'd love to hear from you! Full-time, remote (LA / NYC / Austin / Miami preferred). Please apply through this link: lnkd.in/gRjyCPbq

CPG friends Need urgent help in getting FoodBuy approval We've had well over 7 figures of business in limbo for the last 2 years and want to make moves on this in 2026 Who can help!??!

Catching strays in @Forbes Congrats to my brother @alexmichaelsen1 for getting on the Under 30 list this year. Proud be your co-founder and over-30 brother for life No way @drinkleisure would be doing the things we’re doing without you at the helm

@michaelmiraflor Someone in government must be getting kickbacks from CLEAR+ Just went through security at FLL and I’ve never seen CLEAR reps happier in their life. Easiest day to sign up people ever. At least 20 people were signing up on the spot Lol

My sister is traveling today and says that the TSA lines are an incredible mess at SFO. At least 3x+ the wait for PreCheck. The chaos coming out of this FAA mandatory flight reduction should be a time for CLEAR+ to shine. Right?

@mfg Photos app is unusable

The amount of extra steps apple has introduced to accomplish anything in Photos as well as the screen shot and mark up flow feels like the nail in the coffin moment solidifying they aren’t trusted leaders in UX design any longer

@JosephJacks_ @OSSCapital Legendary move JJ 🫡

New Announcement from @OSSCapital : Incentive alignment is broken in VC. We want to change that. First time in the history of venture capital this is being done (that I know of)… I’m pleased to share that @OSSCapital is granting 10% of our carried interest (equal to about $4M cost basis across our funds today) to all our portfolio founders under the following conditions: — OSS must maintain at least 10% ownership in their companies (fully diluted). — They did not lose our money. Implementation: — This carry will be equal-weighted granted to all qualifying companies and active founders of those companies based on the ownership size of our stakes, not the amount of capital we deployed, for eg we have a few companies where we invested < $2M and own > 10%, and many where we had to invest a fair bit more for the same ownership. — The carry cannot be sold or converted and will be fully vested even if we start paying our distributions than earn carry in older funds. This applies to almost all the companies we have acquired > than 10% of… about 25 companies. We will be completing these grant docs and finalizing details over the coming weeks before the end of 2025. Carry will be granted out of the GP stake (my ownership personally), so it is very meaningful. We are aspiring for > 50X net returns per fund. This creates the kind of extrinsic incentive alignment we want — beyond the very high levels of already tightly aligned philosophical intrinsic alignment we have been blessed with. Thank you to all @OSSCapital founders for believing in us.

It’s officially the holidays

i just love seeing my friends win. no greater feeling.

The team at Vacation is too elite. I smile every time I get an SMS from them. The only brand I genuinely enjoy being subscribed to.

@MaxMulvihil As an ex-Nike guy turned startup founder I couldn’t agree more No way in hell did life at the swoosh prepare me for those early days, months, etc of starting Leisure… outside of emailing from an @ nike.com email to open to get a reply back lol

Many former Red Bull people appear in the startup CPG ecosystem. They do not seem effective. It’s not their fault, as they were role players in a massive organization driven by a next-level marketing machine. No one should expect their experience to be relevant to a startup with no distribution. It makes zero sense that this experience would be helpful for a small brand. Start-up brands need scrappy executors, not administrators. Honestly, companies that hire them expecting results deserve what they get.

Miami OOH hits different

@drewfallon12 Bro is lucky the government shutdown otherwise the SEC would be on you lol

did this podcast move allbirds +6% today 🤔

@RosenZone Suppressing the millennial urge to buy this for absolutely zero reason

The new oven from Our Place is pretty damn nice looking….it even dehydrates food! Just launched today!

🍋 🤌🏼 Highly recommended @drinkleisure.

@iiiitsandrea the best in the biz

has anyone written about Ggiatta and their potential to be GenZ cava/SG currently 5 locations in LA their caesar wrap is insaneeeee

I went on a beverage brands website for the first time on Sunday and 3 days later I can’t escape paid ads from them on Instagram At least 10 ads at this point Great ads TBH but they must be absolutely bleeding $$$

Happy Tummy Coffee now in the 305 Congrats @IsabelHalfCaff you a legend fr