Michael Cassau

This is the best founder you've never heard of. Adam Foroughi's company prints $5 billion in cash a year with just 400 people. When his stock price dropped by 92%, he borrowed money to buy back $6 billion in stock. That bet made the company more than $60 billion. The entire C-suite is just 4 people. To this day, Adam approves every hire. This episode has the highest insight-to-minute ratio of any conversation I've had so far. Here’s our full conversation: 0:00 The $6B Buyback That Made $60B 2:15 Borrowing Money To Buy Back Stock At A Discount 5:02 Why VCs Passed On AppLovin In 2012 9:00 From App Discovery To Ad Platform 14:45 Beating Google's AdMob With Performance Marketing 19:30 No Board For Six Years 30:12 The China Deal That Almost Blew Up 37:45 The Convertible Note Pivot And KKR 46:30 Buying Gaming Studios To Get Data 51:45 Losing Trust With Game Developers 58:20 The 2022 Crash And How He Kept His Team 1:02:00 Building An Hyper Competent & Efficient Company 1:07:25 Why Every New Hire Needs His Approval 1:19:06 The Axon 2 Inflection Point 1:21:15 One Great Engineer Now Beats A Hundred Includes paid partnerships.

This is truly unfortunate: In 2022, JetBlue had agreed to merge with Spirit Airlines in a $3.8 billion transaction. This was intended to end Spirit's imminent bankruptcy and employ the majority of Spirit's 17,000 employees. One year later, in 2023, the US Department of Justice sued to block the merger, saying it would reduce competition and drive up fares. Fast forward another 2 years to today, and Spirit has officially gone bankrupt, ceased operations, and 17,000 people are now unemployed. And, tens of thousands of Spirit passengers are now "stranded." The worst part? The "reduced competition" that the DOJ thought they were avoiding by blocking the transaction has only gotten worse. There quite literally is no competition in the space anymore. This will go down as one of the biggest transactional failures in US history.

What everybody conveniently ignores: Unlike the capabilities and salaries of human employees, AI employee capabilities and costs will be entirely dictated by a handful of sociopaths who control your access to said employees. They can raise the costs 3x overnight. They can nerf the capabilities with a simple update. They can change entire models and workflows instantly. How many business leaders do you think are losing sleep over that? Or, are they all too busy lapping up the drool over the short-term benefits? Remember: "First one's free" was always the fastest to make someone dependent on you.

something ppl forget when they’re speaking publicly whether in interviews, podcasts, anything broadcast is to slow down. you basically need to talk at 0.5x. & i now realize i am so fucking guilty of this. i default to 2x cuz i’m racing to get the thought out before it slips. but speed that feels articulate in your head reads as anxious on the other end. the audience needs room to land each beat & the pause is where they decide you’re worth listening to. cadence is effectively the message.