Early Stage Growth • Ballpoint: Aggregate Weekly

Aggregate 08: brand-led growth, the April slump, and the power of GPT-5.5

Josh Lachkovic — Fri, 24 Apr 2026 10:15:04 GMT

Hello to our many new subscribers. This week’s post on 15 ways Claude has changed our business went a little bit viral. 👋

As a heads up for you. Our usual cadence is a weekly Tuesday essay and a weekend lighter snack. I like to think of this as FT Weekend for startup, DTC, and consumer growth people.

April is coming to an end, which for most of you – bas…

Something for the weekend: Meta platform updates, Twitter's 20th anniversary, and the Claude codebase leak

Josh Lachkovic — Fri, 03 Apr 2026 09:45:26 GMT

Good morning

Last week, we were away on our company offsite as we embarked on the journey to become AI-native. The current goal state is:

For any task, can it first of all be given to AI to complete for you

I take the David William Silva view that LLMs likely won’t be the singularity answer. There is just too much devolving to the baseline and average inv…

Something for the weekend: mafia, business lunches, JW Marriott and more

Josh Lachkovic — Sat, 21 Mar 2026 08:52:54 GMT

Good morning

I’m testing times we deliver this weekly aggregate roundup. Let me know what you think of the Saturday delivery.

Context and experience are becoming the most valuable skills in AI.

But something else we all need to learn is perseverance.

If you tell Claude to connect to an Ads MCP and ask it for recommendations, it’s going to tell you to increa…

Aggregate #005: Meta/Claude AI bans, the death of authenticity, and the $160bn rise of sports betting

Josh Lachkovic — Fri, 13 Mar 2026 08:57:49 GMT

Last week I was in California.

In SF, AI billboards were everywhere. As well as making it seem like the entire economy there was AI-focused, it also acted as a good reminder of forgotten launches.

Even brands we’ve already signed up for, we forget about quickly. If your product use isn’t daily or weekly at worst, then you risk being forgotten. If your pro…

Aggregate #004: shifting creative bottlenecks, Manus, and the demise of the Greggs sausage roll

Ryan Lang — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 09:30:54 GMT

Hello reader, and apologies for the interruption to your regularly scheduled programming. With Josh currently AWOL as he hares around California, it falls to my colleague Ryan and I to bring you this week’s wee catch-up on what’s happening in the world of growth and beyond. We were quite touched that Josh didn’t delegate this task to Claude.

I’m Mark, Ba…

Aggregate #003: Sydney Sweeney, podcasts, and protein's rise

Josh Lachkovic — Fri, 27 Feb 2026 11:45:22 GMT

I’ll be away next Friday as I’ll be embarking on a road trip around California. A trip I’ve wanted to do essentially since I was 15 years old. I really cannot wait and hope you all have a great week.

Aggregate #002: generalists, public affairs, and the end of supersized food

Josh Lachkovic — Thu, 19 Feb 2026 20:52:07 GMT

I write this off the back of a pretty intense AI-focused fortnight.

I first got a computer when I was eight years old in 1996. I spent hours on that thing, playing around with every nook and cranny of that Windows 95 shell. Briefcase, Publisher, the Registry. There was no stone unturned.

Four years later, I got the internet and built my first PC. An old…

Aggregate #001:

Josh Lachkovic — Fri, 13 Feb 2026 09:01:41 GMT

Hello

Welcome to Aggregate #001. I’m giving the Substack a serious upgrade this year.

Every Tuesday – as you have done for the last three years – you’ll get my usual essay.

This is a seven minute read sitting under one of these six core themes: founder mindset, paid social, growth stories, data & insights, creative & psychology, and growth frameworks.

But…