GM! It’s Brett again. I’ve helped 20+ founders make the decision to shut their companies - and I always say the same thing: let go.

Your identity gets wrapped up in your company naturally, so when things aren't working it’s hard not to say "this is my life's work. I'm not a quitter."

I said that when my last company wasn't working out. But as soon as I let go and gave myself the space to breathe, new exciting ideas popped into my mind.

Naval says it best: “The greatest entrepreneurs are always willing to start over.”

If you truly believe in yourself (and you should), starting over is easy, because it gives you a chance to do something even bigger.

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Last week, xAI ran into fresh trouble. Over 200 staff members were tapped for an internal project called "Skippy," where they recorded their facial expressions and conversations to teach the company's chatbot, Grok, how to better read human emotions.

But things got messy quickly.

Employees grew uneasy with the consent forms - which gave xAI “perpetual rights” to their likeness for training and promotional materials. Some even worried their faces could be manipulated to say things they never said .

A tangent here is that xAI recently rolled out avatars like Ani and Rudi - both controversial for explicit or violent interactions. Now there are speculations if Skippy directly fueled these avatars, the timing didn't help optics.

This isn’t xAI’s first ethical stumble either. Just this month, Grok had to be paused briefly after generating antisemitic content.

The bigger picture - We're seeing an escalating debate around privacy, consent, and transparency in AI training - especially when real people's identities and behaviors become the raw material for building human-like AI products.

As we push deeper into “emotionally intelligent” AI, companies will face increasing pressure to define clear ethical boundaries. Without transparent policies and explicit consent standards, AI development risks losing public support or triggering heavier regulation.

Framer is a new no-code website-building tool that allows you to launch any website and marketing campaign in just days without needing a developer. It looks, feels, and works just like a design tool, but it has the power to output real websites that look, feel, and function like they were built by a developer.

Framer has an advanced CMS, out-of-the-box SEO optimization, built-in analytics, localization, and you can add advanced scroll animations to make your website come alive, all without code.

CTA: Get 25% off for 3 months with code HOMESCREEN

Raise, Mergers & Acquisitions:

Stat: 17,000,000%. That’s the return one anonymous Bitcoin whale made after cashing out a $54K investment from 2011 for $9.5B.

Rabbit Hole: How to get recommended by ChatGPT (Kyle Poyar)

The best resources we recently came across that will help you become a better founder, builder, or investor.

👾 Golpo turns your documents and/or prompts into whiteboard explainer videos.

💰 How to price your AI product? | Lessons from 400+ companies & 50 unicorns ~ Madhavan Ramanujam.

💥 How Claude is building a unique growth engine out of user-greated apps.

‼️ AI As Profoundly Abnormal Technology (Scott Alexander)

😱 Inverse Scaling in Test-Time Compute
When Large Reasoning Models are made to reason for longer, their accuracy can actually drop, revealing five types of failure modes like distraction, overfitting, or spurious reasoning. It highlights the need to test models across different reasoning lengths to catch and fix these issues.

🏈 Streaming and sports marketing: Here’s what the numbers say.
While sports sponsorships remain popular among marketers, 76% say they struggle to measure return on investment.

🔥 Monday Motivation: Marketing Masterclass: 3 Things You Must Know to Successfully Position, Market, Sell Your Product | Shreyas Doshi

Simple tricks to get a ton of value with minimal effort for work and life.

Every tool you forgot to open this month? Nuke it.
Downgrade the plan, pause the account, or remove your access. Saves cash and mental clutter.

Do the same for all the open tabs in your browser. If you didn’t need it today, you won’t need it tomorrow (probably). Use a tab manager if you’re feeling fancy.

And lastly, think back: what did you do more than 3 times this month?
Write it down. Then see if you can automate it with N8n, Zapier, or any other AI tool.

That’s it. You’ll walk into the next month lighter, sharper and faster.

Last week’s answer: If you guessed AI-generated… you were wrong.

🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Yeah (~43%)

🟩🟩🟩🟩⬜️⬜️ Nope (~57%)

Here’s the original.

Micro is a CRM that doesn't feel like homework and an email client that knows what matters. Simply put, it's an all-in-one productivity tool that organizes itself so you don't have to.

I built Micro with some friends because I was tired of getting guilt tripped for not hitting inbox 0 and having to bounce around between so many tools to do my job.

That said, Homescreen subscribers can cut the line - go to micro.so/waitlist, join the waitlist, and write in “Homescreen” for Other in the “How did you hear about us” question to get early access.

If you’re interested in advertising with us, send an email over to [email protected] with the subject “Homescreen Ads”