Sam Blumenthal

Yet increasingly, brands are elevating unboxing into an altogether new marketing strategy. A growing number have begun selling their products as “mystery boxes,” clearing the way for unboxing videos where customers genuinely don’t know what’s inside — and allowing brands to bundle their products in a way that is ready-made to go viral on YouTube... See more

Decentralized execution changes the game. Where centralized execution creates existential capture risk, decentralized execution acts as a strong backstop to other forms of capture. As long as executive power in a network remains distributed across a wide portion of the agents, the network has flexibility to experiment with various forms of... See more

Everyone wants to talk metaverse, but what about advertising?

In the span of just two years, Whatnot became the first U.S. livestream shopping unicorn with a valuation of $1.5 billion. Its app is home to thousands of sellers that deal in sports and Pokemon trading cards, action figures and comic books. Some have created multi-million dollar businesses on the back of its marketplace. Lafontaine says it’s these... See more