🚀Chat & Buy: The Future of AI Shopping

Happy Thursday 👋 Hope you’re doing well. You might be wondering why this email looks different from the usual ones. It’s because we’re changing the newsletter platform to Substack. The email address might also be different, yeah, same reason. Why did I move to Substack? Well, it’s for 2 main reasons: better email deliverability (a few emails that I sent landed in spam) & Substack has a wonderful community to engage with. What’d you think?

WHAT IS HAPPENING?

Y Combinator joins $4.5m round for AI SMS checkout tool OneText

📲💬 AI meets checkout, straight from your messages. OneText, founded by ex-PayPal folks, just raised $4.5M from big names like Y Combinator and Khosla Ventures to bring text-based shopping into the mainstream. Their AI-powered SMS tool doesn’t just recover carts, it lets customers buy directly through conversations. With open rates that crush email and mobile engagement at an all-time high, OneText is tapping into one of the most overlooked opportunities in digital commerce. Read More

🛸📡 We've been broadcasting our presence to the cosmos for decades, whether we meant to or not. A new study led by Ramiro Saide from the University of Manchester shows that Earth’s radar systems, from airport scanners to Cold War-era military networks, have been lighting up the sky with artificial signals strong enough to be spotted by alien civilizations up to 60,000 light years away. This isn’t a sci-fi "what if" anymore. Our tech has unintentionally turned us into a galactic beacon, raising a big question: if someone out there is listening, what happens next? Read More

MORE NEWS

• 💰 South Korea is moving to give crypto firms a real seat at the startup table. A proposed amendment by the Ministry of SMEs and Startups would reclassify virtual asset companies as eligible "venture businesses," unlocking benefits like tax breaks and financial support previously off-limits to them. This marks a sharp policy shift from 2018, when firms like Dunamu (Upbit's parent) lost venture status and faced steep penalties. Backed by newly elected pro-crypto President Lee Jae Myung, the move signals growing institutional support and could be a game-changer for the country’s digital asset ecosystem. Read More

• 🤖🚀 Replit just teamed up with Microsoft to bring "vibe coding", building apps with plain language, to the enterprise world. This partnership lets businesses create custom software fast using Replit’s AI tools, now available through Microsoft’s Azure marketplace with added security guardrails. Behind the scenes, Replit’s shift to Anthropic’s Claude model has seriously boosted its coding capabilities. As language-based coding reshapes how software gets made, this move signals a growing shift in who can build and how fast the tech stack is evolving. Read More

• 💸⚡ Ego Death Capital just locked in a $100M fund to scale software companies building directly on the Bitcoin protocol, not chasing tokens, just real businesses with revenue and traction. Targeting Series A rounds, the firm is backing startups like Breez, Relai, and Roxom that generate actual cash flow in BTC. With most investors burned by speculative bets, this fund aims to lead a more grounded, sustainable path in the Bitcoin economy, one built on solving real-world problems, not hype. Read More

MARKETING IN ACTION

🧠This quote gets right to the heart of one of the most powerful ideas in the book Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion by Robert Cialdini. It's simple: when someone does something for us, we feel a strong urge to return the favor. Cialdini shows how marketers and salespeople use this to their advantage, often by giving away small freebies or helpful information. It’s not about manipulation; it’s about understanding a deep-rooted social instinct. Whether it’s a free sample at a store or a downloadable guide on a website, those little “gifts” can make us feel like saying yes is just the polite thing to do.

LET’S TALK MONEY

💰This timeless quote is from The Richest Man in Babylon by George S. Clason. It is one of the book’s most important lessons: pay yourself first. It’s a simple idea, but powerful. Before you spend a dime on bills, groceries, or fun, set aside at least 10% of what you earn. That money becomes the seed of your future wealth. Most people work hard and spend everything they make (or more), but Clason reminds us that financial freedom starts with discipline. Even small savings, if done consistently, can grow into something meaningful. It’s not about being rich overnight, it’s about building wealth the old-school way: slowly, wisely, and deliberately.

INSIDE THE CONVERSATION

This quote is from How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. It highlights a powerful principle: the importance of using someone's name. It might seem small, but hearing your own name makes you feel acknowledged and respected. Carnegie teaches that people crave recognition, and something as basic as remembering and using their name in conversation builds trust and likability. It signals that you see them as an individual, not just a face in the crowd.

THE WISDOM LINE

"Value means helping people. If you’re trying to figure out what kind of business to start, look for something that people already need or want, and then find a way to give it to them." — Chris Guillebeau

Hope you like today’s issue. Have a good day! Bye 👋