"If no one knows who you are, nothing good can come from that." – Joe Zappa

Daniel and James sit down with Joe Zappa, founder of Sharp Pen Media, a communications agency built entirely for ad tech. At just 31, Joe has become one of the most visible people in the ad tech world across X, LinkedIn, two podcasts, and a newsletter. His core thesis? Most B2B companies and CEOs are completely invisible, and that invisibility is far more dangerous than saying the wrong thing. Joe built his entire business by putting himself out there, and in this episode he lays out exactly how anyone can do the same.

Joe gives a 30 day strategy to make a big impact, explains why comms teams are often the biggest blockers, how Terence Kawaja says invisible founders are killing their own exit multiples, and why Brian Chesky's AI-generated X thread is a cautionary tale for executives who outsource their voice. Joe lays it all out in this episode and the bar is so low that just showing up consistently puts you ahead of 90% of B2B.

Thank you to our sponsors for making this possible:
AdQuick – Making OOH advertising as easy to plan, buy, and measure as digital. adquick.com
Thrad.ai — Building the advertising infrastructure for AI. thrad.ai
beehiiv — The all-in-one platform for newsletters, websites, and every tool you need to grow and earn. beehiiv.com
The Farm — Fraction commercial legal with an in-house approach to outside counsel. thefarmllp.com

STAY CONNECTED
James on Twitter & LinkedIn – /jamesborow
Daniel on LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok – /danieldruger
Subscribe & leave a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review on Spotify & Apple Podcasts.

Daniel and JB are back from vacation — tanned and fired up — for an ADSN rundown that covers everything from Sean Frank's "ads rule everything around me" manifesto to X Money's launch, prediction market hedging for e-commerce brands, and Meta vibe-coding a new app. The episode kicks off with a sharp take on why every digital company is now fundamentally a marketing company, and why the problem-solving bar has been permanently raised by AI — with Gen Z founders skipping the career ladder entirely.

From there, they dig into X Money's 7% savings yield and why a Tesla phone with Grok, Starlink, and X payments could be the actual super app. They break down Claude's new Slack integration as the start of multiplayer AI, why companies become irrelevant rather than defeated, and the reveal that Josh Siegel's team is now at Meta — likely behind the new Pocket minigames app. They close with Primary Posts featuring an AI-generated country song that JB played 1,600 times at his Fourth of July party and Jason Levin's genius fake protest at Cannes that got 10 million Instagram views for a few hundred bucks.

Thank you to our sponsors:

AdQuick – Making OOH advertising as easy to plan, buy, and measure as digital. adquick.com

Thrad.ai — Building the advertising infrastructure for AI. thrad.ai

beehiiv — The all-in-one platform for newsletters, websites, and every tool you need to grow and earn. beehiiv.com

The Farm — Fraction commercial legal with an in-house approach to outside counsel. thefarmllp.com

STAY CONNECTED

James on Twitter & LinkedIn – /jamesborow

Daniel on LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok – /danieldruger

Subscribe & leave a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review on Spotify & Apple Podcasts.

Daniel and JB kick off what they call their most capital-intensive episode yet on ADSN. The conversation opens with SpaceX's blockbuster IPO — stock surging past $200 a share, the company now worth more than Microsoft, and the staggering stat that Elon Musk's net worth jumped by "a full Warren Buffett" in a single day. From there they unpack the $60 billion Cursor acquisition, Fox's $20 billion Roku deal, Substack's official ads launch, and Mercury's new agentic banking platform.

The episode covers a wide sweep of what's moving in tech and media right now: why frontier AI labs are about to go on an acquisition spree, how Fox is running Meta's family-of-apps playbook for television, why Sam Altman says "always make an API" saved OpenAI, and the emerging argument that tech companies will start looking more like hedge funds — tiny teams, massive AI leverage, and profit per employee through the roof. If you want to understand where the money is flowing and why, this is the episode.

Thank you to our sponsors:

AdQuick – Making OOH advertising as easy to plan, buy, and measure as digital. ⁠⁠adquick.com⁠⁠

⁠⁠Thrad.ai⁠⁠ — Building the advertising infrastructure for AI. ⁠⁠thrad.ai⁠

​beehiiv — The all-in-one platform for newsletters, websites, and every tool you need to grow and earn. ⁠⁠⁠beehiiv.com⁠⁠

​The Farm — Fraction commercial legal with an in-house approach to outside counsel. ⁠thefarmllp.com ⁠

STAY CONNECTED

James on Twitter & LinkedIn – /jamesborow

Daniel on LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok – /danieldruger

Subscribe & leave a ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ review on Spotify & Apple Podcasts.