How a Pool Party in Vegas Turned Into Slap Snacks

One of the things I love most about startups is how rarely they begin the way you think they will.

SlapSnacks started in one of the least likely places imaginable: a pool party in Las Vegas.

I was there for my friend and business partner Sam Rockwell’s bachelor party, along with Justin Samuels and my brother Jeremy. We had all gone to school together at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Sam had gotten to know Dana White over the past few years through his work building brands like Dr. Bombay and his relationships with retailers like Walmart. Sam texted Dana asking if we could swing by UFC headquarters for a quick visit.

Dana immediately replied…

“Come on over!”

We expected to be there for thirty minutes…or thirty five minutes if you include the video game detour..

The video game detour

(above – the video game detour)

Instead, we spent the next five hours together.

Dana gave us a full tour of UFC headquarters, showed us his office and some of the personal artifacts he keeps there, like a sabertooth skull, an original samurai uniform, custom guns from Kid Rock, and more, and talked about everything imaginable: business, leadership, family, sports, politics, entrepreneurship, and life. It was one of those rare conversations where nobody was checking the time or their phones because everyone was genuinely locked in.

One thing became obvious pretty quickly.

The Dana people see on television is exactly the Dana you get in person.

He’s authentic. Direct. Competitive. He says what he thinks and does what he says.

As an entrepreneur, that’s something I’ve always admired, and actively look for in partners. Sam and his team are the same way.

The UFC wasn’t built because it was the obvious opportunity. It was built because Dana had conviction. He saw something the rest of the world didn’t, committed to it completely, and spent decades turning it into one of the most valuable sports properties on the planet.

He doesn’t put his name behind many businesses, let alone build them from the ground up as a co-founder.

He only leans in when he truly believes.

As we were wrapping up, Dana asked a simple question:

“So, what are you guys working on?”

We each shared what we were building, and naturally the conversation shifted into…

“Maybe we should build something together?”

That’s when food entered the conversation.

Like a lot of people, we all grew up eating Hot Pockets. We loved them.

But somewhere along the way, we stopped eating them.

Not because we stopped wanting convenient food, but because we wanted better food.

That led to a simple set of questions:

Why can’t convenient food also have clean ingredients?

Why can’t it be high in protein?

Why can’t it actually taste incredible?

Why should consumers have to compromise?

That conversation stuck with all of us.

Ironically, I had spent the previous few years telling Sam to stay away from frozen.

I had invested in Happi Co., seen countless food companies come and go, and experienced firsthand how difficult frozen can be. Manufacturing is complex. Distribution is harder. Margins are tighter. Supply chains are unforgiving. Many institutional investors avoid the category altogether, and I understand why after seeing many of those pitch decks.

But the more I heard why people disliked frozen, the more interested I became. My contrarian investor instincts started to kick in.

I’ve always believed some of the best businesses are built by running toward problems when others are running away.

So I started digging into the market.

The numbers were fascinating.

The U.S. frozen food category is now a roughly $90 billion market, driven by consumers who increasingly value convenience without sacrificing quality. Frozen is no longer just about low-cost meals, it’s becoming a destination for premium products, cleaner ingredients, and protein-forward eating.

Then another trend stood out.

Consumers are eating significantly more protein than they were just a few years ago. They’re reading ingredient labels more carefully than ever. They want recognizable ingredients, fewer compromises, and food that fits into busy, modern lives. And with the rise of GLP-1 medications and a broader focus on weight loss and health, protein-forward eating has become even more central to how people think about food.

Then we spoke with retailers.

Over and over, we heard the same message:

“We need innovation.”

The frozen aisle had become dominated by legacy brands that had changed very little over the years.

Retailers wanted new brands.

They wanted more competition.

Most importantly, they wanted products consumers were actually excited to discover.

That became our “aha” moment.

We realized we weren’t excited about building a frozen food company.

We were excited about building a great food company.

One built around clean ingredients.

One built around high protein.

One built around food people actually crave, not just tolerate because it’s “better for you.”

And, one with snackable, fun, approachable form factors.

Frozen simply happened to be the best place to start, driven by a product vision we couldn’t shake and the collective experience around the table, from building food brands to scaling consumer companies.

It’s a massive category that has been waiting for real innovation, and we believe it’s the perfect foundation to build something much bigger over time. And with Dana and his partners, we also have a unique opportunity to bring the brand to life in a way most food companies never can, connecting directly with fans at events like PowerSlap and the UFC, and turning customers into part of the experience from day one.

So we decided to go all in, make some moves, and get to work.

(above – making the moves)

Together with Dana, Sam, Justin, Jeremy, and an incredible team, we set out to build a modern food company making products we’d proudly feed our own families and friends. Convenient without compromise. High in protein. Made with real ingredients. And most importantly, food that actually tastes great.

That’s how SlapSnacks was born.

Fast forward to today, we’ve assembled an incredible group of investors who share that vision, including members of the UFC family, investors from my network like Red Sea Ventures, and the Happi Co. community.

Today, after a year or so of working in the kitchen, we’re excited to officially launch.

You’ll find SlapSnacks in the frozen aisle at Walmart.

That’s where our journey begins and we’re just getting started.

(above – working in the kitchen)

(above – SlapSnacks debut at PowerSlap)

(above – board meeting at UFC 316)

Game on!

How a Pool Party in Vegas Turned Into Slap Snacks Read More »

$75,000,000 Crypto Wallet Bulk Hack

Four years ago I went on a wild goose chase to unlock millions of dollars stuck in a Trezor hardware wallet.

That chase got… weird.

At one point I was considering flying to Switzerland to access a secret lab. Another plan involved smuggling myself across a locked-down Europe during COVID. There was even a moment where I half-joked (half-serious) about using hallucinogens to help my friend recover his lost memory so he can remember a 4-digit password.

It didn’t look like a business. It looked like a bad (or actually excellent) movie script.

But it led me to Joe Grand, a brilliant engineer who once testified before the Senate that he could take down the internet in 30 minutes. He saw paths where others saw dead ends.

We took our shot.

And somehow, it worked. The coins were recovered. #FreeTheta, we said!

That could have been the end. Cool story, move on.

Instead, we leaned in and built a company together called OffSpec.

Our thinking was simple: there have to be more people out there in the same position.

We were right.

Since then, we’ve identified roughly $75M worth of crypto that people thought was gone forever. Every case is different, but the reaction never is. Relief. Shock. Sometimes something that genuinely changes the course of someone’s life.

What I didn’t fully appreciate at the beginning was the ripple effect.

One decision…a wild goose chase…turned into:
– a company
– millions of dollars back in people’s hands
– that money flowing back into families, businesses, and new opportunities
– and in some cases, completely altering someone’s trajectory in life…with money, hope or closure.

And yeah… that feels really good.

It’s a reminder that curiosity and optimism are underrated forces.

You don’t always need a master plan. Sometimes a wild goose chase, with an open mind, is good enough.

Most things don’t work like that.

But every once in a while, something does.

Videos below

Part One

Part Two

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America Is Closing Its API

For decades, America ran the most generous open API the world has ever seen.

Free trade agreements. Open borders for goods. Most Favored Nation status handed out like developer keys. The pitch was simple: let anyone plug into the American economic engine, send us your exports, access our consumer market, and the rising tide of efficiency will lift all boats.

It was the economic equivalent of a tech company launching a free, unlimited API and telling the world: build on us.

And build they did. China became the world’s factory floor. Mexico became the nearshore assembly line. American companies moved upstream into design, IP, and brand while outsourcing the actual making of things to whoever could do it cheapest.

If you’ve spent any time in tech, you’ve seen this movie before.

The Free Tier Is Over

Remember when APIs were free? Google Maps, Twitter, Facebook. They flung open their platforms with zero restrictions. Third-party developers flooded in and built entire businesses on top of them. The platforms got distribution and network effects. Everyone won.

I would know. We ran this exact playbook at Buddy Media, building on Facebook, and again at Troops.ai.

building on Slack. It worked incredibly well. Both companies were acquired. But eventually, Facebook and Slack looked at what we’d built and realized they were giving away the store. They natively integrated our killer features into their own platforms. The open API giveth, and the open API taketh away.

Then came the pricing pages. Twitter killed its free API and started charging. Google Maps jacked up rates overnight and thousands of startups scrambled to rearchitect. OpenAI and every major LLM provider now charge per token, metering every single request that touches their infrastructure. What was once free became a line item, then a serious expense, then a strategic bottleneck.

That’s a tariff. Dressed up in developer docs instead of trade policy, but the mechanism is identical. You built on our platform for free while we were growing. Now we’re charging because we realize the value of what we’ve been giving away.

@gokulr talked about this strategy playing out at Facebook and Google. The result? They are two of the very best companies in the world. And there’s a graveyard of startups to show for it.

Look at U.S. trade policy and tell me it’s not the same pattern. Tariffs on Chinese goods. Reshoring incentives through the CHIPS Act. Restrictions on technology exports. Universal baseline tariffs floated every few months.

The message is the same one every maturing platform eventually sends: you’ve been accessing our infrastructure for free, and that era is over.

@howardlutnick recently delivered this very message at Davos.

Outsourcing Your Leverage

In tech, the open API era gave way to vertical integration. The companies that actually won didn’t just build platforms for others to plug into. They owned the full stack. Apple designs its own chips. Tesla manufactures its own batteries. Amazon runs the logistics, the cloud, and increasingly makes the products it sells.

The lesson is straightforward: when you outsource everything, you outsource your leverage. Open systems are great for growth. They’re terrible for defensibility.

America is learning this now, and the stakes are a lot higher than a startup losing access to an API.

When you outsource your manufacturing base to a geopolitical rival, you don’t just create a supply chain dependency. You create a military vulnerability. The same country making your consumer electronics makes components that go into defense systems. The same rare earth minerals that power your iPhone power your fighter jets. If the relationship deteriorates and the API gets shut off, you’re not dealing with empty shelves at Walmart. You’re dealing with a compromised ability to build the weapons your military needs to function.

This is why the U.S. is now backing American companies to acquire mineral mines in the Congo, competing directly with China’s decades-long head start locking up critical mineral supply chains across Africa. It’s full stack integration at a national level. You can’t just design the chip or assemble the product. You need to own the mine that produces the cobalt and lithium that make any of it possible in the first place.

Apple started designing its own silicon instead of buying from Intel. America is starting to secure its own minerals instead of buying from China. Same logic, wildly different consequences if you get it wrong. Apple ships a slower laptop. America loses the ability to defend itself.

The Stack Is the Strategy

The shift has real costs. Rate-limited APIs slow innovation at the edges. Tariffs raise consumer prices. Vertical integration is expensive and operationally brutal. There’s a reason companies outsourced in the first place, and there’s a reason countries did too.

But the calculus has changed. The question isn’t “what’s the most efficient way to produce things?” anymore. It’s “what’s the most resilient way to produce things, and who captures the value when things get tense?” This is especially true for strategically important categories like AI, weapons, defense, pharmaceuticals, and healthcare.

Tech learned this lesson already. The most valuable companies in the world aren’t the ones with the most open platforms. They’re the ones that control the critical and most valuable layers of their own stack.

America is running the same playbook at nation-state scale. The API is closing. The free tier is gone. And the winners in the next era, in both tech and geopolitics, will be the ones who own their stack from the mine to the microchip.

America Is Closing Its API Read More »

Meet Thensome.com

Some of the best ideas come from simple questions.
Like: What if you could add THC to any drink you already love—without changing the taste, smell, or vibe?

That’s what we’ve built with Thensome.com. A flavorless, tasteless THC beverage enhancer you can add to cocktails, mocktails, coffee, beer, or water. Whatever you’re drinking, now you can have your drink… and Thensome.

Why Now?

The world is shifting. People are drinking less and looking for better alternatives.

  • Alcohol consumption is at its lowest point in nearly 90 years (Gallup).
  • Daily cannabis use just passed daily alcohol use (AP News).
  • Gen Z overwhelmingly prefers cannabis to alcohol (CBS News).

The timing is right. Culture is ready.

The Team

As I’ve said a million times, the journey is the prize. And the only thing better than building something new is building it with your friends.

  • Steve Weisman knows the cannabis world inside and out, having started and selling his own cannabis company. It also helps that we studied electrical and computer engineering together, started two other companies together, and have been looking to build another project together for quite some time.
  • Peter Alden brings a deep background in sales and tech, and is what we’ll most definitely call a “product-centric” CEO here.
  • Emily Miller spent the past few years building one of the most forward-looking consumer brands, of which I was an investor, and she understands trends and the consumer mindset.

Different skills, same energy, shared vision.

So here we go.
Thensome.com is live.
The product is available for purchase.
Have your drink, and Thensome.

There is a lot more to come, but please let us know what you think and follow us.

And because I had to play around with some new AI tools..

Meet Thensome.com Read More »

Copying Isn’t Cheating (in some cases)— It’s Smart Strategy

“I wanted to win the Olympic gold medal. She did it. I figured, if I copied everything she did, I would win the Olympic gold medal too.”

I’m paraphrasing here, but that’s what Nastia Liukin, Olympic gold medalist, told me the first time we met. She was referring to another gold medalist gymnast who practiced at her gym. We were just starting to work together on TULA, where she became our first brand ambassador. Her mindset stuck with me, especially since it’s an approach I’d used too.

Most people think copying is wrong — even taboo. They confuse it with theft.

Yes, stealing someone’s work or IP is theft. But borrowing a framework that works? That’s not theft — that’s mentorship in disguise. It’s how we learn from people who’ve already figured it out.

When we launched TULA, we “stole” two core playbooks:

  1. Go narrow and deep with one motivated retail partner — a strategy my partner Ken used while building Bobbi Brown.
  2. Lean heavily into influencer marketing — something I saw work firsthand while building Spinback.

At Troops, we borrowed another winning formula: build on top of a widely adopted platform for accelerated distribution. In our case, it was Slack. At Buddy Media and Spinback, it was Facebook. One was a social network for the enterprise, the other was for consumers. Same strategy, different platform.

Even when hiring, I use frameworks and interview questions inspired by leaders like Zuckerberg and Musk — not to imitate, but to learn from their pattern recognition and what has clearly worked for them. Specific interview questions and frameworks I “stole”:

  • “What’s something you’ve done that is exceptional?” – Elon
  • “Would I work for this person?” – Mark

Now let’s be clear: there’s a line. I’ve seen companies cross it — pixel-for-pixel clones, one-to-one knockoffs. That’s theft. That’s lazy. That’s short-term. It’s also scummy.

But copying a strategy with intention and ethics? That’s just smart. The truth is, some of the most effective outcomes in business (and life) come from studying what works and adapting it well.

Copying isn’t the enemy. Done right, it’s a shortcut to excellence.

Nastia Liukin, Olympic gold medalist and TULA’s first brand partner

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Walking Paradoxes: Why Our Contradictions Might Be Our Superpower

Humans are walking paradoxes—complex, layered, and often full of surprises. A scientist might spend her days decoding molecular structures, then go home and lose herself in oil paints. A finance executive could secretly be a poet, writing verses more moving than market trends. A waitress might be jotting down screenplay notes between tables, crafting stories that rival what’s showing on Netflix.

We often assume expertise must match a title, but some of the most profound insights come from the least expected places. And sometimes, it’s the combination of seemingly unrelated interests that creates true innovation. Steve Jobs is a perfect example—his fascination with calligraphy and philosophy, when fused with his love for technology, helped shape the aesthetic of modern computing. The Mac’s typeface and interface weren’t just functional; they were beautiful. That happened because of his paradoxes, not in spite of them.

On the flip side, titles alone don’t guarantee mastery. A parent volunteering part-time in a classroom might connect with students more deeply than a certified teacher. A high schooler passionate about geopolitics could out-analyze a foreign policy “expert.” And in the world of finance, we saw a retail investor like Roaring Kitty outsmart Wall Street veterans during the GameStop saga—doing his own research while hedge funds completely missed the mark.

When I was building TULA and Troops, I saw this firsthand. In the beauty industry, I was “the tech guy.” In tech, I was “the beauty guy.” But the randomness? That was the advantage. In beauty, we used SaaS playbooks. In SaaS, we applied consumer-brand marketing tactics. That cross-pollination made both companies better.

The truth is, skill, passion, and insight rarely wear name tags. They live in the curious, unpredictable spaces between our identities. That’s where magic often happens—where paradox becomes power.

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Lotame Acquired By Publicis Groupe

“Publicis Groupe has agreed to acquire ad tech firm Lotame, expanding the holding company’s global identity and data-management capabilities.” – Digiday

About eighteen years ago, I met Andy Monfried, who offered me an internship at his online advertising startup, Lotame. It was an opportunity I couldn’t pass up.

After graduating college, I joined full-time. But there was a catch—I had to reverse commute from NYC to Columbia, Maryland, where our headquarters was based. My days started early, really early. I’d wake up around 4 AM, jump in the car, and drive two to three hours to the office. During the week, I stayed in a corporate apartment with Andy, fully immersed in the startup grind. Then, every Friday, I’d drive back to the city, catch up with friends, and do it all over again the next week.

I kept up this routine until we eventually opened a New York office.

Looking back, those long drives to Maryland weren’t just part of the job—they were the foundation of an incredible journey. What I remember most isn’t the commute itself but the people I worked with. I was surrounded by some of the smartest minds in technology, and those early days shaped the way I think, work, and lead today.

Sometimes, the road to success is quite literally a long drive, wrapped up in a lot of patience —but if you’re surrounded by the right people, it’s always worth it.

Congrats Andy, Jeremy, and the rest of the Lotame team. Incredibly well-deserved!

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The Text That Still Haunts Me

I’ve never shared this story before.

2008…

I was standing in the corner of my parents’ living room, fiddling with the audio settings for the outdoor speakers. Something wasn’t working right — the input and output were all mixed up, and I was reconfiguring the auxiliary settings. It’s a weird, random detail to remember so vividly, but I do.

Because that’s when I got the text.

“Dan, when are you coming to Chicago?”

“Not sure, probably in a few months. I’ll keep you posted.”

“I really need you.”

I sent back something like, “We’ll hang soon… you got this.”

Looking back now, I can’t stop thinking about how cold that response must have felt. How dismissive. How much he might have needed something more in that moment.

A week later, Jason was gone.

I never got the full story about why or how. But deep down, I knew.

I knew then.

He was reaching out. Asking for help. Saying it in the clearest way he could without actually saying the words. And I didn’t do a damn thing except send a hollow, meaningless response.

It haunts me to this day.

What if I’d been more compassionate?

What if I’d just called him?

What if I’d jumped on a plane?

What if I’d done anything more than sending a short text?

Would he still be here?

Maybe if we’d recreated the kind of support system we had in college — that rare feeling of closeness, understanding, and looking out for each other — maybe he would have been okay.

People try to comfort others in those moments. They say things like, “It’s not your fault. You did your best. There was nothing you could have done.”

And part of me wants to believe that.

But part of me knows that’s bullshit.

The truth is — I could have done more. I didn’t.

And maybe even the smallest gesture, the simplest act of care, could have made the difference.

I’ve been posting a lot lately about hard work, strength, pushing through. But the reality is, sometimes we don’t need toughness. Sometimes we just need compassion.

Understanding.

Presence.

No answers. No solutions. Just showing up and being there.

So why am I sharing this now?

Honestly, I’m not even sure. Maybe I’m just rewiring my brain, trying to be a little kinder to myself and to others.

Because I’ve learned — and keep learning — that everyone is going through something we can’t always see or understand.

Be there.

Be compassionate.

Peel back the layers.

It could literally change someone’s life. Maybe even save it.

Rest easy, bro.

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