A Jumbotron Clip, a VC Divorce, and Some Failed Checkouts
Instinct spent 18 hours extracting a US Open Jumbotron clip from a production crew, which delighted everyone except the people worried about who does the resulting work. Also: a venture conflict-of-interest spat, and three purchases that didn't happen.
What people were saying
The day belonged to @oliviaalevine, who got on the US Open Jumbotron with her boyfriend, assumed the footage was unobtainable, asked anyway, and had the video in hand 18 hours later. It was the most-liked Instinct post of the day by an order of magnitude, and also the most-argued-about, which is usually how these things go.
Running underneath that was a genuine venture news story: @alexrkonrad reported that Instinct's conflict concerns pushed Index Ventures out of leading Town's round, with Forerunner and Menlo stepping in at the same $1B price. @EricNewcomer confirmed it and used the word "drama," and @Techmeme picked it up. Konrad then asked openly whether the VCs vagueposting about karma were subtweeting his scoop.
The praise
@os7borne had a leaked Gemini API key rack up a ₹61k GCP bill he could not find in the console; Instinct spotted the email, drafted the dispute, followed up, and got it waived in 48 hours. @pikachu_irl had it find and book a doctor. @akshatag77 shared live location while traveling and got flagged vistas and transit directions without fighting Google Maps. @sariazout hosted a morning of tea, meditation, and Instinct onboarding for a group of moms and concluded she had reinvented the Tupperware party.
The pushback
@mvanhorn went 0-for-3 on agentic commerce this week (Rome airport pickup, a UK vinyl record, then Instinct) and would very much like his agents to buy things. @puneetiitm hit the same wall: research fine, checkout no. @hishboy got access and pronounced it VC-overhyped. @_guglielmo made the closed-box argument (no visibility into the backend, and your cron jobs vanish if pricing 10x's), preferring a self-hosted Hermes setup. And @kunksed argued it's a bridge, not a platform, since it carries no liability when a booking goes sideways.
Notable anecdotes
@dickc relayed a friend's claim that this category is Apple's to lose, then rebutted it in one sentence by inviting everyone to try search in iMessage. On the podcast side, @HarryStebbings aired @jasonlk's Replit-and-Lovable framing: no moat today, but a hundred times more use cases next year becomes one.
Interest over time
Updated at 12:01pm ET from 40 posts. Posts published later appear on the Posts tab.