In this episode of The Orita Podcast, Aaron Schwartz sits down with Ben Parr—Mashable alum, best‑selling author of Captivology, co‑founder of Octane AI, and now investor at Theory Forge—for a founder‑to‑founder reality check on how commerce tech is moving (hint: faster than your Monday stand‑up).

Together, they unpack:

• The $$$ unsubscribe—how to show the C‑suite that every send is either compounding value…or torching it

• Zero‑party data, real‑party money—how quizzes became Octane AI’s unfair advantage

• Investor X‑ray vision—the scoring prompts Ben runs through GPT‑4o before wiring a pre‑seed check

• Founders, don’t die—Ben’s surprisingly simple rule for surviving platform cliffs, cash crunches, and chatbot scandals

• Building 10M ARR in a weekend—and other tales from the AI frontier you can’t ignore

If you’re a DTC operator, tech founder, or anyone still calling ChatGPT “the robot,” this convo will either supercharge your roadmap or light it on fire. Either way, time to move.