New York, NY
Joined April 2009
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Aaron McClendon retweeted
Nerds going from ~$40M to nearly $900M since launching Gummy Clusters might be one of the most underreported CPG stories of the decade.
And it almost didn’t work.
The idea actually started in 2001 with Nerds Rope. But no breakout.
Then Gummy Clusters launched in 2020 with just ~$700K of marketing. Early tests flopped.
In 2021, Kylie Jenner posted them organically to ~200M followers: “Next level.”
TikTok took it from there. The crunch became ASMR content.
Sales:
2020: ~$8M
2024: $500M+
Today: approaching $900M
Repeat is insane too:
More than 1 in 5 buyers purchase 6+ times a year.
Nerds has now passed Skittles as America’s #1 sugar candy.
And Mars is responding with gummy versions of Skittles + Starburst.
Big M&A win. Ferrero bought Nestlé’s entire US candy portfolio in 2018 for $2.8B: Butterfinger. Crunch. SweeTARTS. Laffy Taffy. Nerds.
Nerds was basically an afterthought.
Today, the value created by Nerds alone may have effectively paid for the whole acquisition.
Aaron McClendon retweeted
Here is a 30,000 foot view of screenplay structure.
Act 1: I have a problem.
Act 2A: I think I'll solve it.
Act 2B: This is harder than I thought.
Act 3: The sacrifice.
Keep it simple. Structure is just the framework. Scenes and characters are where you cook.
Aaron McClendon retweeted
Fun Fact: RZA met the owner of the Speed Racer cartoon while in Tokyo. He happened to be a huge fan of The Wu, so he allowed them to use any footage they wanted for it, making it the first rap anime music video on US television
(s/o @iAmJeffSledge)
Aaron McClendon retweeted
The good and the beautiful go together
Recognizing the beautiful is a timeless way to identify the good
So if you want to convince people that what you’re building is good, make it beautiful
Aaron McClendon retweeted
Writing is the superpower of humankind. It is our truest form of magic.
Writing allows you to conjure up something of value where nothing previously existed. It costs little for you to write down the lessons of your life and yet those few minutes spent writing can be life-altering for the right reader. As I once saw it put: "there is someone out there with a wound in the exact shape of your words."
Furthermore, writing is the foundation of nearly every technology and innovation because we have to record what we know before we can build upon it. And these innovations are passed down from generation to generation, allowing our children to inherit a richer intellectual fortune than what we were born into. The world is richer because we write and nobody is made poorer in the process.
Life is WWE. Marketers are all magicians.
People want to be fooled.
Create your own magic.
Ads are dead. Everyone is now a content creator because old systems no longer work:
1) Display advertising only shows ads to broke people that can't afford premium subscriptions. The K shaped economy makes this worse. How do you sell a premium product when your target audience pays not to see ads?
2) College degrees, certifications, and CV's have all been defrauded to death. AI spam and Indian fraud have annihilated these previously quality indicators that someone would make a good employee.
3) Meatspace ads are increasingly irrelevant as more transactions and attention move online. Even things you think would be relevant, like billboards, are superceded by Google maps. And with self driving cars, who is going to look at a billboard ever again?
4) SEO has been dead for 20 years, and now Google is getting replaced by AI powered search.
5) The internet is increasingly walled gardens (X, FB, Discord) that don't want you leaving the platform. So while they serve ads, there's a tension with them. X is trying to bring in commerce to the platform to remove this tension.
Below, McDonald's isn't going into 'fine dining' as a new business vertical. They're going to run a restaurant at a small loss as a marketing ploy. People will go there as a joke, the well dressed waiter will recommend the Michellin star chef made Happy Meal, and those people will post about McDonald's online. It's advertising, The End.
Kraft recently announced a "Mac & Cheese" flavored soda.
Tesla shot a car into space, then made a flying car. Tesla's marketing budget: $16. Not a typo.
Anthropic's marketing is claiming Claude helped the US military with Iran, and that Claude is so powerful it'll doom humanity.
The bad news: you must create content. You have no choice. Your CV will be auto-denied and/or filled by Indians. Your ads will be seen only by brokies.
The good news: content creation is Lindy. From shadow puppets on cave walls, to YouTube brainrot, it seems to have value no matter what technology does. It's also a moat: only ~1% of people create any content at all! Most aren't willing to look ridiculous in public.
And the best news: you need to create things AI can't, like racism or misogyny. Otherwise people just copy your content with AI. Launching an upscale restaurant isn't news. McDonald's has a brand built from fast food, and are being jesters by pretending to be upscale. It's different, fun, it brings out the comments.
Frens, we live in the golden age. Your future depends on you being a jackass on the internet.
Aaron McClendon retweeted
I always intended Stratechery to have a sponsorship component; it just took me 12 years to get back to it. That I could do so with the company that made the subscription business possible makes me so happy. There is nothing better than endorsing a product you whole-heartedly believe in.
Ben has for many years been the best analyst in tech. I’m very much looking forward to this new @stratechery + @stripe partnership.
stratechery.com/2026/present…
Aaron McClendon retweeted
The answer is always Art + Science.
Not Art alone. Not Science alone. Both of them co-existing, balancing each other out, and over-indexing when needed.
