The Cheese #76 🧀 - Tesla to Disney, Whatnot Closing in on $400k, and Did Anthropic Quietly Nerf Opus?

Tesla to Disney

Drove the Tesla to Disney World this week with Colleen and Johnny. Left Monday around 7:30 am, headed to the Walt Disney World Dolphin, and made two supercharger stops along the way. One in Tifton, Georgia at a Starbucks. One at a Wawa. Each stop was 7 or 8 minutes.

First time I ever charged to 100% before a trip (you rarely want to do this), and the car ran the cabin AC beforehand to condition the battery for the long trip. A little message popped up on the screen at each stop, saying it was conditioning the battery for super charging before we pulled in. Genuinely didn't know it worked that way. Very cool.

At Tifton, I grabbed a coffee, got back to the car, already at 80% (max you take it to during stops). At the Wawa, we changed Johnny's diaper, grabbed some snacks, car was already done. V3 Superchargers push around 250 kW versus the home Wall Connector at roughly 12 kW. That's about 20x faster. I already knew that number on paper, but living it is different.

Johnny is walking around Disney, pointing at everything. It's amazing.

Meanwhile, Whatnot is doing what Whatnot does. We're already over $200k for July, and the forecast has us possibly landing at $400k for the month. Cameron is pushing hard and thinks $500k is in play if we keep adding to what we've got going. All the hosts are doing well. Maya, our newest host and our first female host, is ramping up fast. She's a natural. Really excited about where this is going.

Amazon is rolling right along in 2026. The team is working on a few things that could change the trajectory of the channel in a big way. Exponentially, honestly. I'll have more to share when the time is right, but I'm excited about it.

Membership is in good shape overall. The renewal cycle on the 15th had a few more declines than usual, but the dunning run on the 16th picked up the gap. Net result is fine.

On the BattlGames side, Shay and Seele are doing a site visit this week. Getting everyone aligned on filming, robots, and vendors. We're also closing up sponsorships no later than the end of the month. Things are moving.

On the AI front, had a frustrating week with Claude's scheduled tasks. Some of my automations have a local dependency: they need the desktop running, and when Claude tries to execute from the cloud, it hits a wall. Still working through the fix.

The other thing is more of an observation. Maybe a hot take. Opus has felt off since Fable launched. Making mistakes, it just didn't make before. The kind of stuff where you stop and think, wait, you knew how to do this three weeks ago. Almost feels like they dialed Opus back to push people toward the new model. Could be completely wrong. Hard to prove. Very weird either way.

Let's get into the rest!

Why I Built Our AI Automation Agent Myself Instead of Delegating It

Wrote this one earlier this week. Why I chose to build Leo, our internal AI agent for product listings, myself instead of handing it off. The short answer is that leading from the front is the only way to actually understand what you're building. Worth a read if you're thinking about where AI fits in your own operation.

Apple OpenAI Lawsuit: What the Trade Secret Fight Means for Operators

Apple filed a trade secret lawsuit against OpenAI on July 10th, and the complaint is genuinely wild. Former employees allegedly walking out with confidential files, suppliers getting misled, an offboarding document designed to help people beat Apple's exit security. I wrote up what it actually means for operators, because most of us will never be in that room, but the lessons are still ours.

Coterie Success Story: How Frank Yu Built a $1 Billion Premium Diaper Brand

Lhea's latest. Frank Yu turned Coterie into a $1 billion premium diaper brand by refusing to play on price in a category everyone else treated as a race to the bottom. Good origin story and a clean operator read.

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Stay cheesy, and we’ll catch you next week with more!

Queso-Love,
Team Online Queso