👋 Hey, I’m Jaryd. I share one stealable idea with you a week on product, growth, AI, marketing, or strategy. My goal is to help with the hard part—growing the thing you’re trying to build. For more: Explore the top ideas | Videos

Good morning guys, happy Friday!

In the next 5 minutes over your coffee: the election data centers lost, the book gap pushing boys away from reading, Apple reversing it’s stance on AI, Google’s “no AI, no search” ultimatum, and the App Store’s new age gate.

Also, quick plug. If you want to get to know me better, like these 32 random facts, or get tactical build-in-public updates of what I’m doing to grow hey100.com, like this video showing exactly what I did on day 2 , or general ideas and takes and stories…I’m doing a lot on Instagram exclusively around finding customers for our apps and other ideas to grow.

What’s going on: Data centers were…at the center…of the US midterms, and both red and blue ran against them. Ohio on the ballot had 21 local measures, and every single one went against data center development. Nationally, 33 of 41 limiting measures passed or were winning.

The market reacted hard which makes sense…this market is entirely (in my non financial-advice opinion) propped by AI. Most of us saw that knock to the S&P yesterday closing -4.36%. All pushed by fears of a slower data center buildout. Proof in the fact that The chip index fell 12.3%, Nvidia 9.2%. Interesting timing for Anthropic’s IPO.

Why it matters: Sliding back on the history timeline, when US factories moved to China, the towns that lost them never got to vote about it. But with data centers they do, because they need a permit. AI was short on compute → then memory → then power: and all three are fixable. This election shows politics can be the new constraint, and that can block fixing the other three. Voters can make compute more scarce and that’s what they’re asking for.

The idea behind this: Build your pricing assuming tokens stay expensive.

What’s going on: “Do you have anything for boys?” A middle-grade book reviewer kept getting that comment from parents and teachers, so she went and built a database of 2026 releases. Turns out girl protagonists outnumber boys 2 to 1. And in realistic fiction and mystery: 3 to 1. A good overlay graph here is that the share of 13-year-olds who never or hardly ever read for fun more than tripled between 1984 and 2025. One bookstore buyer now dodges the hero’s pronouns as long as she can when pitching books.

Why it matters: Publishers are in a sales slump, so what do they do? They write for the reader they already have, which is overwhelmingly girls. That’s a good bet…for today. But if you look up, beyond this quarters sales, the macro is that it shrinks tomorrow’s audience. Reaching into the backlist doesn’t fix it either. Older books are slower, with longer chapters and more setup, and the kids as you know are raised on short-form dopamine hits.

The idea behind this: If people can’t see themselves in your product, they won’t try it. Building only for your proven customer feels safe, but it’s also how your market gets smaller. Short-term vs long-term games.

What’s going on: Apple started rationing AI. Some engineers’ daily AI allowance dropped from $300 to $200 and $100 may be the next cut. Non-engineering teams could drop to $25. Also they’re picking cheaper and on-device models. This is the total opposite stance they had in April where apparently teams were being penalized for not using their $300/day Claude budget.

Why it matters: Seven months from penalizing low usage to now rationing it. Why? Compute costs are going up and value-outcomes are not really changing. Even Anthropic is trimming and using lower-grade models to cut update costs.

The idea behind this: It’s time to do more things by hand. We easily threw stuff at AI because we could. It was cheap and easy. More updates, iterations, whatever. We also easily picked the best model for stuff where it was totally unnecessary. But that isn’t the way to do it…we need to start being more picky what we ask Claude to do, and on what models.

What’s going on: Schools that block Google’s AI will now lose Google Search. Starting early 2027, if K-12 schools don’t have Google AI, students will just see a message that Google is unavailable. Google’s VP of education says “Search and A.I. are deeply integrated.”

Why it matters: Wow. Google is using its must-have product to drag in its new one. Great for adoption charts but so expensive in trust. Google says its giving schools more control. But schools might just use that control to switch search engines…which means a younger pool of people growing up on non-Google search.

The idea behind this: Bundle only when the new thing makes the old thing better.

What’s going on: Any App Store app with any dating or romantic relationship features now needs an 18+ rating. From November 16 devs have to add new content descriptors so their ratings match their features, as well as age verification.

Why it matters: “Romantic relationship features” is a very blurry line, and plenty of chatty AI apps wander over it without thinking about it. Cross it and your rating jumps to 18+ which can cut a chunk of your audience overnight. Lots of indie devs who have AI features with chat are exposed to this.

The idea behind this: Does any feature you have read as potentially romantic? Does you non-romantic AI have guards that prevent a chat from being that way? If someone can open your meal delivery app and talk to your AI like a “companion”, that’s a problem/violation. If you share location, that’s also an age requirement now.

That’s it for this week guys!
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—Jaryd