👉  Knock it off!

💊  Don’t forget to fill your prescription! Making sure you pick up your pills is the mission of Forus, a startup that just hit a $1B valuation to fix the broken system of filling prescriptions — something nearly one third of Americans never end up doing. Forus uses AI to automate the backend — insurance checks, pharmacy routing, approvals — and help boost fill rates. 

☕  Mona overseeing mochas: Bay Area AI safety startup Andon Labs is letting Mona, an AI agent, run its Stockholm cafe. Human baristas make and serve orders, but Mona handles hiring, inventory management, and answers questions customers ask using a phone inside the cafe. So far, it’s yet to turn the shop into a lucrative business — most of its initial budget was spent on startup costs — but it’s only been open since mid-April. 

🤖  And if a single cafe isn’t enough, tech journalist Joanna Stern’s new book, I Am Not a Robot, details how she handed over numerous daily tasks and decisions to AI for one year. In an excerpt published in TechBrew, she noted she couldn’t permanently replace everything with AI, but did find it a useful swap for traditional online search engines, only returning to Google for maps and business contact info. You’ve still gotta watch out for those hallucinations, though.

MORE NEWS TO KNOW

• Media moves: Media entrepreneur Byron Allen will acquire a majority stake in BuzzFeed, which he intends to expand, alongside HuffPost, into streaming video, audio, and user-generated content.
  

• You again? Digg is back yet again, this time as an aggregator of AI news after its last resurrection as a community forum floundered due to bot traffic. If this works out, the site will add more news verticals.
  

• How about now? Amazon announced a 30-minute delivery option, Amazon Now, that will bring customers thousands of items, including groceries and household products, across dozens of US cities.
  

• Snacking in black and white: Japanese food giant Calbee said its chip bags will temporarily fade from brightly colored to black and white as the Iran war disrupts access to naphtha, a crude-oil derivative used in ink.
  

AI search has ruined everything

Old search strategies don’t apply in full to LLMs. They’re crawling, retrieving, and synthesizing real-time data, and your brand is either valid or invisible. 

Don’t get any dustier. Read our State of AEO Report for the highlight trends of 2026, and citation data from top LLMs including ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and Perplexity.

Conquer AI search:

• What’s slowing AEO adoption industry-wide? 
• What are AI answer engines really looking for? 
• Content structures and title patterns that win 
• How to fix your process for the future

Brands are betting big on AEO. We are, too. 

What happens when a small business gets duped?

Dupe. Knockoff. Look-alike. Copycat. Brummagem.

Whatever you call them, inexpensive imitations of higher-priced goods are everywhere, accounting for $467B in global trade annually. Heck, there's even a website devoted to finding dupes.

We often hear about knockoffs of high-end handbags, apparel, beauty products, shoes, even bootleg Labubus, excuse me, Lafufus. 

But increasingly, small businesses are targeted by counterfeiters. Unlike major brands with the legal and financial resources, entrepreneurs often struggle to protect their bottom line and reputation. 

Savvy scammers

While e-commerce and social media allow entrepreneurs to reach a global audience, that visibility has left them vulnerable. Scammers have also become increasingly savvy, per The Wall Street Journal.

• Images and copy are scraped from a creator's website.
  
• AI tools eliminate language errors — red flags when listing on Amazon and other platforms.
  
• SEO tactics position dupes higher in search results.
  
• Creators are pummeled with negative reviews for the cheaply made knockoffs.

While Amazon has a zero-tolerance policy for copycat listings, owners play whack-a-mole with new imitators and other platforms. Numerous designers have filed lawsuits against Shein and Temu for selling copies of their work, which could be just a photo of the original work.

Battling Goliath 

Other small businesses find themselves up against major brands that have taken "inspiration" from their product:

• Two beverage startups claim Pepsi copied the branding and flavors of their products.
  
• A San Francisco entrepreneur sued a department store chain for selling what looked to be replicas of her food-themed hair clips, and settled with another for $45k.
  
• Stateside Brands sued Anheuser-Busch InBev, alleging the beverage giant's canned vodka drink copied their design.
  
• Countless small clothing brands have had designs stolen by fashion brands, but often have no recourse because fashion is not fully protected under US copyright law.

Knock it off

While filing a trademark can help, dupes often don't replicate trademarked details, meaning they're generally legal and not considered counterfeit. 

But companies are finding ways to fight back:

• Entrepreneurs in Australia commit to quality materials and nurturing customer relationships.
  
• One startup uses AI to identify counterfeit fashion. 
  
• Companies using VerifyMe can utilize track-and-trace networks and digital authentication. 

Now, if we could only do something to keep those Lafufus from haunting my dreams.

🔗

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

Millions of Japan’s homes are empty. But why? We explored the social and economic forces behind the phenomenon.

How much 600+ current and former OpenAI employees made collectively from selling their shares through a tender offer last October. Many became overnight multimillionaires, including ~75 who took home $30m each, per The Wall Street Journal. 

While the artificial intelligence boom has already made a whole lot of people dumb rich, OpenAI and Anthropic are now preparing for what are expected to be some of the largest IPOs ever, meaning Silicon Valley is about to be drowning in liquidity.

Our readers are always dreaming up cool ideas. Here’s our weekly spotlight on a Hustle reader working on something big.

Who: Gillian Walker
What: Boho Row

The elevator pitch: “We invented the perfect travel/summer shoe. Three different base heights that come with 13 different colored interchangeable laces. 13 shoes in one."

Problem they’re trying to solve: “We traveled the world for over two years and my husband was getting back pain from my luggage constantly being overweight. It was shoes. Most women want multiple shoes to match their outfits when traveling so I came up with the idea of 13 shoes with just one base heel."

Piece of advice to a fellow entrepreneur: “Find a problem you personally have, think about if others have the same issue, and create a solution."

What are you working on? Tell us here.

📅  On this day: In 1637, Cardinal Richelieu ordered the blades of all his dinner knives rounded off, reportedly due to his disgust at diners using the points to pick their teeth. The new dinner knife took off in France, then the world.
🎨  That’s cool: A website that lists walls where it’s legal to graffiti.
🗞️  Newsletter: The Dink helps millions of pickleballers focus on what actually matters.
🐳  Nature: The earliest known recording of whale songs.
🐶  Aww: A ferocious battle.

SHOWER THOUGHT

 Since people like hot drinks in cold weather, and cold drinks in hot weather, that implies a perfect heat for room temperature drinks.  SOURCE