Descriptions:
Scott Galloway’s Prof G Pod hosts John Kugan and Jordi Hayes, co-founders of TBPN, the daily live tech-and-business show that became OpenAI’s first-ever acquisition in spring 2026. The pair walk through how they built TBPN from a zero-audience recording sent over Google Drive to a $30 million media business in 17 months, crediting early encouragement from podcasting advocate David Senra and a deliberate choice to treat the show as a full-time startup rather than a side project.
The conversation goes deep on TBPN’s unconventional media model: 150 hours of two-person discussion before any guests, a high-frequency live format covering 30-50 topics per episode, and an advertising strategy built around 20-second live reads at high repetition rather than traditional 90-second spots. The founders explain why this proved especially effective for enterprise B2B advertisers — where a single customer conversion can justify an entire sponsorship deal — and how their clips effectively function as targeted trade media reaching exactly the right small audiences.
Kugan and Hayes also explain their early, contrarian public support for ads in ChatGPT at a time when the broader tech community pushed back, which they credit with drawing OpenAI’s attention. The episode offers a detailed case study in independent media scaling during a historic technology cycle, and raises broader questions about what it signals when the world’s most prominent AI company makes media its first-ever acquisition target.
📺 Source: The Prof G Pod – Scott Galloway · Published July 09, 2026
🏷️ Format: Interview
