Ideas
Non-alcoholic beer is next beer mega-trend
Bill argues non-alcoholic beer is a major long-term category trend, not just a niche. It offers 20-30% of the calories of regular beer with full craft flavor, meets new social occasions, and can bring back consumers who drink alcohol as well as those new to beer. He expects non-alcoholic beer to be significantly bigger than craft beer and a huge part of the overall beer category.
AGI here via long-horizon agents
Pat argues AGI is effectively here because long-horizon agents like Claude Code and Opus 4.5 can persist, recover, and execute multi-step tasks. This is a call to arms for founders to apply these capabilities to real-world problems, and he is backing both fundamental research and application-layer companies.
Incumbent software struggles with agent shift
Pat says the shift from apps to agents makes the nature of software and moats completely different, so it will be tricky for incumbent software companies to make the leap, similar to how on-prem companies struggled to transition to cloud.
Agent-led growth rewards best products
Sonya expects a shift from product-led growth to agent-led growth, where AI agents choose infrastructure, tools, and products for users. This favors the best product and creates a new distribution paradigm where agents have infinite time to evaluate options and can one-click replace incumbents.
Amazon's ad flywheel and product feed resilient
Sean says Amazon has a powerful ad arbitrage system: it can spend to acquire users and then monetize them through clicks on Amazon, and its broad product feed means it can plug into every AI/LLM platform while still capturing sales and ad revenue when users land on Amazon. This makes Amazon resilient even as shopping interfaces shift to AI.
Bullish Shopify, but website risk remains
Sean is very bullish on Shopify as a platform because it is a catalog, CRM, and payment processor, and it has been quick to partner with LLMs. However, he warns that websites may become less important as AI agents take over shopping, so Shopify must plug into every LLM to remain the product feed for merchants.
Bullish ads on every internet surface
Sean is incredibly bullish on ads coming to any surface of the internet. He wants ads everywhere because more ad inventory and platforms give advertisers more opportunities, especially as new platforms underprice ads initially.
AppLovin ad product delivers for Ridge
Sean says Ridge has spent millions on AppLovin, is new to e-commerce there, and loves it as an ad product. More ad surfaces and platforms are good for his business, indicating AppLovin's product efficacy and performance.
AI ad generation cuts costs, scales
Alex sees the emergence of AI-native social media agencies that make commercial ads end-to-end with AI, enabling batch content generation and hyper-personalized video at sub-$1 cost per video. He expects 2027 to be a major revolution in adtech as generation connects with performance data and reinforcement learning.
Custom silicon renaissance from AI video
Alex expects a renaissance of custom silicon because video models are getting bigger (beyond 100B parameters) and more capable, and custom silicon can perform well for these AI workloads. He highlights Gemini and Nano Banana Pro as examples of models driving this.
AI models make Adobe obsolete
Alex says Gemini 3 and Nano Banana Pro enable semantic-based editing and make Adobe obsolete for social media marketing. Creators can generate and edit ad content end-to-end with AI without going to Adobe tools like Photoshop.
This TBPN video, published January 17, 2026,
features Bill Shufelt, Pat Grady, Sonya Huang, Sean Frank, Alex Mashrabov
discussing Non-alcoholic beer, AI agents, Legacy software, AMZN, SHOP, Digital advertising, APP, AI-SECTOR, SMH, ADBE.
11 trade ideas extracted by AI with direction and confidence scoring.
Speakers:
Bill Shufelt,
Pat Grady,
Sonya Huang,
Sean Frank,
Alex Mashrabov
· Tickers:
Non-alcoholic beer,
AI agents,
Legacy software,
AMZN,
SHOP,
Digital advertising,
APP,
AI-SECTOR,
SMH,
ADBE
