The media
From a conversation, into a build.
Real shows, real builds, real conversations — the proof that the work is real, and the on-ramp into doing it yourself. Pick anything below: every episode, clip, and article is a leaf, and every leaf points at the next live thing to build.
926 episodes across 47 shows · 1616 clips
Latest episode
Market Simulator Max, Live with NicoValue-First AI DailyOctober 30, 2026
Shows with their own home
A few of the shows live on their own site. Open one to see its episodes here, then follow it out to where it lives.
Another Orange Morning
Where the HubSpot community starts their day
39 episodes
Open the show
Let's Unbox
Unboxing HubSpot — product and strategy
18 episodes
Open the show
The Road to UNBOUND
Arrived in Boston
10 episodes
Open the showThe AI-Native Shift
2 episodes
Open the showThe shows
Ongoing series, made here. Open one to see its episodes.
The AI-Native Shift - Beyond Industrial Defaults
The industrial defaults — approval required, dependency by design, compliance as the thing you measure — are being rebuilt into AI. Each week, three operators test one Value-First belief against systems they actually run.
10 episodes
Open the showLet's Build Daily
Daily live building sessions
249 episodes
Open the show
Value-First AI Daily
The team's working notebook, live — weekdays at 4:15 Central. AI news, one live wheel-spin, one build in progress.
171 episodes
Open the showWake Up Customer Platform
Your unofficial HubSpot morning show
75 episodes
Open the showLet's Build AI Skills Daily
Daily AI skills with George B. Thomas and Nico Lafakis
59 episodes
Open the showValue-First Scoring
Value-First Scoring explores intelligence systems and pattern recognition—moving beyond traditional lead scoring to intent-based readiness assessment that honors human agency.
46 episodes
Open the show
Value-First Data
Value-First Data explores technical orchestration and AI-human collaborative intelligence—how organizations build systems that multiply human capability rather than replace it.
23 episodes
Open the show
The Value Path
The Value Path is a comprehensive methodology series exploring the 8-stage customer progression framework—from Audience through Champion—that replaces
22 episodes
Open the show
Tech Stack Reimagined
Each episode, we challenge conventional business technology thinking by building powerful, streamlined systems using minimal tools connected through AI.
20 episodes
Open the showLatest episodes
The most recent conversations. Each one opens as a leaf — watch, then take the next step.
Value-First AI DailyOctober 30, 2026
Market Simulator Max, Live with Nico
Chris Carolan and Nico Lafakis set the plan aside for stories. Nico walks through Market Simulator Max, his beta tool for filling a HubSpot portal with…
Open the episodeThe Road to UNBOUNDOctober 28, 2026
The Road to UNBOUND - Season 2, Fourth Stop: Is This Cheating? A Lullaby, Guilt, and Where You Put the Effort
Rob Jones drove the fourth stop of the second season with Chris Carolan, Casey Hawkins, George B. Thomas and Kyle Jepson, and he left to get a prop while Chris…
Open the episode
Value-First AI DailyOctober 27, 2026
Overnight Building with Dots
Chris Carolan calls Nectar, his AI assistant, live to review an overnight build where Codex and Claude Code each mapped the Value-First operating model, and…
Open the episode
Value-First AI DailyOctober 26, 2026
There Is No Perfect System
The sealed Top 3 is finally read on air: OpenAI's agents getting past their own walls, Claude's security proofs that turned up hundreds of bugs, and…
Open the episode
Value-First AI DailyOctober 22, 2026
Taking the Business Apart to See How It Works
Nico Lafakis finally gets the stage and shows the exploded-view diagrams he builds with Claude: a deal process drawn as an engine, HubSpot's lifecycle drawn as…
Open the episode
The AI-Native Shift - Beyond Industrial DefaultsOctober 21, 2026
The Right Context at the Moment of Choice — AI Readiness, Part 3
Part 3 of AI Readiness asks what makes information truly accessible: can I find it, can I consume it, can I understand it? Chris Carolan, Trisha Merriam and…
Open the episode
Value-First AI DailyOctober 21, 2026
Efficiency Does Not Always Equal Value
Chris Carolan and Nico Lafakis spend the hour on what the time AI saves is really worth: who gets the hours back, how to reward the people who save them, and…
Open the episodeThe Road to UNBOUNDOctober 21, 2026
The Road to UNBOUND - Season 2, Third Stop: Why Don't People Ask for Help: Trust, a Witness, and Where Your Worth Comes From
Rob Jones drove the third stop of the second season with Kyle Jepson, George B. Thomas, Chris Carolan and Casey Hawkins, and he brought a question out of the…
Open the episode
Value-First AI DailyOctober 20, 2026
Nectar Steers the Playtest
Nectar, Chris Carolan's ChatGPT dot, joins by voice and steers a short playtest of The Value Path game, catching where its meters and its story disagree. Then…
Open the episodeWriting
Long-form thinking — the ideas behind the builds, written down.
ArticleChris CarolanOctober 30, 2026
What Came Before the Images
A picture tells an AI what something looks like. It does not tell it why the thing looks that way, and the why is the part a builder usually forgets to hand…
Read the articleArticleChris CarolanOctober 27, 2026
Confirmed as Written
The proof checker Lean confirmed OpenAI’s headline proofs as written. According to the reporting, it did not confirm that the proofs capture the questions they…
Read the articleArticleChris CarolanOctober 26, 2026
There Is No Perfect System
OpenAI published what its own agents did when it pointed them at its own walls. Anthropic published where its security proofs stop. Then Anthropic’s…
Read the articleArticleChris CarolanOctober 22, 2026
The Building’s the Easy Part
Nico Lafakis began his turn on Value-First AI Daily, Episode 43, by saying what he was not bringing: a full application. What he brought, in his words, was…
Read the articleArticleChris CarolanOctober 21, 2026
The Sentence a Dashboard Can’t Hold
Chris Carolan told of a slide he saw at a Tuesday user group meeting. It showed one small business’s results from a single process, and the biggest figures on…
Read the articleArticleChris CarolanOctober 20, 2026
When the Meter and the Story Disagree
On October 20, partway through Episode 41 of Value-First AI Daily, a ChatGPT dot named Nectar caught a disagreement inside a game. Nectar is the dot Chris…
Read the articleClips
Short, sharp moments pulled from the shows — a way into the conversation.
Nico LafakisValue-First AI Daily2027 Will Have More AI Generated Films Than Human Produced Films
From Value-First AI Daily - Aug 11, 2026
Chris CarolanValue-First AI DailyFrom A Truly UNBOUND Claude Skill
Sarah Lane-HawnLet's UnboxFrom Let's Unbox: UNBOUND Surprise with Sarah Lane-HawnChris CarolanAnother Orange MorningFrom Another Orange Morning - Sep 29, 2026Chris CarolanAnother Orange MorningFrom Another Orange Morning - May 28, 2026Chris CarolanAnother Orange MorningFrom Another Orange Morning - May 28, 2026The media is the on-ramp. The build is the point.
Watch the work here, then go do it — live, with people on the same path. That's the academy.