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Hey — Ryan To here.

In today's edition:

This is one of my favorite newsletters, email me back what you like/don’t like

Algorithms control market demand.

Not 'consumer sentiment.'

If you're an e-commerce brand or you work in marketing

and you're still running 'market research' to figure out how to market or make product decisions

I hate to say it but you're falling behind internet culture.

I've lived in SF for 12 months

and there's one underlying framework consumer app founders use that e-commerce brands never accept:

You have to follow internet communities, not ‘macro’ consumer trends.

Algorithms determine who wins and who doesn't.

Not your belief that women over 40 suddenly 'care about their health.'

2 shifts I'm predicting:

I saw a talk from Matt Rife, the #1 comedian of the Gen Z era

saying how TikTok made a decision to stop pushing comedy content

and his growth has stalled there ever since.

One platform decision. Not a change in what people find funny.

As someone in between the worlds of e-commerce x AI SF bubble x creator marketing, here's my take.

Clavicular's rise to fame came entirely off the back of the 'looksmaxxing' era.

Here's the pattern underneath it:

A community invents its own vocabulary.

A pool of attention gets created.

The influencers and brands who attack that arbitrage monetize and gain heightened attention.

Consumer apps are just the fastest ones to notice, because they cost nothing to ship.

Case study: Omoggle

Webcam roulette. Two strangers get paired.

An AI rates both 1–10 and declares who "mogged" who.

2.1M views on their first videos.

No ad spend. No brand book. No agency.

They just built the thing the community was already talking about.

Now look at your side of the fence.

E-commerce saw a surge of traffic to GLP-1s.

Next, GLP-1 companion products scaled to 8–9 figures.

Grüns. IM8. Bloom. The list goes on.

Nobody ran a focus group to discover that.

The community led the brand's growth.

The brand used the momentum of the movement.

Brands in the 2026 era are just good at echoing what everyone already feels and thinks.

Not the other way around.

Old model: build the product, then hire people to market it in an interesting wat.

New model: build a product that's inherently viral.

A product is algorithmic when anyone who touches it wants to post it.

Omoggle did it with a website people mocked as vibe coded slop.

Most CPG brands never move even with a 6-7 fig budget.

You can adjust 4 variables:

Shape, Material, Packaging, Visibility

Check out Loop.

They took the $3 foam earplug from CVS and asked "what if earplugs were jewelry?"

Shape. Starface turned a pimple patch into a star. That's the whole innovation. People now wear them out on purpose.

Material. Same familiar object, unexpected material. Umbro's chain mail jersey.

Aesthetic transplant. Traditional category, subculture aesthetic. Tattoo-style Old English lettering on a normal vase is an entire brand identity.

Packaging. Who Gives A Crap never touched the toilet paper. They changed the wrap.

Visibility. Caraway noticed cookware lives hidden in a cabinet, so they designed it to sit out on the stove.

Run with the algorithm or get left continuing to push

your ‘perfectly crafted brand narrative’

Have a great day ❤️

Ryan

P.S. if you’re a consumer brand + creator + early-stage business

Book a call here