Check out Mostly Growth and get episodes early. Available on all platforms.

* YouTube

* Spotify

* Apple

In this episode of Mostly Growth, CJ Gustafson, Kyle Poyar, and Ben Hillman dive into the question on everyone’s mind: are we in an AI bubble? What starts as a lighthearted riff on the U.S. Postal Service launching a podcast quickly spirals into a sharp, funny breakdown of today’s AI hype cycle — from Nvidia, OpenAI, and AMD trading money and GPUs in a trillion-dollar feedback loop, to startups burning cash chasing “AI-powered” everything. The trio share real examples of when AI helps and when it backfires (including one newsletter that totally tanked), debate whether companies are over-optimizing for automation, and laugh through the absurdity of the hype while grounding it in practical insights on product, finance, and growth.

Timestamps:

00:00 Preview and Intro

00:14 Are We in an AI Bubble?

00:44 The AI Feedback Loop: Nvidia, OpenAI, and AMD

01:00 Perplexity, We Caught You (Again)

02:18 The USPS Podcast and the End of Original Ideas

04:24 How the Team Actually Uses AI at Work

06:07 CJ’s DIY Dunning Saga

08:38 When Automation Goes Too Far

10:49 The Perplexity Gaslight Moment

13:27 AI vs. AI: Outsmarting Resume Screeners

16:09 What Recruiters Really Think of AI Resumes

17:17 The Chief of Staff Hiring Story

19:15 Is AI Adoption Already Slowing Down?

22:42 The “Crossing the Chasm” Moment for AI Tools

26:22 Bundling AI Like Streaming Services

28:49 Everyone’s Paying Everyone: The Circular AI Economy

31:15 Betting Big on AGI and Data Centers

34:09 The Margin: AI Erotica and Peak Absurdity

35:23 OpenAI’s Token Leaderboard and Other Blunders

41:43 What Kyle Tried This Week: Building an AI Agent

44:52 Wrap-Up and Outro

Episodes Referenced:

5,762 Job Applications. Zero Offers.

Episodes Referenced:

5,762 Job Applications. Zero Offers.

Why Only 2% of Startups Make It

The War for Talent is just getting started | Joe Floyd

Links:

https://usps-mailin-it.simplecast.com/

https://i.imgflip.com/a92oy5.jpg

https://tabs.inc/webinar/tabs-agent

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/10/07/business/ai-chatbot-prompts-resumes.html?_bhlid=1b5906cdc6781a738a150d9c32f846ebf11fc318

https://substack.com/home/post/p-175615945

https://ramp.com/data/ai-index?utm_source=econlab.substack.com

https://medium.com/@samuelvandeth/crossing-the-chasm-162802d1cf27

https://x.com/TrungTPhan/status/1922669292929024017/photo/1

https://x.com/zerohedge/status/1977902195472322620?s=42

https://topline.beehiiv.com/p/the-era-of-haves-and-have-nots

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cpd2qv58yl5o

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/cj-gustafson-13140948_imagine-getting-called-into-your-cfos-office-activity-7381681514532458496-NOqa/

https://fortune.com/2025/10/01/red-lobster-ceo-damola-adamolekun-comeback-plan-bankruptcy/

https://fortune.com/2024/11/13/red-lobster-ceo-damola-adamolekun-says-endless-shrimp-is-never-coming-back/#

https://www.relay.app/

Today’s podcast is brought to you by Metronome

You just launched your new AI product. The new pricing page looks great. But behind it? Last-minute glue code, messy spreadsheets, and running ad-hoc queries to figure out what to bill. Customers get invoices they can’t understand. Engineers are chasing billing bugs. Finance can’t close the books.

With Metronome, you hand it all off to the real-time billing infrastructure that just works—reliable, flexible, and built to grow with you. We turn raw usage events into accurate invoices, give customers bills they actually understand, and keep every team in sync in real time.

Whether you’re launching usage-based pricing, managing enterprise contracts, or rolling out new AI services, Metronome does the heavy lifting so you can focus on your product, not your billing.

That’s why some of the fastest-growing companies in the world, like OpenAI and Anthropic, run their billing on Metronome.

Visit metronome.com to learn more.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit cjgustafson.substack.com

Inside the AI Feedback Loop: Nvidia, OpenAI, and the Bubble Building Itself

Run the Numbers

Inside the AI Feedback Loop: Nvidia, OpenAI, and the Bubble Building Itself