Andrea Tortella
CEO @Thrad_AI
5 Mar 2026Claude Vs Gov, OpenAI Backs Down, Framer CEO Joins Live
Thread's Andrea on Ads in LLMs & Book Launch
Andrea, co-founder and CEO of Thread, explains his company's paid advertising infrastructure for LLMs, which injects sponsor responses into chat interfaces. He discusses the tailwind from OpenAI's ads announcement, Thread's open-source safety efforts, his self-described obsession with advertising, and his book 'Mark Loves Marketing' launching that day. He also shares advice on underpriced attention arbitrage and creative go-to-market strategies.
Conor McNamara (Stripe) Begins Annual Letter Talk
Conor McNamara, EMEA CRO at Stripe, joins the show after brief weather chat about Dublin sunshine. The hosts begin discussing Stripe's annual letter, starting with the standout stat of $1.9 trillion in total volume, roughly 1.6% of global GDP, flowing through Stripe. The segment is cut off at the end of Part 1.
Stripe CRO Connor on $1.9T in Payments & AI-Native Growth
Stripe's chief revenue officer Connor walks through the annual letter stats: $1.9 trillion in total volume, 1.6% of global GDP, across 5 million businesses, growing 34% year on year. He explains why more startups — especially AI companies — are hitting $10M ARR within months (the 2025 cohort doubled vs 2024), the Metronome acquisition for usage-based billing, and going global from day one. He also covers Stripe as an invisible abstraction and fraud layer, the boom in solopreneurs and embedded finance, Stripe Capital (borrowers grew 27% faster), and the 'sorting machine' where winners pull away in a K-shaped economy, with startups building on Replit, Vercel and Lovable.