<![CDATA[Unharnessed]]>Two ad tech founders who've each built and sold startups before, pulling back the harness on how agentic advertising actually gets built with the founders and operators doing it.

]]>unharnessed.aiRiverside.fm (https://riverside.com)Thu, 01 Oct 2026 17:34:03 GMTSun, 16 Aug 2026 15:19:44 GMT60Unharnessed<p>Two ad tech founders who've each built and sold startups before, pulling back the harness on how agentic advertising actually gets built with the founders and operators doing it.</p>episodicUnharnessedjmoffie32@gmail.comno<![CDATA[Unharnessed Ep. 4: Where the Agentic Money Flows in 2027 with Eric Franchi]]>Six months ago, Eric Franchi's inbox started filling with a new kind of startup: companies building an agentic layer on top of every API and MCP server an advertiser can reach. Walled gardens, search, open web, ChatGPT, even DSPs. A couple turned into a dozen, then more than 25. Eric and his partner Corey gave the category a name: the Unified Media Platform, or UMP.

Moffie and Joe dig into whether UMPs create net-new spend or just redistribute existing budgets, and why platform risk is the bear case. Eric also explains why the smartest exits may come from acquirers nobody sees coming, as Pinterest's acquisition of TV Scientific showed. Plus: the AI tools a VC actually uses every day, why ChatGPT ads favor the big players for now, and Eric's three-layer map of the most investable agentic categories for 2027.

Disclosure: Eric's fund is an investor in Swivel, where Joe is founder and CEO.

]]>b7eec251-2fe6-4a1a-8665-6a8aed07a33bThu, 01 Oct 2026 10:00:00 GMT<p>Six months ago, Eric Franchi's inbox started filling with a new kind of startup: companies building an agentic layer on top of every API and MCP server an advertiser can reach. Walled gardens, search, open web, ChatGPT, even DSPs. A couple turned into a dozen, then more than 25. Eric and his partner Corey gave the category a name: the Unified Media Platform, or UMP.</p><p>Moffie and Joe dig into whether UMPs create net-new spend or just redistribute existing budgets, and why platform risk is the bear case. Eric also explains why the smartest exits may come from acquirers nobody sees coming, as Pinterest's acquisition of TV Scientific showed. Plus: the AI tools a VC actually uses every day, why ChatGPT ads favor the big players for now, and Eric's three-layer map of the most investable agentic categories for 2027.</p><p><i><em>Disclosure: Eric's fund is an investor in Swivel, where Joe is founder and CEO.</em></i></p>no00:28:0014Unharnessed Ep. 4: Where the Agentic Money Flows in 2027 with Eric Franchifull<![CDATA[Unharnessed Ep. 3: Build it and they won't come]]>You ship the product. Launch day comes. Your dashboard is 0 across the board. Every founder has felt that. Mike Khristo has felt it enough times to build a company about it. Layers is an agent that reads your repo, makes the content, buys the ads, and traces every install back to what caused it.

On episode 3 of Unharnessed, we go deep with Mike on:

• Using agents for customer acquisition, including buying inside ChatGPT
• The alpha you get as a founder 💩 posting on X
• The rise of AI assistants like Muse and Instinct, and what makes this crop actually useful
• Joe gets free marketing advice for his vintage Native American jewelry side hustle

Unharnessed is hosted by Jonathan Moffie and Joe Hirsch.

]]>fd79de2a-cbff-4234-b4f5-336b8fa5dc4dThu, 24 Sep 2026 11:00:00 GMT<p>You ship the product. Launch day comes. Your dashboard is 0 across the board. Every founder has felt that. Mike Khristo has felt it enough times to build a company about it. Layers is an agent that reads your repo, makes the content, buys the ads, and traces every install back to what caused it.</p><p>On episode 3 of Unharnessed, we go deep with Mike on:</p><p>• Using agents for customer acquisition, including buying inside ChatGPT<br />• The alpha you get as a founder 💩 posting on X<br />• The rise of AI assistants like Muse and Instinct, and what makes this crop actually useful<br />• Joe gets free marketing advice for his vintage Native American jewelry side hustle<br /><br />Unharnessed is hosted by Jonathan Moffie and Joe Hirsch.</p>no00:38:3613Unharnessed Ep. 3: Build it and they won't comefull<![CDATA[Unharnessed Ep. 2: Don't Ship Your (Agent) Org Chart, with Adam Epstein (Gigi)]]>Nobody wants a team of 30 sub-agents. They want their problem solved. Adam Epstein, co-founder of Gigi (a buyer agent for the Amazon DSP) joins Moffie and Joe Hirsch to make the case that your agent architecture is your business, not your product, and shipping it to the customer is the same mistake as shipping your org chart.

]]>2a84d385-cbd8-4938-8eda-900e76dd3ba6Thu, 17 Sep 2026 11:00:00 GMT<p>Nobody wants a team of 30 sub-agents. They want their problem solved. Adam Epstein, co-founder of Gigi (a buyer agent for the Amazon DSP) joins Moffie and Joe Hirsch to make the case that your agent architecture is your business, not your product, and shipping it to the customer is the same mistake as shipping your org chart.</p>no00:35:4612Unharnessed Ep. 2: Don't Ship Your (Agent) Org Chart, with Adam Epstein (Gigi)full<![CDATA[Unharnessed Ep. 1: Boomers & Bots (Ads for Agents)]]>TIME started serving ads to AI agents. Perplexity blocked them and called it deceptive. OpenAds.ai co-founder and CEO Steven Liss joins Moffie (Magnite) and Joe Hirsch (Swivel) to ask whether a market for ads-for-agents survives the model providers — who controls agent traffic, where the leverage actually sits, and what this looks like 18 months out.

]]>3d40636c-7d0b-4301-a000-d1c7db1b58aeThu, 10 Sep 2026 10:00:00 GMT<p>TIME started serving ads to AI agents. Perplexity blocked them and called it deceptive. <a rel="noopener noreferrer nofollow" href="http://OpenAds.ai" target="_blank">OpenAds.ai</a> co-founder and CEO Steven Liss joins Moffie (Magnite) and Joe Hirsch (Swivel) to ask whether a market for ads-for-agents survives the model providers — who controls agent traffic, where the leverage actually sits, and what this looks like 18 months out.</p>no00:24:1511Unharnessed Ep. 1: Boomers & Bots (Ads for Agents)full