Podbit · The Prof G Pod with Scott Galloway
South Korea's stock market fell 44% from its June highs, erasing $2 trillion in value. The culprit: single-stock leveraged ETFs tracking Samsung and SK Hynix at 2–5x multiples launched in May. Ninety-two percent of investors were retail. Goldman estimated 3.4% of the entire adult population received a margin call.
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At 5:31 · chapter starts 4:05
This is the week's most dramatic story, and George Hahn tells it with precision. Leopold Aschenbrenner is 24 years old. His fund, Situational Awareness, was up 439% for the first half of 2026 and had swelled to roughly $45 billion [1] — George Hahn "Situational Awareness, the AI hedge fund run by 24-year-old Leopold Aschenbrenner, was up 439% for the first half of 2026 and had swelled t…" 03:59 . He told investors the sell-off represented an unusually attractive opportunity. Six days later, after mounting losses and margin calls, the fund sold most of its public stock portfolio to Ken Griffin's Citadel in a fire sale — leaving it with around $10 billion. Ed provides the colour: online, Aschenbrenner was 'AI Jesus' — hailed as the savant of his generation, a man who could predict the AI future. But he was secretly 5x leveraged into the hottest momentum trades in the world. When the position moved against him, there was no margin for error. The fund's Anthropic stake was also reportedly being sold. The moral is blunt: it looked like genius until it was revealed as leverage.
After margin calls and a fire sale of its public stock portfolio to Citadel, Situational Awareness was left managing roughly $10 billion.
Situational Awareness fund manager Leopold Aschenbrenner was revealed to be 5x leveraged, which triggered margin calls and forced liquidation of his entire public equity portfolio.
South Korea's stock market fell 44% from its June highs, wiping out $2 trillion in value, driven by retail investors in single-stock leveraged ETFs.
PropGPT launched with 20 downloads a day and strong influencer marketing but hit a ceiling at $1,000–$2,000 MRR. High download numbers masked a critical flaw: almost nobody stuck around after the free trial ended.
Eyal and Yali made a bold bet: stop all marketing, go back into the cave, and rebuild PropGPT from scratch. Four months of pure engineering and design work with zero revenue growth — and it paid off massively.
After rebuilding, PropGPT relaunched at $1,700 MRR. Within 2.5 months, it peaked at $40K MRR and 2,000 downloads in a single day. The product hadn't changed its audience — it had changed how well it served them.
Users didn't want a sports betting analytics tool — they wanted to be told the answer. Eyal realized their app was making users do the work when they just wanted the result, and that single insight drove the entire rebuild.
Step 1: know exactly who you're building for. Step 2: worship your data. Step 3: obsess over in-app analytics to find drop-off points. Step 4: scale with influencer marketing only after the product converts. In that order.
A 45% download-to-trial rate sounds great — until you see 13% trial-to-paid. That gap isn't a marketing problem. It's a product problem. Eyal breaks down how to read these signals before they kill your business.
Their 70th influencer video hit 600,000 views and single-handedly pushed PropGPT's ARR from $8,000 to $38,000 in three days. Influencer marketing has a lottery-like upside — but only if the product can hold the users it acquires.
Most founders struggle with distribution. Eyal and Yali had it nailed from day one — and still failed. Their story proves the rarer, less-discussed truth: a great go-to-market strategy is worthless if the product can't retain users.
Get a co-founder who has your back. Be scientifically honest about whether your idea has real demand. Once you convince yourself, it becomes an order of magnitude easier to convince investors and team members to join you.
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