👰  Welcome, wedding crashers

👋   Good morning. Do you see flashes of Chuck E. Cheese animatronics in your nightmares to this day? Jack Turner, a 23-year-old in Missouri, sees something else: a career. He’s resurrected nearly 100 Rock-afire Explosion characters — the robot band that performed at ShowBiz Pizza Place before it rebranded as Chuck E. Cheese — and charges $450 for private tours of his warehouse and a full show. His first song took six months to program, and includes a cheerleading mouse named Mitzi Mozzarella who can perform everything from Lady Gaga to Lana Del Rey. 

NEWS FLASH 

📈  Stock market stocking stuffers: Say that 3x fast. Startup Beestow is letting you gift someone a slice of their favorite company this holiday season instead of that Starbucks gift card they’ll forget to use. Recipients don’t own actual shares of the 40 companies available on the platform, just a claim that tracks the stock’s performance which they can cash out or reinvest at any time (a $100 Tesla gift could be cashed out at $120 if the stock rises 20%, for example). Santa is bullish on AI, we heard.

🐶  No need to fear: Underdog is here with Woof, a lightweight, text-to-speech AI model that runs entirely in your browser without cloud connectivity or an internet connection, keeping your data private. To demonstrate the model, the startup released a game set in a moody retro office with a teletype keyboard and monitor. Generate speech with the keyboard and music with a tuner while fending off an intrusive cloud-based AI provider — a dig at larger, data- and power-hungry models.

🏒  Ice device, baby: Seattle startup OneCourt is providing blind and low-vision hockey fans with haptic tablets that let them feel what's happening on the ice at NHL games. The devices translate real-time puck and player data into vibrations users feel through tactile rink outlines. The tablets are available at marquee matchups and home games for the Detroit Red Wings, Washington Capitals, Chicago Blackhawks, and Colorado Avalanche. The launch expands the company's coverage, which includes NBA and NFL games.

MORE NEWS TO KNOW

• Shore thing: Reef Arches is replacing expensive seawalls and rock installations used to fight erosion with Lego-like concrete arches weighing up to 3.5 tons that break up waves without blocking marine life.
  
• Hot date: Sex-positive dating app Pure has more than doubled its US revenue over the past year to a $220m run rate as Gen Z looks for options outside of traditional swipe-based apps. 
  
  
• Plug it in, plug it in: EDENenergy developed a battery system for solar panels that integrates used e-bike and e-scooter batteries that would otherwise be tossed.
  
• Must love dogs: Good Owners launched Guide to Dogs, an online knowledge platform that helps dog parents better understand animal behavior and communication, and includes an interactive dogGPT feature.
  

DELEGATE TO DOTS

ChatGPT's dots feature doesn't need you around

Most people use ChatGPT like a vending machine: drop in a question, grab the answer, repeat tomorrow. Dots is the layer underneath that keeps moving when you log off.

Here’s how it works:

• Handoff logic: Custom rules decide what it handles solo versus what pings you for a call.
  
• Management layer: dots coordinates ChatGPT Work and Codex — it doesn't replace them, it runs them.
  
• Plug-and-play frameworks: 3 ready-to-run setups for deal flow, content pipelines, and audience Q&A.

It's not about doing less work. It's about only doing the parts that actually need a human.

Put your dot to work

THE BIG IDEA

We’re getting married! Strangers welcome

If you're married, you know the stress of locking in your wedding guest list — a major factor in your spend. Staying within budget and meeting a minimum venue headcount is stressful.

Couples spend ~$292 per guest, on average. And sometimes, if they don’t meet the minimum number of guests required by a venue, they pay for empty seats.

But what if a stranger paid for it instead?

“Not a Wedding Crasher is a technology platform that connects couples that have extra seats at their wedding with people that like attending unique experiences,” co-founder Jeff Besen told The Hustle.

How it started

Jeff and Karina Besen came up with the business idea on a date night in fall 2025. “I said, what if we got dressed up and went to a wedding? And she, of course, reminded me that you can’t just go to a wedding unless you have an invitation,” Jeff said.

A little research found no similar businesses, so after polling family, friends, and random people on the street, the Besens were ready to say “yes” to the new idea.

Within six months, the couple hired a website developer, launched in March 2026, and attended a wedding in Los Angeles with a couple they had never met.

“I was fortunate the business validated quickly, with couples signing up and strong guest interest,” Jeff said. “Some couples just want people there to bring more energy to the wedding.”

How it’s going

Jeff says the biggest hurdle now is supply — getting enough weddings listed because demand far exceeds available seats, “which is a great problem to have,” Jeff said.

Now, the company:

• Has ~20k users, mostly guests
  
• Has ~50k social followers
  
• Has had a guest video hit ~5m views per platform
  
• Has filled weddings with one to 60 open seats
  
• Has seat prices of $25-$200, with an average of $50-$60
  
• Screens guests with ID checks through Stripe, and couples approve each guest
  
• Is aiming for a wedding in all 50 states in year one

With interest pouring in from other countries and various private events, Jeff says people want to feel connected. “This is an opportunity to do that in a really fun and loving way.”

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NEWSWORTHY NUMBER

Number of AI Knittakers — that is, “authentic Icelandic” knitters — available to hire for your next virtual work meeting. Like AI notetakers, the corporate crafters take meeting notes, but instead of a digital transcript including an hours' worth of “ums” and promises to circle back, they deliver a one-word summary of the discussion in the form of a stitched garment.

Think: “pivot,” “align,” or (probably) “unnecessary,” but cozy.

Sound like the kind of help your team could use? The service, part of a campaign by Iceland’s tourism authority that’s meant to highlight AI fatigue as well as the country’s knitting tradition, is bookable through Nov. 20.

AROUND THE WEB

📅  On this day: In 1965, the Great Northeast Blackout cascaded across parts of the US and Canada, leaving ~30m in darkness (and 800k people stranded in NYC’s subway system).

🐈  That’s wild: How a cat became a published author in a top physics journal in the '70s.

🖼  Whoa: How investigators found a painting 20 years after it was stolen.

🍕  That’s fun: Easily the world’s best road trip.

🐻  Aww: That’ll be five red cards, ref.

SHOWER THOUGHT

There's a size limit to Arachnophobia. Like, if a dog sized spider is in your house, that's scary regardless of it being a spider.  SOURCE

Today's email was brought to you by Ben Berkley, Singdhi Sokpo, Danny Jensen, and Bill Meincke.

Editing by: Sara "Save me a seat" Friedman.

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