Get the Check

In this episode of Get the Check, the pod breaks down a huge week in tech. There’s the historic CEO transition at Apple, a meltdown over Big Tech's capex spend, and xAI’s new plan after Grok was adopted by zero companies we have heard of. Side note, does anyone know why all the big tech companies report on the same day??
After 15 years of running Apple, Tim Cook is stepping into an Executive Chairman role and giving John Ternus the reigns. The hosts start the segment with Tim Cook's legacy, and there's a lot to unpack. He took Apple from $350M to $4T, invented new categories (shoutout to the AirPod, which Anika insists she hates but has purchased 5 times and counting), and even built a $109B services business that now drives 41% of Apple's profits. They also talk about his misses. The Vision Pro ate 25% of R&D spend for years and was barely even adopted in the heart of SF. Then there’s the elephant in the room, which was no real AI product, even though Siri plus Apple’s personal context set them up perfectly to create consumer AI or some type of assistant. The podcast really needs an assistant, so if John Ternus could work on that the pod is forever indebted. Ternus is a hardware engineer who has worked on every important Apple project since 2001. Maya discusses the real reason she thinks Cook picked him and where he may place important bets.
Next they get into hyperscaler earnings, and the numbers are genuinely hard to comprehend. Meta, Google, Microsoft, and Amazon collectively announced $700B in data center spending for the year, which is roughly the GDP of most countries. Amazon's free cash flow is down 97%, Meta is burning $370M a day on construction, and the new bottleneck is not GPUs anymore, it is energy. Half of the planned 2026 megawatts are already canceled. The pod also digs into the Sam Altman vs. Sarah Friar drama at OpenAI, which is projected to lose $14B this year as they try to IPO.
Finally, they get into xAI's proposed deal with Cursor: either a $60B acquisition or a $10B payment for using Colossus, xAI's data center that is sitting at 11% capacity considering Elon’s in the middle of a lawsuit with its otherwise top potential customer OpenAI. Anika's hot take is that this isn’t just a model capabilities problem for Grok it’s also a brand problem - enterprises are not buying Grok after it thought it was Hitler. Priya points out that if this deal closes and Cursor gets locked into Composer only, which is there own model vs. their current approach, which allows users to select between all models then that is a huge opening for anyone else building coding tools.
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00:00 Our take on the JPM sexual harassment lawsuit
06:49 Did Tim Cook achieve GOAT status
09:10 Cook expanding into SaaS12:00 RIP Intel
14:02 Where Tim Cook got cooked
14:05 Vision Pro fail17:08 iPhone growth stalls
19:31 Apple un-intelligence
27:27 Why Ternus won’t be another Cook
29:35 What we think Apple will bet on next
30:40 Hyperscaler capex freakout
31:35 FCF explained
45:28 SpaceX Cursor deal
49:58 Coding tool consolidation50:10 Maya rants about GitHub

From influencers chasing a deeper tan to AI founders in SF biohacking through their all-nighter before a tier-1 pitch, it feels like everyone is suddenly taking black-market Chinese peptides. And in July, RFK and the FDA may officially reclassify a list of peptides, so that compounding pharmacies can legally sell them again. Startups like Mochi and Superpower are already investing in the supply chain so they can get in on the craze the moment it's legal.
This week the pod sits down with two of the most knowledgable people in the space. First, Mansi Hukmani, also known as the Chief Longevity Officer, the #1 Substacker writing on peptides and the wellness industrial complex. She gets invited to the bougie loft parties where nurses are injecting hedge fund bros with NAD+ shots between cold plunges, which is exactly the boots on the ground journalism the hosts want.
Next the trio sits down with Myra Ahmad, founder and CEO of Mochi Health, a marketplace for GLP-1s and primary care providers that has served over 500K patients. Myra has bootstrapped the company to its current size, which is pretty much unheard of in SF. They’ve grown so quickly at a 500% YoY rate that everyone’s taking notice including Eli Lilly who recently sued them over marketing claims. We dive into why Eli Lilly is threatened by a player like Mochi.
With Mansi the pod gets into:
Why New York biohackers are different from SF biohackers (and why London is behind)
How China controls 90% of the global protected amino acid supply, and why HIMS just bought a peptide manufacturer
Why pharma hates peptides, hint: you can't patent something your body already makes
The Las Vegas conference where two women fainted on the spot from peptides
Why Mansi thinks menopause shouldn't exist
With Myra the hosts unpack:
How Mochi grew to 500K+ patients
The 503A vs. 503B compounding pharmacy distinction that the GLP-1 market hinges on
How HIMS will send you a weight loss medication within 60 seconds of filling out a form, with zero doctor in the loop
The actual premise of the Eli Lilly lawsuit and why pharma wants compounding to disappear despite centuries of precedence
Why Mochi invested in a testing lab in San Carlos instead of producing peptides themselves
If you've ever wondered whether you should try peptides, what's actually in the syringe, or why your group chat suddenly knows what BPC-157 is, the hosts have too, which is why they decided to do this deep dive.
Thank you to Kalshi for sponsoring: https://kalshi.com/sign-up?referral=getthecheck. Use our referral code to get $10 when you trade! Maybe there will be a market on if Priya takes a peptide in 2026 soon.
Follow us on Instagram @getthecheckpod and DM us any thoughts on the episode we love hearing from you :)
00:00 Intro to peptides01:06 Meet Mansi known as Chief Longevity Officer on Substack05:58 Who's actually doing peptides11:43 The peptide players: telehealth companies, pharmacies, pharma, and China13:47 Why peptides are so hard to manufacture16:42 China's chokehold on the supply chain19:49 The big players moving in: HIMS, Superpower, Mochi21:02 Why pharma hates peptides29:44 How the FDA categorizes peptides32:09 Superpower's peptide launch33:44 Should Priya start taking peptides38:40 Psychedelics and why menopause shouldn't exist43:41 Meet Myra, founder and CEO of Mochi Health49:35 The Mochi vs. Eli Lilly lawsuit50:19 What's the point of compounded drugs52:48 The GLP-1 and peptide landscape54:33 Why HIMS doesn't have doctors in the loop56:29 Is pharma evil?57:55 BTS of the FDA classification of peptides1:02:12 Is Mochi selling peptides1:04:19 Why aren’t there clinical trials of major peptides1:07:15 The next billion-dollar peptide will be…1:07:42 Bootstrapping Mochi to 500K patients

Today the hosts sat down with one of the pioneers of the early 2010s social media era, Naveen Gavini, ex-CPO of Pinterest and one of the company’s first 10 employees. They talk about the rise of social media and what he’s up to now (hint: he’s going back into the consumer tech space).
If you've ever wondered why people say Pinterest maintained taste vs. Facebook and Instagram, Naveen explains the product decisions that intentionally led to that:
Ordering the algorithm by saves instead of likes
Not importing your contacts from Facebook
Inspiration as a guiding principal over pure engagement
Naveen was sitting at the dinners in the early 2010s when early Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter employees in Silicon Valley debated the ethics of the algorithm and foresaw the world we now live in, where social media and algorithms are shaping the next generation.
The hosts ask Naveen what those employees saw coming, what they didn't, and why companies diverged in morals during this time. They also dive into what it was like to help take a company public. Fun fact, Pinterest’s IPO was exactly 7 years before today. Historically IPO access was limited to employees and investors, but now anyone can make money on a private company going public because of Kalshi’s IPO markets. This link gives you $10 when you trade $10: https://kalshi.com/sign-up?referral=getthecheck.
They also dig into his new company, BuildForever, which is launching Extra, a consumer email product. Email is kind of dead. The hosts can't remember the last time they checked theirs (besides Maya, who's insane and goes through her promos inbox). Extra is rethinking email to be about your personal life and is focused on creating a delightful experience around it.
They also get into the email application competitive landscape and why Extra is going to fill a gap not addressed by hyper productivity apps like Superhuman or Notion Mail. This is a true consumer product, one that long term can actually be proactive in your inbox, like "we saw you're going to NY, here's a hotel we knew you would like."
Naveen is offering Get the Check listeners a free code to download the app today, even though it isn't publicly out yet. The first 50 people who download it from the App Store and use code GETTHECHECK become Extra’s first users. Here's the link! If you try it, let us know what you think :)
00:00 Meet the ex-CPO and 10th employee at Pinterest
00:27 Being the first person to think Pinterest should be an app
04:00 What Pinterest did differently than IG and FB
11:52 Why Pinterest prioritized values over engagement
14:14 Why you don't notice Pinterest ads
16:19 From engineer to CPO
23:55 Saves versus likes on social media
27:32 Taking a company through IPO
34:58 Deciding to start a company after every says not to…
36:27 Email needs a consumer angle
38:59 Introducing Extra
47:01 Monetizing in consumer social

Dmitri is a product designer who spent time at Cash App and Ramp, and is now on a deliberate career break — reading, thinking, and figuring out what design means in a world where AI can build the thing but can't decide if it's worth building.
We discuss:
- how he taught himself Photoshop at 11 through gaming forums and designed his first bank interface for a video game mod before working in FinTech
- what taste actually is and why AI can't have it- how the designer role has quietly absorbed six other jobs over the last decade
- the iconic design choices that shaped how we interact with technology — from Apple and the iPhone to the Nintendo Wii — and why most people never noticed them
- why great customer service is a design problem that most companies treat as a cost center
- why the most important design challenges left might have nothing to do with software at all
00:00 Meet Dmitri
00:28 Photoshop Origins
01:48 Design vs Coding
04:10 Roleplay Mods to UI
09:30 Dropping Out Reset
12:53 Apple and Product Design
16:17 Generalist Designer Era
17:40 AI Slop and Taste
21:02 Tasteful vs Distasteful Brands
23:04 Aesthetics Versus Substance
24:54 Taste Icons Compared
26:30 Customer Service Trust
27:52 AI Commoditizes Software
29:18 Designing For Meaning
31:13 Quality Of Life Debate
34:02 Information And Revolutions
35:56 Voting And Local Community
39:31 Design Beyond Software
40:49 Career Break And Future Plans
46:03 Gendered Founder Paths
48:22 Impact Beyond Valuation

Mercor got hacked, NASA went back to the moon, and Anthropic just dropped $400 million on a nine-person biotech startup. There's a lot to talk about.
Maya, Anika, and Priya kick things off with the supply chain attacks that have been all over the news. A North Korean state actor called Team PCP compromised Trivy, an open source security scanner, which then cascaded into LiteLLM and Checkmarx, ultimately leading to 4TB of Mercor's data getting leaked, including biometric data and confidential training projects tied to OpenAI and Meta. They break down how the attack chain actually worked and how Mercor got their data back. They also debrief the future of cyber and why pinning your dependencies matters more than ever. They also look at who's building defenses in this space: Chainguard ($3.5B valuation), Socket (who detected the Axios attack in 6 minutes), and Cogent Security.
Then they get into Artemis II, NASA's first crewed mission beyond low Earth orbit in 53 years. The real question is why now, and the answer is mostly China, who landed on the far side of the moon in 2019 and says they'll reach the south pole by 2028. They break down the $100 billion the US has spent so far, the heat shield failure that NASA quietly buried for three years, and how SpaceX and Blue Origin ended up fighting over lunar contracts. They also get into the Artemis Accords, why $1.5 trillion in lunar resources has turned the moon into a geopolitical chess match.
Finally, the Get the Check segment covers Coefficient Bio, a nine-person team out of Genentech that got acquired by Anthropic for $400 million after just eight months. They get into how transformers apply to protein structure prediction, what AlphaFold unlocked, how the founders' "lab in the loop" paper cut drug discovery timelines by 70%, and what this signals about Anthropic building out a life sciences group. They also look at Chai Discovery (whose model gets 86% of designs to preclinical candidate selection) and Lila Sciences ($235M Series A), plus the Nvidia and Eli Lilly billion-dollar partnership.
Now…a word from our sponsors :)
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00:00 TBPN's rumored $125M acquisition by OpenAI
04:16 Supply chain attacks 101
10:42 How Mercor got hacked
20:33 Who's building cyber defense
23:03 Artemis II: back to the moon after 53 years
26:26 Why we are going to the moon (hint: China)
28:28 NASA's heat shield cover-up
31:34 $1.5T in lunar resources
33:40 Would we go to space
35:49 Coefficient Bio's $400M exit to Anthropic
36:50 How AI is changing drug discovery
41:46 Lab in the loop
44:34 Predicting a bio talent gold rush