The Best One Yet - 🍦 “Picasso of Pints” — Van Leeuwen’s boom. Reddit’s Un-Googling. Gen Z’s Retirement-Maxxing. +LeBron’s salary cut

Episode Date: July 27, 2026

The fastest-growing dessert brand is Van Leeuwen ice cream… because a pint is not a solist, it’s part of an orchestra.Reddit is considering removing itself from Google… because of Zero-click searches and Google Zero.Gen Z has saved 3x more than Gen X at the same age… so Jack shares his 401k balance.Plus, LeBron James took a huge paycut to bring his talents to Philadelphia…Submit your “Best Comeback Yet” for a chance to be featured in a special episode presented by our friends Liquid IV thebestcomebackyet.com. $RDDT $GOOG $ULGrab your Tickets to the IPO Tour: Our In-Person OfferingSan Francisco 9/23: https://www.ticketmaster.com/event/1C0064AFB5F688BDBoston 10/14: https://tickets.citywinery.com/event/tboy-the-ipo-tour-in-person-offering-8cdhupSeattle 11/4 (21+): https://www.axs.com/events/1446394/the-best-one-yet-ticketsNEWSLETTER:https://tboypod.com/newsletter OUR 2ND SHOW:Want more business storytelling from us? Check our weekly deepdive show, The Best Idea Yet: The untold origin story of the products you're obsessed with. Listen for free to The Best Idea Yet: https://wondery.com/links/the-best-idea-yet/NEW LISTENERSFill out our 2 minute survey: https://qualtricsxm88y5r986q.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_dp1FDYiJgt6lHy6GET ON THE POD: Submit a shoutout or fact: https://tboypod.com/shoutouts SOCIALS:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tboypod TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@tboypodYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@tboypod Linkedin (Nick): https://www.linkedin.com/in/nicolas-martell/Linkedin (Jack): https://www.linkedin.com/in/jack-crivici-kramer/Anything else: https://tboypod.com/ About Us: The daily pop-biz news show making today’s top stories your business. Formerly known as Robinhood Snacks, The Best One Yet is hosted by Jack Crivici-Kramer & Nick Martell. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hey, Eddie's Nick and Jack here from the T-Boy Studio about a special episode that we're whipping up for you. This August, we're doing a T-Boy Hotline episode, our special format where we hear from you. And this time, it's all about comebacks. So you got a business comeback story, a career comeback, a life comeback, guack was extra. Now it's not extra. We want to hear it. So send in your text or voice message to the bestcombackyet.com. And you'll get in the episode this August.

The best comeback yet.com. But in the meantime, Jack, let's hit the show. Nick, this is Jack. Welcome back. It is Monday, July 27th, and today's pod is the best one yet. This is a T-Boy. The top three pop business news stories you need to know today. Funest place in finance, Jack ever wants to know how the s'mores went last week. What do you think?

So good. I built a bonfire on the beach to perfection. No spoilers. Now, the limiting resource, unfortunately, was chocolate. Yeah, it was. So a couple of you had to have chocolate-less s'mores at the end. Kind of the most important resource. Kind of the most important.

We may whip up a story. There is a business takeaway here. I had abundant graham crackers. No one wants the graham crackers. In the meantime, we got three fantastic stories for today's show. Jack, what have we got in the tea boy? For our first story, the fastest growing dessert brand in the country is Van Luen ice cream. Because Van Lewin made one change, one crazy colorful change.

For our second story, this one's wild. Reddit is considering ungoogling itself. Reddit may remove itself from Google search on purpose. Because zero-click searches, Google, Google, And the most famous song from The Who. And our third and final story, guess who's retirement maxing right now? Who is it, Jack? Gen Z.

Yeah. They're three times better at saving for retirement than Gen X was. So us millennials are going to tell you the current balance of our 401 case. Well, at least I am. I'm excited too, man. I'm ready to go. I got the account balance. Before we hit that wonderful mix of stories.

I forgot my password to my brokerage account, but it's good. I'm good to go, Jack. It's official. LeBron James is taking his talents to Writtenhouse Square. The number one basketball player, LeBron, is now a 76er. He announced it on the 24th day of the month for his 24th NBA season. I mean, Jack, this is the biggest sports moment for Philadelphia since Rocky ran up a set of stairs. It's the biggest signing for Philadelphia since the Declaration of Independence.

Biggest media moment for Philadelphia since Bradley Cooper's chin and silver lining playbook. But the most fascinating part of this signing is that LeBron just took the biggest pay cut in sports history. Get this, from $53 million last year with the Lakers to $4 million this year with the 76ers. That is a 92% drop in salary for LeBron. Airball, 92% down, Jack. The 41-year-old just put himself on the bargain basement shelf. It's like a Filene's basement, Jack, from number one highest paid in the league, down to 317th. So why is LeBron James discounting himself?

Well, he thinks the 76ers are most likely to win in NBA finals this year. And he's already worth $1.2 billion bucks, the only billionaire. in the NBA right now. So he's not sweating it. And Nick and I decided, let's create a list of famous salary slashers like LeBron. Yeah, we whipped up a whiteboard list of the business leaders with the biggest pay cuts in history. Who we got, Jack? First final season at Apple, Steve Jobs took a salary of just $1. When Chrysler went bankrupt in 1979, CEO Lee Ayacocca accepted only one buck as payment. During COVID, Bob Iger of Disney canceled his entire salary. No dollars. And for 20 years, Jeff Bezos kept his Amazon salary at the quirky number of

$81,840 bucks. I got a feeling that corky number was dictated by his accountant, though, Nick. A highly strategic, Jack, happens to be the bare minimum price to just get the health benefits. So these are famous self-salary slashes, and sometimes they do it for empathy with the workers, sometimes it's performative for the media. Sometimes it's tax avoidance, Jack, sometimes they take an equity instead. And sometimes it's to leave salary cap space to try to win a fifth NBA championship. Either way, LeBron is now making less than a Goldman Sachs banker besties.

salary. Yeah. Veteran move. If you go to a Sixers game this season, leave some change for LeBron. He's going to need it. Jack, let's hit our B-Star. 15 years before this song, two boys from the Northeast met in the dorm. They had an idea that caused a cultural storm.

It's the best one yet, but the best is an norm. Jack Nick, that's it. I don't even think they need to practice. 50% that's a fat tip. Tea Boy City on your at list. If you know, you know, because we're ready to go. We can't wait no more. So just start the show.

Start the show First, a quick word from our sponsor For our first story, Van Lewin Ice Cream Just became the fastest growing dessert in America With over 100 million bucks in sales Because they packaged not for a single pint They packaged for the entire freezer And it reminds us of an orchestra

But first, full disclosure, my dentist makes me say this Every time we do it, Jack. I've got a level three sweet tooth over here. Nick's out of control. I mean, don't go to an ice cream shop with him because he'll ask for every single flavor before finally landing on a scoop. No limit on the tries, Jack. No limit on the tries. Nick actually interviewed the founders of Salt and Straw for their book launch. So he's got crack. Yeah, love those guys. Love those flavors. But Jack and I also met in Vermont, we should point out, founding state of cookie dough ice cream. Which is how we got the privilege to interview Ben Cohen of Ben and Jerry's last month. So yeah, we do ice cream on this spot. Oh, and yeah, Ben and Jerry's still America's top-selling ice cream with over one billion bucks in sales.

Ben and Jerry's walked so Jenny's ice cream could run and Talente's ice cream could spread. Okay, but pause the pod jack, because there is one ice cream brand right now that is eating all of them. And they're even appearing here in Vermont in the freezers taking on Ben and Jerry's. Van Loo and the Brooklyn-based artisan ice cream company. They went from one $2,000 postal truck they bought on eBay to 100 scoop shops today, doing over $100 million in revenue. How would you describe Van Luen? It's like if Willie Wonka and Ron Swanson had a baby. Who was raised by a vegan pistachio farmer in William.

And the difference for Van Luin, besties, is total indulgence. That's the differentiator. The French custard base of this ice cream is 18% butterfat, which is nearly twice as buttery and fatty as the average ice cream. Which is also why a pint of Van Luin is twice as expensive as your average American ice cream. But here's the news. Van Luin ice cream is the fastest growing dessert in America, according to the Food Service Industry Tracker, Technomics.

Sprinkle on the profits, but besties, this is what Jack and I find fascinating about Van Luin. None of this would have happened unless Van Luin made one change 10 years ago. Okay, let's go back to 2016. Every Van Luin product was yellow and had a truck on it. That was their branding. There was that postal truck. Like any company, they had the same brand on all of their products. But that year, they redesigned the pint to do the opposite.

Yeah, Jack and I call it an unprecedented packaging. Specifically, they were the first person. brand we had know of to design deliberately for social media. The first brand to be Instagram first. They revolutionized the Roy G. Biv to jump off your feed like chocolate sprinkles. And here's what they did. At first was Extreme Simplification Number One. Just the name, the flavor, and the ice cream.

No need for any other wording. Anything else? It's all just implied by it being a pint. Sure, the backside had the nutrition facts, but the front side was minimal. Which leads to Extreme Simplification Number Two. They didn't pick one color for the brand. They used every color instead. Okay, but they only used one color per a product. Every Coca-Cola product has a red Coca-Cola somewhere.

Every Pepsi product has some blue Pepsi imagery somewhere. But Van Lewin decided to use every color, but only one at a time. For example, Van Luen's pistachio pine, it is all green and only green colored. And no other flavor they sell has any green. Or the Van Luen black cherry chip. It is red colored and only red colored. And no other flavor they sell has any red anywhere. In the meantime, Jack, every hog and does.

ice cream flavor, has brown on the label. Every Ben and Jerry's flavor has a black and white cow on the label. But Van Lewin's the opposite. Now, on their own, each pint looks like it's from a different company. Okay, but Jack, when I'm staring at them in the freezer together, they stand out like a rainbow color wheel. The result sales jumped 50% in the first year after this big packaging redesign. And now 50% of Van Lewin sales are in the grocery store, not the scoop shop. The proof is in the pudding. You mean the ice cream? Because 80% of new Van Luen customers, Yeah, they came from Instagram. Although we want them to bring back the charcoal flavor,

which did get banned in New York City. So, Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies over at Van Llewin? The shelf isn't to showcase a soloist. It's for the whole orchestra to play together. Now, Eddie, Jack and I have studied other brands that attribute their success to a package, redesign, or a rebrand, one simple move. Poppy and LaCroix, both of those drinks didn't change the recipe within the can.

They just changed the can and changed their destiny. They decided to design for the entire shelf, not for the individual packet. They were the first to realize it's not just how your product looks in isolation. It's how the different products look together on the shelf. Jack, it's kind of like how an orchestra is not about that one instrument,

the one saxophonist off doing a solo. It's how different instruments sound together in harmony. As a whole orchestra, besties, the shelf, it's not just there to hold things. It's there to be your canvas. It's there to be your masterpiece. For our second story, Reddit, Politico and Business Insider all suddenly want to un-google themselves.

It's because of zero-click searches. Google Zero is almost here, and it's almost breaking the internet. The great un-googling. But besties, to tell this story, Jack and I want to go back three years ago when the internet publishers panicked. Because they realized chat chit could completely cut them out of the equation. You know what we're talking about. Instead of Googling the words, LeBron James, people would just ask a chatbot, what's the latest with LeBron James.

And instead of landing on an article on ESPN.com, you would learn about the LeBron trade from the chatbot. So, Jack, who is the loser in this situation? ESPN.com, who would lose you as a website visitor and lose advertising revenue associated with your view because they got upstreamed by AI. Call Larry David. They got upstreamed. But we actually call this phenomenon zero-click search. When you search for something on the internet and get the answer without ever clicking a link.

Because now that Google provides AI summaries, we're all clicking on Google links of less, less and less. Which is really bad news for any business that depends on internet clicks to make money. And the result? Well, it's a steady digital march toward Google Zero. When websites get zero visitors who found you and clicked through from a Google search. Yeah, could this be the end of the www.w.com. It could be the end of the business model of publishing stuff online, Nick. Now, Google Zero is a term coined by the Verges, Neelay Patel. And for some publishers, we're already halfway there. Because get this, yes. According to journal data, in the last 12 months, New York Times and Wall Street Journal traffic from Google is down 9% and 17%.

For Reuters in the USA today, they've lost 30% of their Google traffic in the last 12 months. All right, how about this, Jack, Washington Post and Business Insider, over 40% of their viewers are gone, MIA. Devastating losses, and it's actually a double whammy for these publishers. Why is it a double whammy, Jack? Because half the traffic that these websites are still getting are bots, according to Cloudflare. So advertisers are paying for fewer views, but also paying lower rates because they know the quality of those viewers is worse. Which leads to this news from the Wall Street Journal. Online publishers like Reddit, Politico, and the USA Today are considering voluntarily ungoogling themselves.

Ungoogling themselves. Jackie, sprinkle on more context, please. That would be if these websites shut off access to Google so that their information can't be used in Google's AI summaries. And if they did besties, then they would never show up in Google's searches, but that actually may be worth it. I was say today's CEO said this last week. It's time to take a stand and say enough is enough. If you got to, it's like the Beastie Boys. You got to fight for your right to publish. Yeah, to publish. Variety and Rolling Stone, they're suing Google, saying that these AI summaries are stealing their content and giving them to customers for free. But besties, here's what Jack and I find fascinating.

Reddit is showing what this un-Google rebellion may really be. A negotiating tactic. That's right. Because in 2024, Reddit signed a deal to give Google's AI access to to all of Reddit for $60 million a year. For $60 million, Google's AI can crawl every banana bread recipe on every subreddit to train their model and summarize them for you if they want in AI summaries. So Reddit threatening to ungoogle itself? That could be posturing so they can earn a better deal when they renew this Google licensing deal.

Because while publishers are getting profits squeezed, Google's are stretching like LeBron's headband. And it wouldn't be just Reddit trying to get more money in these AI licensing. So who would it be, Jack? Google has deals to license content from over 200 publishers. But now all those publishers could rise as one in the great ungoogling rebellion. It's dramatic stuff. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies is ungooguling themselves facing Google?

To quote the who, meet the new boss, same as the old boss. We won't get fooled again. Ayadis, today it's the AI summaries. But first, it was Facebook. Because 20 years ago, when Facebook invented the news feed, every publisher insisted that they publish every article on Facebook. The hope it was that for publishers like BuzzFeed you would discover your Disney princess listicle on Facebook,

click on it and then engage with BuzzFeed.com. But instead, people just engaged with the Facebook post, with likes and comments, but BuzzFeed got no traffic and made no money off it. Bessie, do you see what's going on here? It's the same thing right now with AI summaries. People are engaging, but they're not clicking the link. It was zero-click scrolling on Facebook 20 years ago.

Now it's zero-click searches on Google. today. Facebook zero, Google zero, publishers that can't trust that the tech companies are going to help them out. Meet the new boss. Same as the old boss. We won't get fooled again. Now a quick word from our sponsor. For our third and final story, Gen Z's new financial obsession, it's retirement maxing. Not get rich quick. It's retirement accounts. Gen Z is three times better at retirement savings than Gen X was. Oh boy. But this millennial is going to share his 401k balance. All right, Jack, let's move out the whiteboard here. Can we go through the Gen Z consumer trends right now?

What is fire? What is fire? Do punting in retail, thrift loving and fashion, swipe hating and dating. None of those are cringe. All are fire. But you wouldn't have expected this one, would you, Jack? Gen Z is saving for retirement better than any American generation before it. Get these numbers from Charles Schwab.

The average boomer began investing for retirement at age 35. The average Gen X are at age 32. We millennials, we start. started on average when we were 25. But the average Gen Z American began investing for their retirement at age 19. Sit down, stand up, and financial trick shot again?

I mean, Jack, boring, slow growth investments associated with 60-year-olds are the new fetch for teenagers. These people, protein max, looks max, and retirement max, too. Why, they're fragrance maxing, Jack. And even Wilder, one third of these Gen Zers who are saving for retirement

are saving to the maximum amount. They're contributing seven and a half thousand. bucks of their salary a year. Yeah, that's the max. So they're literally IRA maxing to max out on this tax break that the government offers. But Jack, there's an even wilder stat we discovered from a university of Chicago. Gen Z has nearly three times more in retirement balances right now than Gen X did at the same age in 1989. Oh, and yeah, that's adjusted for inflation. But it is a bittersweet statistic. Sweet that Gen Z is surprisingly killing it with financial responsibility. But bitter because the house costs on average three times more so that win is just an economic wash.

But yet he's the headlines about Gen Z. It's going all in on risk and trying to get rich quick. It's the opposite of everything we just said, right, Jack? Right, it's crypto schemes. It's sports bettings. It's putting your credit card into your buy now, pay later sports betting crypto schemes. Jack, we did a story last week about there was 40 million bucks of predictions about who's going to hook up on the last Love Island episode. But Nick, for every rich quick move,

This data suggests that people in the same generation are saving to get rich slow. It turns out retirement maxing is now viral on TikTok like it's a dance meme for money besties. So this is what Nick and I find fascinating. Both retirement maxers and get rich quickers, they're reacting to the same discouraging economic megatrans. Just with different tactics. Home prices are at all time highs. Interest rates are obnoxiously high. AI robots are coming after everybody's jobs.

But while one group is betting on risks, one is investing. in retirement. Now, since Nick and I are in our 30s, and we love set it and forget it retirement accounts, we're going to share why we chose the latter. You can unbutton your balance on this one, Jack? I'm logging in right now. The K and 401k is for Kardashians. So Jack, what's the takeaway for our buddies retirement maxing? One decision you make in your 20s can be worth $300,000 in your 30s and $3 million in your 60s. Yiddies, there's a wonderful book about Warren Buffett called Snowball about the power of compounding gains. Well, we wrote a takeaway about something similar, but for my 401k. All right, Jack, let's travel back in time. Twenty-two-year-old you, you decided to put five percent of your paycheck

into a 401k. And I was at that job for five years. So five percent of my salary was about $5,000 per year. So I saved $25,000 total in my 401k. Okay, but here's the key. Your employer matched what you contributed to your 401K. Right. So that was $50,000 saved for my time at that job. But, Nick, that 50,000 has been growing in the stock market since 2011. You're not going to believe the balance of that $50,000 today. Jack, 14% average returns in the S&P 500 since 2011. Oh, what is your 401K balance right now? Nick, the balance has seven Xed to $350,000.

$350K in a 401k. I haven't been at that job since 2016. I haven't added a dollar to that account since I was 26. and now it's worth $350,000 in my 30s. Okay, but then, Jack, let's go even further with the math here. Like, when you actually need that money in retirement, like let's say when you're 65, what will be worth then? Okay, assuming 8% stock market growth per year,

it's going to be worth almost $3 million when I'm 65 years old. Oh, and get this. Since it's a 401k retirement account like an IRA, it gets the mother of all tax breaks. That's the power of an employee match and compounding growth in the stock market, which acts like a gigantic snowball getting bigger and bigger as it goes down the hill. Besties add it all up and one decision in your 20s can be worth 300 grand in your 30s and 3 million.

Retirement maxing, but K and 401K is for Kramer. Jack, could you whip up the takeaways for us to kick off the week? Van Lewin is the fastest growing dessert brand in America with $100 million in annual sales. Their pints in isolation are one color, but together it's an orchestra on a shelf in Isle 6. For our second story, Reddit, Politico, and the USA Today are considering ungoogling themselves because AI summaries are upstreaming their website visits. First, Facebook, now Google. Meet the new boss. Same as the whole boss. And our third and final story, Gen Z is retirement maxing. They're better at saving than any generation

before them. And with employer match and compounding growth, a decision in your 20s could become $3 million in retirement. But besties, this pod's not over yet. Here's what else you need to know today. First, call it the midsummer night slump. Stocks dipped 1% last week and 2% in the last two weeks. Because for roughly the 27th time in the last four years, investors worry that big tech might be overspending on AI. Google announced their first negative cash flow quarter ever, and Tesla, they flipped from positive to negative too.

Because they're spending so much freaking money on data centers and GPUs. Okay, but this week, four of the mangoes companies are reporting earnings, including Amazon, Apple, Meta, and Microsoft. Second, it's a deflation celebration. the price of something is actually coming down. This week, it's chocolate. Coco futures are down 34% in the last year to just $1.30 cents a pound. Apparently, the latest cocoa harvest in Africa is going well.

But Nick, while cocoa prices are down, chocolate prices are frustratingly still up. That's right. Candy bar prices are up 11% because the companies haven't passed those savings on to us consumers yet, Jack. So what should be a deflation celebration is a deflation frustration. This is why you didn't share those some mores. Or why we ran out of some mores, I think, Jack. Yeah, that's why I only bought two urshies. part. And finally, the Pokemon trading card market's gotten so insane that Japan's government may regulate it.

Because as one government official said, Pikachu isn't simply a toy anymore. It's a financial asset. Last year, a world record was set for a $16 million dollar Pokemon card. That is ATH all time high, baby. This is why we describe SpaceX stock as like a Pokemon card. They're both financial assets. So now Japan wants to introduce consumer protections so you don't get duped like a fake crypto Pynum. Ponzi scheme. Fick Charzard, Ponzi. Did you check that Bigajun, by the way? We got to double-check that one. Now, time for the best fact yet, which because it's Monday, means T-Boy trivia. Jack, what do we got? 32 years ago this month, Amazon was founded as a company. July 1994, Amazon.com came into the world. Trivia. What was the original name of Amazon before Amazon? You see, before Jeff Bezos made at Amazon,

his first idea was to name the company Cadabra. As in Abercadabra. Because e-commerce was like a magic trick at the time. But their lawyer said cadabra sounds kind of like cadaver. You know, a dead body. So what was Amazon's second name before finally landing on Amazon? And here's the hint. If you type in Amazon's second potential name into a website browser today, it still exists and it redirects you to Amazon.com. So they're still on the domain. Okay, the answer is, it's not cadaver. It's not cadaver. It's relentless. Jeff Bezos wanted to name Amazon, relentless.com. Yetis, you look fantastic today. Jack, you are glowing over there and besties. You want to drop a bomb in your group chat today? Make it your 401k. You mean the balance or this story about my balance? You know, I was thinking this story, but if you drop your balance, that is a relentless move, Jack. That's a relentless move. I hope that telling my balance was hopeful. Yeah. Because I haven't touched that in years and it's grown to $350,000. It's hopeful that, like, you can save money today. And when you need it in decades, it's going to be gigantic.

Anyway, Yendies, drop today's episode to your group chat. Nick and I, we'll see you tomorrow. Can't wait. And don't forget, if you've got a comeback story that you want to share in our hotline episode, go to the best comeback yet.com. We've got a link in the episode description. And before we go, a happy birthday to legendary Yeti, R.C. Bell, over in Midtown, New Jersey, the real central Jersey.

Now she's 25 with twice the confidence. And happy birthday to American Kevin Brown, who is traveling to Japan for his birthday to meet up with his Australian girlfriend. And Elchin Agaboya, over in Fairfax, Virginia. birthday, buddy. Happy birthday to William Simione of Milton Mass, the Bantam, bro. Just outside Boston. And Mary Walsh, the Mid-Panther from Jersey, living up in Greenwich. Happy birthday. Happy 57th birthday to Heidi Sacker in New Jersey. And her son, Jake, turn in 27, same birthday, mother and son. And happy half birthday to James Moreno of San Jose. His real birthday's January 27th, Nick, but the weather is so

much nicer July 27th, so he just chose to celebrate that dance. And Brendan and Samantha, congrats on the three-year wedding anniversary with that lovely celebration over in Montana. Big shout out to Alex, my wife, who, Nick, last night our ferry got in super late. We were driving until 3.30 a.m. And Alex was the workhorse behind the wheel from midnight to three. Alex? Beast. Incredible. Alex, that should be a Rivian commercial right there.

Powerful family move by Alex. This is Jack. I own stock of Amazon, Disney, and Reddit. Nick and I both own stock of Apple. And I own one share of SpaceX and Nick owns more than one.