Introducing Cat Labs

Watch the announcement video

Last summer I posted a video of a bluetooth landline phone I had made to my audience of ~1M on TikTok and Instagram. Within 3 days, I had over 1,000 pre-orders. By the end of the year—in about 5 months—I had found a manufacturer, hired a small team, and sold over $750,000 worth of bluetooth landline phones. 

Physical Phones moved that fast because of two things working together:

(1) Creator distribution. I had a built-in audience that trusted me, gave me direct feedback, and pre-ordered before I'd committed to manufacturing. I understood exactly what they wanted, which de-risked the entire experiment.

(2) AI tooling. My small team used AI to teach ourselves FCC approval processes, debug hardware issues, translate technical documents from Mandarin, negotiate with suppliers, and about 1,000 other things that would have required specialists or months of trial and error.

Those two forces—creator communities and AI leverage—are an explosive combination that changes the economics of building companies. Small teams can now move faster than venture-backed startups with 50 people and 18-month roadmaps.

So why stop at phones? :)

Today, I'm announcing Cat Labs — a creator-first product studio where the audience decides what gets made.

Starting this summer, we're launching one new experiment every month. Hardware, software, weird ideas, useful tools—whatever we think will work. Some will become real businesses. Some will fail publicly. All of them will be available for you to buy, test, or play with.

And we're showing you everything. Not vague "behind the scenes" content, but the actual work:

• The AI prompts we use to debug firmware and write supplier emails

• Real-time negotiations with manufacturers

• The spreadsheets, the pivots, the moments we decide to kill a product or double down

• Revenue numbers, costs, margins—the full financial picture

You'll also have a say. We'll poll the community on what to build next. You'll vote on whether we pivot or ship. Your feedback will shape what gets made.

If you're a creator, you'll get a working playbook for turning your audience into customers. If you're building something, you'll see whether AI tools actually deliver or if it's all hype. If you're just curious about the future of work, you'll watch us test it in public, repeatedly, and prove what's possible when you stop waiting for permission.

Here's what I believe: The future feels uncertain because people are being told about AI instead of being shown what you can do with it. I think if more people saw what I did with Physical Phones—the autonomy, the creative freedom, the fact that a small team can now build things that used to require venture backing—they'd feel less anxious and more excited.

If you want to follow along, make sure you’re subscribed to the official Cat Labs Newsletter, and follow CatGPT on Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, and YouTube.

If you want to build with us—as a creator, collaborator, or investor—reach out here: https://catlabs.studio/

More to come… 🚀🌈

Cat