14.ai Dispatch #25

Lessons from Karens, creators, and croissants

Michael Fester, Marie Schneegans, Maya Czeneszew, and 2 others

Nov 23, 2025

This week: we trained Karens, celebrated Michael with way too many pastries, and dug into creators, ops, and live commerce shaping the next wave of TikTok Shop.

Karen training simulator 2025

Last week in SF, we ran a little social experiment:

“Channel your inner Karen and demand a refund on a completely normal item.”

Some people went all in. We saw trembling voices, dramatic sighs, and many demands to speak to with the regional manager.

If you know someone who needs Karen training, send them this.

TikTok Shop hangs in WeHo (Dec 5)

We’re hosting a small TikTok Shop mixer on December 5 at the 1 Hotel West Hollywood! Macarons, champagne, and founder convos.

If you sell anything online: beauty, wellness, home goods, the latest oddly-satisfying gadget, you already know TikTok Shop can feel like a goldmine and a puzzle at the same time.

One day you’re printing money. The next day every affiliate disappears into the void. That’s normal.

No formal pitches. Just brands swapping notes on what’s actually working (and what’s not).

Come through if you’re in LA, and/or tell your LA friends.

Michael bday = Pastry apocalypse

We took a break from building and debugging to celebrate Michael’s birthday the only way a mostly French startup would: A pile of Arsicault pastries.

The team descended like extremely polite raccoons. Hopefully Michael got one.

Nashville: You up?

We’ll be in Nashville next week helping out with Black Friday craziness.

Message us if you’re there.

Scaling your TikTok shop: Lessons from Jordan West

Jordan West, e-commerce legend, taught us a lot about internet money.

Here are some of the coolest (and most important) pieces:

ZipString, a Shark Tank toy is doing $50–100k PER DAY on TikTok Shop.

The best TikTok shops:

1. Sell to creators, not consumers

Your job isn’t to convince the end buyer. It’s to convince creators why your product deserves their audience over everyone else’s.

2. Calculate virality as media value

TikTok Shop CPMs run around $30. A billion impressions = tens of millions in earned media value, plus direct sales. Jordan’s says it’s like Facebook ads in 2014, most brands still don’t get it.

3. Operations matter as much as content

If your fulfillment can’t handle 10K orders overnight, the algorithm isn’t your problem. Backend infrastructure is the silent killer of TikTok Shop success.

4. Live shopping is the next frontier

In China, live commerce is close to a trillion-dollar market.

North America is 3–5 years behind. That gap is the opportunity.

And behind all of this, when a viral spike hits, someone still has to handle the flood of support tickets. “Where’s my order?” “Wrong address.” “Need to cancel.” That volume scales with every creator you activate.

That’s the part we’re obsessed with at 14.ai.

Go watch the full episode on Spotify, and thanks again, Jordan!

Scaling creator partnerships

How do you scale creator partnerships without hiring a whole team to manage them?

Jeremy Yaoxin Ding, Co-founder and CEO of Euka AI has helped some of the fastest-growing TikTok Shops uplevel their systems.

Join us for a live session on how top shops automate creator discovery, streamline outreach, and turn affiliates into predictable revenue.

If you want to understand how high-performing teams hit consistent 5 and 6-figure GMV months, we’ll explore:

How AI automates creator discovery and outreach at scale
How winning shops manage thousands of affiliates with smart CRM and re-engagement
How to identify high-performing hooks, scripts, and formats using social intelligence
How AI-generated briefs and content speed up testing and iteration
How top teams structure ops for predictable, repeatable GMV

Perfect for founders, operators, and anyone trying to turn TikTok Shop into a predictable growth engine.

📆 Wednesday, December 3

🔗 RSVP here.

Thanksgiving support tickets

Thanksgiving always comes with a lot of complaints, confusion, and unsolvable family arguments. Basically: annual customer support day.

We can’t give this one away yet… but keep an eye on Michael’s LinkedIn next Friday. 😉

In case you actually worked this week

Paris to SF: Marie discusses making the jump to Silicon Valley.
Hackathon recap: Ugo shares what he built against all odds.
Escalation tier: when the bot fails and you hand out the money yourself.

Jobs that your grandma probably won’t understand

🛠️ Founding Engineer @ 14.ai (San Francisco, CA)
⌨️ Support Executive @ Landeed (Hyderabad, Mumbai, Chennai, Bengaluru, India)
🩺 Clinical Customer Success & Implementation Specialist @ Knowtex (San Francisco, CA)