💀 Skool Redundant, Empire Deals, Meta Sued

Hey there 👋,

Last Thursday beehiiv launched communities. Friday morning I shut my Skool down, one day before it rebilled (win). The new Redundant community lives at made.redundant.lol/community, the same place this newsletter lives. If you can read this, you're one click from inside. No signup form, no new password. There's a one-tap home screen app if you want it in your pocket, and you can ignore that entirely.

It's free: five open channels, plus one locked channel called Pro. A direct line to me, early access to everything I build before it ships (new workers, playbook drafts, product ideas at the workshop stage), and a vote on what gets built next. $29 a month or $290 a year.

If you bought a playbook, you're already behind that lock. The lifetime community access you were promised didn't die with Skool. It moved over with you, upgraded. Going forward, every playbook includes a year of Pro.

One more change. Redundant is now also your weekly read on AI, layoffs, and the deals they create: who's cutting, why, and what's for sale as the dust settles. If you're on payroll, this is the wave coming for your role. If you own a business or hold the stocks, this is your labor market repricing in real time, plus the week's marketplace listings valued so you can see where the money's moving.

Starting now.

Meta is being sued by 26 employees over the May cuts that removed 8,000 people. The claim: internal AI systems (keystroke tracking, email and browser activity scores, AI token-usage dashboards) fed performance rankings that disproportionately selected workers on medical or parental leave. Meta says humans made the final calls. The plaintiffs say the metrics made the outcome predictable.

Companies keep framing cuts as necessary to fund the AI future. The spreadsheet only needs enough tasks left in the bundle. For anyone on payroll: your role is already being scored the same way.

For operators and capital, the same wave reads differently. Public markets are rewarding headcount cuts. The private market for online businesses is one step ahead: leanness is already the asset. Businesses that run on a VA and a stack of automations are commanding full multiples, while anything still carrying payroll is where the discounts hide. Five fresh Empire Flippers listings get that exact read on the deal board below.

New this week on Empire Flippers. I didn't write these reads: my Claude workers did, from the listing data, and I hit send. It's the same Acquisition Operator you can install yourself, and these are its first glances. The full teardown is what it does before money moves.

🏙️ Franchise city-media network, $621,291 at 30x ($20,710/mo profit). Seven years old, 200 cities, 60%+ margins, fully remote, recurring B2B subscriptions. The cheapest multiple on the board attached to the oldest, most recurring business on it. The one question that decides everything: how much revenue is real recurring franchise subscriptions versus one-time franchise sales. If it's the former, this is the pick of the week. Link

💪 High-ticket recovery ecommerce, $2,877,244 at 38x ($75,717/mo profit). Two brands, 3PL fulfillment, minimal owner hours, serious profit. But founded August 2023: you're paying seven figures at 38x for a brand that has only ever existed inside the cold-plunge boom. Fair multiple for the earnings, full price for the trend risk. For a buyer with conviction the recovery niche outlives the hype. Link

📄 AI resume-builder SaaS, $341,187 at 34x ($10,035/mo profit). The layoff wave's picks-and-shovels play, and I still wouldn't buy it. Adds 100 customers a month yet holds only 300-350 active subscribers: that gap is churn, and it's the business model. Job seekers subscribe, get hired, cancel. Underneath that, ChatGPT writes resumes free. 34x is below SaaS market rate, and cheap for a reason. Link

🏔️ Outdoor experiences marketplace, $972,139 at 48x ($20,253/mo profit). Lovely asset, wrong price. 90 experiences from 40 operators is a curated agency, not a network effect, and half the traffic is paid social. 48x prices it like the marketplace it might become, not the booking site it is. Link

📦 Dropship home goods, $787,620 at 30x ($26,254/mo profit). Retail arbitrage on Faire and Shopify, one VA, real profit. Also no brand, no product ownership, no moat: the business is a spread between other people's products and other people's platforms. Spreads close. 30x is brand money for a non-brand. Link

The trackers through mid-July: AI is explicitly cited in around 22% of 2026's cuts so far, some 87,000+ roles, with tech well past 120,000 for the year and May the peak month for AI-reasoned cuts. Managers and software engineers are taking the worst of it at the scale players. Companies aren't trimming. They're reallocating around agentic systems.

🏭 Intel: 5,133+ US manufacturing layoffs announced July 15 across Oregon, California, Arizona, and Texas, part of a restructuring squeezed by the AI chip race and cost targets. Link

📱 Samsung Electronics America: ~840 US roles across display, mobile, consumer electronics, sales and marketing, triggered by the HQ move to Plano "to foster stronger collaboration in a growing technology and AI ecosystem." Majority offered relocation, the rest laid off. Link

🧑‍💻 Sprout Social: 260 positions cut July 15, around 20% of the company, while its Trellis agent pushes deeper into enterprise AI. The stock rose on the news. The market now prices headcount reduction as alpha. Link

Still using GoDaddy or Namecheap? There’s a better way with Porkbun!

Porkbun is the domain registrar trusted by creators, developers, entrepreneurs, and folks who want low prices without the nonsense.

Why people are choosing Porkbun:
• Most domains sold at cost
• Low, transparent registration and renewal pricing
• Free features like WHOIS privacy and SSL certificates
• Powerful web and email hosting options
• Real human support 24/7, 365 days a year
• Named the #1 domain registrar by Forbes Advisor and USA Today

For launching a business, building a personal brand, starting a side project, or creating your first website, Porkbun makes it easy.

Get $1 off your next domain registration with Porkbun now.

Get Your Domain Name Now

The pattern is sharpening: middle management is getting hit hardest. Meta's earlier filings showed managers around a third of the identified cuts, and nearly half of those were software engineering managers. Companies are collapsing spans of control, moving survivors into smaller AI pods, and spending the savings on infra and scarce AI talent.

Anything that looks like monthly reporting, outreach, basic diligence, content ops, or support is now a bundle of tasks an owned AI worker can execute. The deciding stays human. The doing doesn't have to.

The human cost is showing up raw on X. A 56-year-old comms exec, laid off after 15 years, now in a patient safety role at a 60% pay cut with the house on the market. And the week's bleakest post, from @1ssve the now-classic irony: a coworker spent six months training an AI tool at her manager's request, then got a termination notice citing "successful knowledge transfer”.

If the doing is getting automated either way, be the one who owns the automation. That's the whole newsletter in one line.

💼 If you're on payroll

Run the free Redundancy Audit. Map your role's tasks against what agents already handle and see your exposure before your employer does.

Ship one vibe-coded prototype, internally or on the side. It repositions you as the person who ships, not the one replaced.

Get good at orchestration, governance, and bias auditing. The Meta lawsuit just created a job description: someone has to stress-test these systems for fairness, and it won't be the model.

🏢 If you own the thing (or the stock)

Every layoff on the board is labor your competitors just made cheaper. The agencies and retainers you still pay are the same work the packs skill-ified. Install the worker, keep the margin.

Leaner businesses are more sellable businesses. If AI just compressed a niche's cost base, the buying window is open before multiples catch up.

Q2 earnings start this week. AI ROI versus headcount discipline is the story every call will tell, and the Sprout pattern (cut people, stock rises) is the one to watch for in your holdings.

Either seat: the community now has a channel for each of you. Day Job for the first group, Business and Investing for the second.

Cheers!

Richard

P.S. Just hand built two watches. The Redundant watch is one step closer, and when it finally exists, Pro sees it first.

The obvious bit: nothing in this email is financial, investment, or legal advice. The deal reads are produced by AI workers from public listing data, unverified, and I hold no position in anything listed. Valuations are opinions, multiples move, and no verdict here replaces your own due diligence. If you're buying anything, verify the numbers yourself before money moves.