How Art Changes Brand Strategy Inside Big Systems (with Onika Simon)

The Practice of Shaping Your Inner World | Juju Kim

"Everything you build eventually teaches you something about yourself. The question is, are you paying attention to learn it?" This episode is for anyone building anything in public, a product, a company, a content practice, and wondering whether the metrics are telling them the real story. Tom went into this interview thinking they were going to talk about running. They talked about so much more than that. Juju Kim is an ultra runner. She ran from LA to Las Vegas. Currently, she's training for 500 kilometers across the Atacama. Her practice started two years ago as a 20-minute deal she made with herself from her bed, after a breakup, in the middle of months of doom-scrolling. The deal was small on purpose: if you're going to rot, run for twenty minutes. Then a second deal: if you're going to doom-scroll, make one video. What she films now is the inside of that promise, still being kept. Tom and Juju talk about why she didn't want to be a running influencer, why she keeps the camera on for the part most people would edit out, what happened on day six of the LA-to-Vegas race when her sponsors had already pulled out and a team of strangers told her to go finish without them, and what her audience is actually watching when they watch her. Recorded at The Social Hub Berlin. Changing Shapes is hosted by Tom Horak, founder of All Shapes — a podcast about the relationship between idea, maker, and audience, and how to get it right.

Changing Shapes Trailer

The AI era didn't create a crisis of purpose. It made the absence of one harder to hide. When anyone can produce, the question of why you are the one making this becomes impossible to avoid. There's one thing no tool can replicate. Not because the tools aren't good enough yet, but because of what they are. AI has never lost anything. It has no experience to draw from, no moment that changed how it sees, nothing it built a conviction around because life made it unavoidable. The guests this season have all of that: moments that cost them something and changed how they see, and a way of working built directly around what those moments taught them. They drew that line before anyone called it a strategy. None of these conversations come with a framework or a playbook. What they come with is proof.

Why AI Can’t Replace Friendship (for People Who Build Products)

AI can show us what a good friend looks like, but it can’t teach us how to be one. In this episode, Clicqui [https://www.clicqui.de/] founder Cynthia Mensah‑Neglokpe and host Tom Horak [https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomas-horak] unpack why AI cannot replace friendship, what most brands get wrong about “community,” and the small mechanics of hosting that actually make people feel seen. “I really just love people… Every person I talk to gives me a little bit of a puzzle piece to a world I don’t know.”  Cynthia has built one of Europe’s most interesting women‑only IRL communities, with curated 12‑person dinners and gatherings in Berlin, Paris, Copenhagen, Munich and beyond, and together they map what her practice means for the digital products and communities founders choose to build next. Changing Shapes is a podcast for founders, builders and operators who want to build things that connect with the people who use them. Host Tom Horak, founder of All Shapes [https://www.linkedin.com/company/allshapesio], talks with people who have built that relationship between product and audience and gets them to walk through exactly how. Recorded at The Social Hub Berlin [https://www.thesocialhub.co/berlin/].

How Art Changes Brand Strategy Inside Big Systems (with Onika Simon)

“Strategist and artist Onika Simon explains how art can change brand strategy from the inside of big systems. After years at global agencies and B Corps, she shows founders and operators how artists see the ‘first touch’ with customers that businesses keep missing. If you care about design, strategy, and art in business, this conversation is for you. "Brands are like systems trying to find a way to talk to people. Art is how people talk to other people about systems." Onika Simon spent the first half of her career inside the big global strategy agencies (WPP, advertising on Madison Avenue), and the second half building B Corps and running interventions for the BMW Foundation. She tells Tom Horak [https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomas-horak] why most expert rooms are missing the most important person, what artists know about the first touch that specialists keep missing, and why most entrepreneurs could never be artists. For founders, builders and operators who want to build things that connect with the people who use them. Host Tom Horak, founder of All Shapes [https://www.linkedin.com/company/allshapesio], talks with people who have built that relationship between product and audience, and gets them to walk through exactly how. Follow Tom on LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomas-horak] and subscribe for new episodes. Recorded at The Social Hub Berlin [https://www.thesocialhub.co/berlin/].

How Investors Evaluate Founders (Before They Read Your Deck) | Angeley Mullins

“In this episode, investor and operator Angeley Mullins explains how investors evaluate founders before they even read your pitch deck. She shares what she listens for in the first meeting – resilience, grit, whether you’re a decent human – and why real traction means one thing: has anyone actually paid you?” "My first and primary motive is to make sure I'm backing good people. Then we go to the business piece."  Angeley Mullins has scaled seven companies, including one unicorn and one IPO, and she runs every first meeting in that order. She tells Tom Horak [https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomas-horak] what she listens for in a founder before the deck comes out, why ten thousand email subscribers is not traction until someone has paid, and the ten-second read that tells female founders and founders of color how a VC meeting is going to go. For founders, builders and operators who want to build things that connect with the people who use them. Host Tom Horak, founder of All Shapes [https://www.linkedin.com/company/allshapesio], talks with people who have built that relationship between product and audience, and gets them to walk through exactly how. Follow Tom on LinkedIn [https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomas-horak] and subscribe for new episodes. Recorded at⁠ The Social Hub Berlin⁠ [https://www.thesocialhub.co/berlin/].