Our Partners

From 'Customer Obsession' to 'Customer Extraction'

When Amazon came to us, they were leaving money on the table by actually helping customers find products. We helped them realize that the real product was the customer themselves. Now sellers pay 45-51 cents of every dollar just for the privilege of being buried under ads and Amazon's own knockoff products.

Connecting People to Advertisements

Facebook was wasting user attention on content from friends and family. We helped them pivot to a model where you see what advertisers pay for, while publishers who built their audience on the platform watch their reach crater to 2% unless they pay up. In April 2026 the extraction machinery finally turned inward: the Model Capability Initiative began recording employees' own keystrokes, screens, and conversations as AI training data — no opt-out, obviously, because the methodology works.

Don't Be Evil (Terms and Conditions Apply)

Google's search was too good. Users found what they needed in one click and left. We helped them understand that the real search result is the ads you scroll past looking for the actual answer.

Free Speech* (*$8/month)

Twitter had built a platform people actually used for free. We showed the new owner how to extract maximum value by charging for basic features, amplifying paid users regardless of quality, and calling it 'free speech.'

Your Attention is Our Product

TikTok was accidentally making creators successful. We helped them understand that creator success should be manually allocated and revoked at will, keeping everyone desperate and dependent.

Netflix and Bill

Netflix was losing money by letting families share accounts like normal humans. We helped them realize that every household is a separate revenue extraction unit, and that ads can be inserted even into paid tiers. Five years on, the ad-supported tier the company once apologized for is now the default new-subscriber path; advertising is on track to clear $3 billion in 2026; and the customer's relationship with the platform has been quietly rewritten from a content subscription into an ad surface they pay to keep small.

Your Ride, Our Price

Uber was subsidizing rides to destroy the taxi industry. Once that was done, we helped them understand it was time to extract from both sides: charge riders more, pay drivers less, and blame the algorithm.

Creativity Requires a Subscription

Adobe let people buy software once and own it forever. We helped them transition to a model where creatives pay forever and can never leave because all their files are trapped in proprietary formats.

The Front Page of Monetization

Reddit was powered by free labor from millions of moderators and users who created all the content. We helped them realize this community-generated value could be extracted by killing third-party apps and selling the data to AI companies.

Per Install, We Profit

Unity had a sustainable business model charging developers upfront. We helped them pivot to a per-install fee that would charge developers for every download, including reinstalls, pirated copies, and charity bundles.

Subscribe to Your Own Car

Tesla was selling cars with all the hardware included. We helped them realize that hardware is just a platform for software subscriptions. Why sell heated seats once when you can rent them monthly forever?

Cancellation is Not an Option

SiriusXM noticed customers wanted to cancel. We helped them design a cancellation process so frustrating that many just give up and keep paying. For those who escape, we beam ads directly to their car's infotainment system anyway.

Performance. Luxury. Subscriptions.

Mercedes was selling cars that performed at their full capability. We helped them realize that performance is a software toggle, and toggling it on should cost $1,200 per year. You already bought the hardware? That's your problem.

The Only Game in Town (By Design)

Ticketmaster came to us with a simple problem: they only controlled 70% of the live event market. We helped them understand that monopoly power isn't just about market share—it's about making the extraction so normalized that customers blame artists instead of the platform.

We Don't Buy Companies. We Monetize Them.

Broadcom doesn't buy software companies to grow them. Broadcom buys software companies to stop growing them. The playbook refined at CA Technologies (2018) and Symantec Enterprise (2019) — cut engineering, concentrate on the 600 largest accounts, walk price up until the smaller customers leave, then walk it up again on the ones who can't — reached its mature form with the $61B VMware acquisition in November 2023. When 'Broadcom is buying your vendor' is the phrase your CIO fears most, that's product-market fit.

Your Garage, Our Rules

Chamberlain sold millions of 'smart' garage door openers. Then they realized: why let customers control their own garage doors for free when you can charge them? They blocked all third-party integrations and told Home Assistant to pay up or get out.

Stream Now, Artists Get Paid Never

Spotify disrupted the music industry by making music nearly free for consumers. We helped them realize the next step: make it nearly free for artists too, while charging labels for 'Discovery Mode' placement. The platform extracts from both sides now.

Free* (*Not Free)

TurboTax ran ads screaming 'FREE! FREE! FREE!' for years. Turns out 'free' meant 'free for maybe 33% of you, and we'll dark-pattern the rest into paid tiers.' The FTC was not amused.

Bricking Speakers, Building Character

Sonos had perfectly working speakers and a functional app. Then they decided to 'improve' it. The May 2024 app redesign became a masterclass in how to destroy $500M in market value while your CEO insists everything is fine.

Ink Costs More Than Champagne

HP realized they were leaving money on the table by letting customers use affordable third-party ink. Solution: firmware updates that brick your printer if you dare use non-HP cartridges. Then: make you subscribe to your own printer.

Cutting Costs, Cutting Corners

Boeing pioneered a revolutionary approach: what if we extracted value not just from customers, but from the manufacturing process itself? Spin off your own factories to private equity, buy the parts back at a markup, and let the suppliers absorb the liability when the planes stop staying in one piece. Twenty years later Boeing quietly reabsorbed Spirit AeroSystems for $4.7B — the rarest corporate achievement: admitting the enshittification went too far while still running -8% operating margins.

Every Fee Welcome (Especially the Hidden Ones)

DoorDash promised to empower local restaurants and give drivers flexibility. What they built is a three-sided extraction engine: restaurants pay hidden commissions, drivers' tips get routed into base pay they were already promised, and customers pay menu markups they can't see. The food is just the delivery vehicle for the fees.

The Judgement-Free Zone (Cancellation Requests Judged Separately)

Planet Fitness spent 26 years training Americans that $10 per month was a covenant. When that covenant became load-bearing marketing, we helped them unlock it — a 50% classic-tier hike in 2024, a Black Card bump scheduled for post-2026 peak season, and a cancellation flow that still requires a physical letter mailed to your home club. The Judgement-Free Zone doesn't judge your body. It judges your ability to leave.

A Safe Space to Share (With Meta, Snap, Pinterest, and Criteo)

BetterHelp promised a safe space to share. We helped them clarify the sharing scope. Between 2017 and 2020 they piped email addresses, IP addresses, and intake-questionnaire answers from 7 million people in mental health crisis to Meta, Snap, Pinterest, and Criteo for ad targeting — then used those same people's Facebook friends as the next acquisition cohort. The therapy was the lead-gen funnel; the patient was the lead.

Can't Break In (Can't Break Out)

Oracle is EnshitifAi's founding client and the reason this practice exists. In 1977, Larry Ellison and team proved that enterprise software is not a product you deliver but a perimeter you enforce — licensed by the core, audited by the clause, renewed under duress. Every other partner on this site is running a Japanese bootleg of moves Oracle was making before they had incorporation papers. When we say we have 49 years of extraction experience, we mean: Oracle has been our client for 49 years.

Empowering Every Person and Organization on the Planet to Subscribe More

Microsoft is the industry's most durable extraction engine because it learned to enshittify before the rest of the market had a word for it — the 1998 Halloween Documents formalized 'embrace, extend, extinguish'; Ballmer got on record calling Linux 'a cancer' in June 2001; the Bush DOJ settled the antitrust case that November without a breakup. Everything from Office 365 (2011) to the 2024 Copilot force-bundle to the February 2026 Enterprise Agreement tier collapse is refinement on fundamentals Microsoft established before broadband reached 30% of US households. The empowerment mission was never a lie — Microsoft empowers every person on the planet to subscribe more.

We Buy Apps You Love. We Fire the People Who Made Them.

Bending Spoons is private equity with a developer blog. The playbook is simple and repeatable: acquire a beloved software brand, fire most of the staff within weeks of close, migrate the remaining product into Bending Spoons' shared backend, raise prices on the captive user base, and pocket the margin. The rate of acquisition is now accelerating faster than the brand memorials can keep up.

Finding the Needle in the Haystack (The Haystack Is You)

Palantir is Peter Thiel's thesis rendered as a software company. Co-founded in 2003 with Alex Karp on the premise that 'competition is for losers' and — in Thiel's own 2009 Cato Unbound essay — that he 'no longer believe[s] that freedom and democracy are compatible,' Palantir has spent two decades building the infrastructure for the kind of society its founders have been arguing for in public since. On April 19, 2026, they stopped arguing for it in the sidebar and printed it on the letterhead. The product is not AI. The product is not analytics. The product is the conversion of human behavior into government-legible data under contracts that are not subject to FOIA, consent, or meaningful democratic oversight. The haystack is you.

Save Money. Live Better. Install the App.

Walmart spent fifty years owning the cost floor of American retail. We helped them understand that the cost floor is not the product — it is the bait. The product is a captive subscriber base trained to surrender first-party data in exchange for services Walmart used to offer for free. The physical price-check pedestal — which any grandmother could walk up to and use anonymously — was removed from most US stores between 2023 and 2025. The replacement is a ~250MB app download, permissions grants for camera and location, and a funnel toward a $98/year Walmart+ membership that you now need for the kind of convenience that used to come with owning a car and a shopping list.

Food With Integrity (Install the App to View Full Menu)

Chipotle looked at their kitchen, their line, and their loyalty program and asked: what if the customer who walks through the door is actually the obstacle? We helped them answer it. The Digital Makeline moved online orders to the back of house where the walk-in customer cannot see them. The Chipotlane rerouted drive-thru traffic to mobile-order-only pickup. And the Quesadilla — later joined by the entire Lifestyle Bowl category — became the first menu item that the customer at the counter physically cannot order, and the employee at the counter physically cannot sell, without the customer first installing an app on a personal device.

To Inspire and Nurture the Human Spirit — One App Install at a Time.

Starbucks was never a coffee company. Starbucks was a real-estate company selling third-places, then a loyalty-program company running a payments network, and for the last decade a captive-audience mobile-ordering engine that happens to also sell coffee. Mobile Order & Pay launched in September 2015. By December 2024, 31% of US transactions came through the app. Rewards members — now 60% of US sales — never meet a barista; they walk past one. The third place was enshittified by its own customers, one skipped conversation at a time. When Brian Niccol left Chipotle to run Starbucks in September 2024 for a $100M pay package, he brought the same playbook; the $1B restructuring and roughly 2,000 corporate layoffs since are how that playbook greets its new host.

What Can Brown Do For You? (See Surcharge Schedule)

UPS spent a hundred years promising to move the world forward by delivering what matters. We helped them clarify which deliveries matter. Under the leadership of Carol Tomé, who became CEO in June 2020 and introduced the 'Better, Not Bigger' operating thesis, UPS has spent five years systematically stripping the shipping options it used to include and reselling them at a premium: guaranteed delivery windows became paid subscriptions, route modifications became Premium-tier features, and 'peak surcharges' now apply during what the calendar used to call 'the holidays.' You are not paying both the seller and the carrier for fast shipping. You are paying once, to the seller. The seller is paying twice, to UPS. The extra charge just rides in the checkout total you see.

Cannabis Commerce Made Simple (For Us)

Dutchie is what happened when cannabis legalization met software consolidation. Founded in 2017, Dutchie acquired its two principal POS competitors (Greenbits and LeafLogix) in 2021 and peaked the same year at a $3.75 billion valuation — then proceeded to tie its free point-of-sale software to its proprietary Dutchie Pay payment rails, converting 6,500+ dispensaries from customers into distribution surfaces. The platform now processes $22 billion in annual cannabis transactions and, on multiple occasions, has failed on April 20th — the single busiest sales day of the cannabis retail calendar — which is the platform's most honest disclosure.

The World Is The Gameboard. The Dataset Is The Product.

Niantic spent nine years operating what 20 million weekly active Pokémon GO players believed was a fitness-adjacent AR gaming company. What was actually being built — frame by frame, every time a player scanned a PokéStop or submitted to Wayfarer — was the Large Geospatial Model, a proprietary database of over 30 billion posed images of the physical world, assembled without disclosure, without compensation, and without an in-product consent flow that ever used the words "training data" or "foundation model." In March 2025, Niantic sold the games division to Scopely (Savvy Games Group, owned by Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund) for $3.5 billion and rebranded the remaining geospatial AI business as Niantic Spatial Inc. — confirming, post-hoc, what the architecture had always been: a games-shaped front-end on a planetary 3D dataset acquisition platform.

Inflation, My Friend, Is a Premium Feature.

For two decades Jagex ran RuneScape as the proof that a grind could be a lifestyle. In February 2024, private-equity firms CVC Capital Partners and Haveli Investments acquired the studio, and within seven months the membership price began climbing on a schedule that no longer pretends to track anything but the cap table. The genius of the model is that the players already spent ten thousand hours building characters they cannot take anywhere else — so the question was never whether they would pay the new price, only how many times per year they could be asked.

Your Miles Are a Currency. We Quietly Set the Exchange Rate.

American Airlines spent decades teaching travelers that loyalty compounds — that miles were a currency you earned and owned. We helped them reframe loyalty as a variable the airline controls: published award charts retired in favor of opaque dynamic pricing, miles switched off for the cheapest fares, and for fourteen months in 2024 the right to earn miles at all gated to booking through American's own channels. The seat is the same aluminum tube it always was; everything bolted to it — legroom, a checked bag, sitting next to your child — is now a separate line item.

Build Once, Run Anywhere — Pull Within Your Rate Limit.

Docker turned 'it works on my machine' into the default way the world ships software, then spent a decade learning that indispensability is a billing strategy. We helped them meter the commons: pull rate limits on the public registry that quietly break CI pipelines, a 2021 paywall on Docker Desktop for any company large enough to notice, and a recurring habit of announcing the deletion of free open-source accounts, absorbing the outrage, and walking it back just far enough. The image is still portable. The exit is the part that costs.

Ohana Means Family. Family Means Annual Auto-Renewal.

Salesforce sold a generation of companies on 'Ohana' — the idea that your CRM vendor is family. We helped them remember that family, in the enterprise-software sense, means a seven-figure annual contract that auto-renews, a price that only moves one direction, and switching costs measured in years. After a 2023 layoff of roughly 8,000 people during record revenue — applauded by the activist investors circling the stock — Salesforce raised list prices for the first time in seven years, then did it again in 2025 to fund the AI agents now replacing the support staff it just cut.

Eliminate Crime. Retain Everything.

Flock Safety's mission is to eliminate crime. We helped them see the deeper asset: a camera the taxpayer funds at roughly $2,500 a year that photographs every passing car and pours the plates into a nationwide pool searchable by thousands of agencies. The neighborhood believes it bought a security product. It actually enrolled itself — every driver, every trip, no opt-out — as inventory in a $7.5 billion network that any individual city can leave, but that no individual driver can.