Work Manifesto About Newsletter
Creative Studio / London

Cultural
Capital
Labs

34+ live products built by one strategy director with AI. No engineering team. No funding. Just taste, strategy, and an obsessive curiosity about culture.

1,200+
Brands tracked
259
Stations mapped
200+
Blog posts published
25+
Live products
6
Automated pipelines
0
Lines of code
25+Live Products
1,200+Brands Tracked
84Restaurants Reviewed
259Stations Mapped
295Books Catalogued
160+Activities Curated
10Automated Pipelines
0Lines of Code
25+Live Products
1,200+Brands Tracked
84Restaurants Reviewed
259Stations Mapped
295Books Catalogued
160+Activities Curated
10Automated Pipelines
0Lines of Code
How We Build

Observe. Question. Build. Ship.

01
Observe
Scan culture. Read everything. Find the pattern nobody else is seeing.
02
Question
What if this existed? Why doesn't it? What would someone with taste build here?
03
Build
Strategy meets AI tools. One person. No committee. Speed over perfection.
04
Ship
Live by Friday. Iterate forever. The work is the proof. Ship it and learn.

Flagship Work

15 headline projects
01
Flagship

The Pattern

Daily AI-powered culture intelligence. 50+ RSS feeds synthesised with Claude AI, published every morning with AI-generated audio briefings.

thepattern.media → Case Study
02
Flagship

Modern Retro

What if modern brands existed in the 1970s? 96 AI-generated vintage retail store images. Print store and brand scoring system.

modernretro.art → Case Study
03
Flagship

The Relevance Index

1,200+ brands scored on cultural relevance across five dimensions. Automated weekly scoring with stock market data enrichment.

therelevanceindex.com → Case Study
04
Publishing

What Caught My Eye

Weekly newsletter on culture, commerce, and taste. The links, patterns and provocations worth paying attention to. 200+ posts and counting.

mikelitman.me/newsletter →
05
Flagship

CultureTerminal

Culture signal aggregator. 100+ sources scored daily across fashion, brands, design, music, art, and tech.

cultureterminal.com →
06
Flagship

Oishii London

84 best Japanese restaurants in London. Curated, reviewed, and mapped by neighbourhood.

oishii.london → Case Study
07
Flagship

First Out

The fastest way off the tube. 259 stations, all 11 lines. Platform positioning for every exit.

firstout.app → Case Study
08
Flagship

The Visible Shelf

Visual book library. 295 books photographed, catalogued, and curated by vibe.

thevisibleshelf.com → Case Study
09
Voice Product

With Moshi

AI voice agent that answers the phone for restaurants, takes bookings, and sends SMS confirmations. UK's first for independent restaurants.

withmoshi.com →
10
Data Product

The Queue Index

Every Saturday at 1pm, an AI calls London's top 50 restaurants and asks: how long's the wait? The walk-in data nobody else collects.

thequeueindex.com →
11
Voice + Data

Buggy Smart

An AI called 700+ London venues to find out which ones your pushchair can actually get into. 8,389-venue dataset. Free interactive map.

buggysmart.app →
12
Intelligence

Trove

Cultural intelligence for senior strategists. Save what catches your eye and your taste profile emerges. Every link is a signal. Built for the people whose job is to know what matters next.

yourtrove.app →
13
Voice Product

First Order London

An AI called Alice rings London restaurants and asks: what should a first-timer order? Straight from the kitchen, not from a review. ~200 calls made.

first-order-london.netlify.app →
14
AI Pipeline

The System

Brief to deliverable in 105 seconds. One form. Four Claude Opus generators running in parallel. Landing page, strategy deck, CV, LinkedIn optimisation. Outputs auto-deploy live.

mikelitman.me/thesystem →
15
Newsletter

EVERYWEAR

Daily wearable tech intelligence. 24 sources aggregated, scored, and published automatically every morning. The signal feed for the wearables industry.

everywear.media →

Voice & AI Products

5 products
With Moshi
AI voice agent that answers the phone for restaurants. Takes bookings, sends SMS confirmations.
The Queue Index
AI calls London's top 50 restaurants every Saturday to track walk-in wait times.
Buggy Smart
AI called 571+ London venues to map pushchair accessibility. 8,389-venue dataset. Free interactive map.
First Order London
Voice agent calls restaurants to ask: what should a first-timer order? Straight from the kitchen.
The System
Brief to deliverable in 105 seconds. Four Claude Opus generators in parallel. Outputs auto-deploy live.

Culture & Intelligence

8 products
CultureTerminal
Culture signal aggregator. 100+ sources scored daily across fashion, brands, design, music, art, and tech.
The Pattern
Daily AI culture intelligence. Automated briefings with AI-generated audio.
The Relevance Index
1,200+ brands scored on cultural relevance. Five dimensions. Weekly automated updates.
Sociology of Capitalism
Brand tension index. 74 brands scored on cultural relevance vs business performance.
Signals & Shifts
Culture tracking dashboard. Music, design, food, fashion, tech. Signals and shifts.
Taste OS
Brand taste scoring. 5 dimensions, 36 brands, interactive radar charts.
Predictions
Weekly bold cultural predictions: which 5 brands will rise or fall over the next 4 weeks. Backed by Relevance Index data, scored 4 weeks later.
Taste Arbitrage
Identifies investment opportunities by measuring the gap between cultural relevance and stock market performance. Culture moves faster than markets.

London Guides

5 products
Oishii London
84 best Japanese restaurants in London. Curated, reviewed, mapped.
London Pub Guide
114 pubs. Roast ratings, crawl routes, and neighbourhood picks.
First Out
The fastest way off the tube. 259 stations, all 11 lines. Platform positioning for every exit.
Buggy Smart
AI called 571+ London venues to map pushchair accessibility. 8,389-venue dataset. Free interactive map.
Little London
160+ verified activities for families in London. Weekend sorted.

Creative & Visual

3 products
Modern Retro
96 AI-generated vintage retail store images. Print store.
The Visible Shelf
295 books photographed, catalogued, and curated by vibe.
EVERYWEAR
Wearable tech news aggregator. 24 sources. Automated daily pipeline.

Tools

4 products
Trove
Personal taste engine. Save links and your taste profile emerges. Every link is a signal.
Brand Audit
Interactive tool that scores any brand's cultural relevance across five dimensions: Attention, Conversation, Creation, Desire, and Zeitgeist.
Taste Genome
Score 10 iconic brands across five cultural dimensions and compare your taste profile against Mike's.
Slack Dashboard
Live analysis of a decade-long personal Slack workspace: 459 channels, 3,312 messages, activity heatmaps. Culture + AI = 63% of everything.

Writing, Ideas & Talks

5 projects
Memos
6 short talks on taste, AI, culture intelligence, and creative strategy. Deck format. Built to think out loud in public.
Taste Machines
15 essays on how AI democratises creative production and makes taste the ultimate competitive advantage.
You Are What You Save
Essay and quiz: your saved links form a more honest self-portrait than anything you post publicly. Features a taste quiz.
Media Tsundoku
Essay on digital hoarding psychology with an interactive tsundoku score calculator and 7-day declutter challenge.
The New Flex
Essay on how status has shifted from material acquisition to demonstrating skill, taste, and creative output.

Personal & Fun

3 products
Forest Flash Cards
Top Trumps-style card game. 30 Nottingham Forest players. Card flip animations.
Forest Quiz
The ultimate Nottingham Forest history quiz. 300+ questions, 9 modes.
Nihongo
Japanese learning app. 4 levels, 5 study modes, spaced repetition system.
The Pipeline

Zero code. Zero employees. Fully automated.

Every project was built with Claude Code and deployed through automated pipelines. One person with taste and the right tools.

🤖
Build
Claude Code
Every line of HTML, CSS, JS, and Python generated through conversation with AI.
Automate
GitHub Actions
10 automated pipelines run daily, fetching data, scoring brands, and generating content.
🚀
Deploy
Netlify
Every site on its own domain. CDN-served, SSL-secured, zero maintenance.
📡
Monitor
Plausible + ntfy
Privacy-first analytics on every site. Push notifications for pipeline runs.
$ idea → claude code → build → git push → github actions → netlify deploy → live

Recent Activity

The studio is alive. These products update automatically.

10 automated pipelines
The Pattern
New briefing daily at 7am UTC
Daily
CultureTerminal
Updated daily at 6am UTC
Daily
EVERYWEAR
Updated daily at 6:30am UTC
Daily
Sociology of Capitalism
Updated twice daily at 8am + 8pm UTC
2x Daily
The Relevance Index
Updated every Wednesday at 3am UTC
Weekly
Little London
Updated daily at 7am UTC
Daily
The Queue Index
AI calls 50 restaurants every Saturday at 1pm
Weekly
With Moshi
Voice agent live 24/7, answering restaurant calls
Always on
Buggy Smart
AI calls 175 venues at 10:33am & 2:03pm BST daily
2x Daily
First Order London
AI calls restaurants on demand for dish recommendations
On demand
Manifesto

The tools changed. The rules didn't. When everyone has access to the same technology, the only thing left that matters is what you choose to build, and the taste to know why it matters.

We believe in taste over data, conviction over consensus. Every project begins with a cultural observation: something hiding in plain sight that nobody is paying attention to. A scoring system for brand relevance. A culture intelligence feed. A visual experiment that asks what if modern brands existed fifty years ago?

What would it look like if someone who actually cared built this?

Cultural Capital Labs is one person with AI tools, shipping real products at the speed that used to require a team of twenty. This is the proof of concept for a new creative model: range + taste + technology. No investors. No team. No excuses. Just work that speaks for itself.

Mike Litman

Builder / London

15+ years building and shipping new-to-market propositions for Google, Nike, Adidas, Netflix, Meta, Gucci, and more. Across MediaMonks, R/GA, Contagious, Dare, and Poke. Always at the intersection of product strategy and emerging technology.

At MediaMonks, founded and scaled a global emerging technology capability from zero to $3.2m+ in revenue. Built it 0-to-1: positioning, service models, team design, go-to-market. Led strategic partnerships with Stability AI and Runway.

In late 2025, started building AI-driven products independently. Within weeks, shipping actual live products: automated data pipelines, hybrid scoring systems, multimodal AI workflows spanning generative image, voice, and language models. 34+ products live. Zero lines of code written.

The thread connecting all of it: 0-to-1 product instinct. Identifying the opportunity. Developing the concept. Owning the execution through to market.

What Caught My Eye

Culture, commerce, and taste. The links, patterns and provocations worth paying attention to. 200+ posts and counting.