#147 - Do These Things Right Now To Stop Falling Behind In The AI Race (Oliver Merrick)
Sweat CapitalShow Notes
In this episode of Sweat Capital, we sit down with Oliver Merrick, the 22-year old founder of Mez Corp, to unpack what it actually takes to build a business at the coalface of AI.
Ollie's path is anything but conventional. The son of winemakers, he made his first $5 at 14 doing Instagram shoutouts from boarding school, cycled through drop shipping, print on demand and theme pages, and eventually quit a startup job he loved to bet on himself.
Eight months after starting his current Instagram account, he booked a one-way ticket to France to join a hacker house with a Dutch founder he'd never met, and has since worked out of the UK, Dubai, DC, New York and Sydney.
We unpack his framework for making businesses "dangerous with AI", why he believes the Elon Musk first-principles playbook (stop, audit, delete, simplify, then automate) matters more than chasing shiny agents, what it's like inside a global hacker house alongside founders running 400K-follower accounts and 8-figure consumer apps, and why distribution, curiosity and ruthless honesty about what you actually want are the most compounding skills of our generation.
A genuinely inspiring conversation for anyone trying to figure out how to build, post and live with intent in the AI era.
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This episode was recorded on 13 May 2026.
We'll see you in the next one,
Keep playing the long game.
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