ETN's Cheeky Pint Benchmark goes viral, drawing replies from Musk and Zuckerberg

On 13 October 2026, European Technology NetworkDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → (ETN), the London daily live tech show hosted by Luke KnightDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → and Ronan ChambersDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →, published "The Cheeky Pint Benchmark" on X: a chart of how many pints of Guinness each guest finished on Cheeky Pint, the pub-style interview podcast hosted by Stripe co-founder John CollisonDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom →. An ETN intern watched every episode and scored 38 guests to the nearest sixth of a pint. The post drew more than 2.8 million views, 5,600 likes and close to 400 replies within a day. Key points from the chart and the replies:

• The leaderboard: Elon Musk (xAI) leads with three full pints, ahead of Garrett Langley of Flock Safety (two) and Dan Sundheim of D1 Capital and Des Traynor of Intercom (one and five-sixths each). Henri Stern (Privy), Zach Abrams (Bridge), Bret Taylor (Sierra), Charlie Songhurst, Satya Nadella (Microsoft) and Mark ZuckerbergDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → (Meta) also finished more than one.
• The one-pint club and the sippers: eleven guests, including Dario Amodei (Anthropic), Tobi LütkeDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → (Shopify), Evan Spiegel (Snap), Tony Xu (DoorDash) and Vlad Tenev (Robinhood), drank exactly one. At the bottom, Marc Andreessen (a16z) and Greg Brockman (OpenAI) managed a third, and Brian Armstrong (Coinbase), Pieter Levels and Sundar Pichai (Google) a sixth. Kalshi's Luana Lopes Lara is footnoted for also drinking a bottle of Brahma.
• The guests responded: Musk replied with a laughing emoji (3,800 likes). Zuckerberg, who sits tenth, wrote "I'm confident we can reach the frontier here too" (3,700 likes), a nod to Meta's AI ambitions. Lütke said the intern had missed his second pint, which would have spared his German heritage a mid-table finish. Dave Ricks of Eli Lilly called his five-sixths a poor showing for "the only industry here that actually does fermentation" and asked the Collisons to have him back; Aaron LevieDealroom has a profile for this one. Try Dealroom → (Box) replied that Lilly also sells GLP-1 drugs, "so kind of cuts both ways". Tenev complimented the "tap table" chart design.
• What the crowd said: most replies were jokes, with Irish and German commenters dismissing the field as lightweights, sympathy for Pichai's sixth, and quips that Andreessen did not "accelerate" his pint. A recurring critique was methodology: several asked for results adjusted for body weight or episode length, and one user posted a re-weighted chart. Others questioned whether a chart celebrating alcohol sends the right signal, and predicted future guests will now drink performatively.

Launched as a daily show in July 2026, ETN covers European AI, startups and venture capital. The benchmark is a light, data-driven take on US tech culture, and it drew direct replies from Musk, Zuckerberg, Lütke, Ricks and Tenev, taking the London show well beyond its core European audience.

Read more: ETN on X