Building a “Vertical Integrator” is an exceptionally challenging endeavor, as illustrated by the case of Katerra, which failed despite substantial investment and a promising strategy. The difficulties include the need to integrate both hardware and software, compete against strong incumbents, determine the right level of integration, and manage high costs and complex logistics. While the path is fraught with obstacles, successful Vertical Integrators can achieve significant advantages and create products that are difficult to replicate, as seen in examples like Apple and SpaceX.
Only a tiny fraction of startups, around 0.6%, successfully secure funding beyond Series D or achieve an exit through acquisition or IPO. Startups face increasing challenges in raising subsequent funding rounds as they progress from seed to later stages, with key factors like the founding team, revenue growth, gross margins, and market conditions heavily influencing their chances of success. While the number of new tech startups founded each year is impressive, the vast majority either stagnate or fail to navigate the complex journey from early-stage funding to a successful exit.
BizOps is a flexible role that helps high-growth tech companies make faster, more informed decisions by bridging the gap between organizational structure and business objectives. As companies grow, BizOps teams may specialize into areas like go-to-market or product, but their core responsibility remains connecting and aligning different parts of the organization. Measuring the success of BizOps can be challenging, but it should be based on how well their cross-functional partners perform on key business metrics and how effectively the BizOps team is leveraged across the organization.
Two years ago, this author had the unique experience of walking the Cannes Film Festival's red carpet as a VIP guest, thanks to winning a Mastercard promotion with a creative video submission. Despite the carpet's surprisingly low quality, the event highlighted a valuable marketing lesson: the significance lies not in the product itself but in the people who use it, demonstrating the importance of showcasing and celebrating customers to enhance brand value.
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In the late 19th century, many doctors dismissed germ theory, leading to inadequate medical practices that contributed to President James Garfield's death from infection after an assassination attempt. This historical example contrasts with the field of finance, where fundamental issues like debt and greed have persisted over time, highlighting how knowledge in some areas, like medicine, is cumulative and universally accepted, while in others, like finance, it is cyclical and influenced by human behavior. This cyclical nature of financial knowledge implies that society must accept a degree of volatility and repeated mistakes, as these issues are not easily resolved by scientific truths.
The way venture capital firms are classified by limited partners (LPs) can be overly broad and overlook significant differences between firms. A new category, "developing managers," is proposed to describe firms that have demonstrated early success and are on track to become established, but are not yet at that level. By asking the right questions and considering a firm's strategy, growth, and performance, LPs can better understand a firm's potential and make more informed investment decisions.
Amazon's growth strategy involves either addressing customer needs, such as creating the Kindle for ebooks, or leveraging existing skills to reach new customers.
Product-led growth (PLG) is often unsuitable for most B2B businesses as it can lead to wasted resources and false validation without generating substantial revenue.
Large language models are excellent at summarizing and analyzing vast amounts of information, but they can struggle to provide unique or rare insights, instead often providing average or typical responses.
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Payment gateway provider SlimCD has disclosed a breach affecting 1.7M individuals. SlimCD reported that in June it detected that a threat actor had breached its network nearly a year previously in August 2023 and took steps to block the access. Stolen information included full names, physical addresses, credit card numbers, and expiration dates, but not CVV numbers.
WhatsApp introduced “View Once” pictures as a way to prevent other users from sharing private pictures. Security researchers have found ways to bypass these protections on WhatsApp web. WhatsApp has stated that it is aware of the issue and is rolling out a fix.
McAfee detected a new Android malware campaign that uses OCR to steal crypto recovery phrases. The malware also contains the capability to spread via SMS and capture OTPs sent via SMS. McAfee was able to trace back the malware and managed to access the admin panel of the malware operators.
Inspired by the I-Soon leaks, these authors decided to build an AI espionage agent called Red Reaper. Red Reaper consists of 3 data science layers and a basic Flask UI. The first layer seeks to identify entities that deal with LAW in the sample email dataset and assign a confidence score to each one. The next layer builds a Neo4j graph and performs some analysis on the graph to identify key communication clusters and individuals. Generative AI is introduced in the last layer to refine the analysis and identify information that could be relevant for espionage, extortion, blackmail, or other criminal activity.
This post discusses how to use AddressSanitizer(ASan) to detect memory errors in C++ code. Adding ASan annotations to libc++ containers like std::string and std::deque aids in bug detection. The post walks through various examples and code snippets that use ASan to aid in finding memory bugs in C++ code.
This blog post explains how to gradually introduce Rust into existing firmware codebases for improved security. Drop-in Rust replacements for C code can enhance security with minimal effort. By following an incremental approach and addressing specific challenges, you can seamlessly integrate Rust into your firmware development process.
Orca has released a new tool for testing managed Kubernetes environments. The Kubernetes Testing Environment uses Terraform to deploy a configurable staging environment and runs a configurable set of scans against it. It provides dashboards to visualize the scan results.
Frida 16.5.0 contains new features like hardware breakpoints and watchpoints to help locate code accessing specific memory data more easily. The release also brings support for Windows on ARM and other improvements, making Frida even more versatile for developers. This article presents a demo using these new APIs in a game like DOOM, showing how to find and monitor memory locations dynamically.
hookchain aims to provide a new perspective on EDR Evasion. Through a precise combination of IAT Hooking techniques, dynamic SSN resolution, and indirect system calls, hookchain redirects the execution flow of Windows subsystems in a way that remains invisible to the vigilant eyes of EDRs that only act on Ntdll.dll without requiring changes to the source code of the applications and malware involved.
The AppSec product market is undergoing rapid change as new tooling such as CSPMs and API security tools shift the way teams interact with traditional tools like WAFs and DASTs. ASPMs are arriving to bridge the UI/UX and contextual gaps that exist in AppSec tools across the SDLC but struggle with requiring more integration points than CSPMs. GenAI is emerging as a useful tool that aids in triaging alerts, but it is still lacking in maturity.
2024.09.11·links.tldrnewsletter.com·17 min read·TLDR InfoSec Microsoft has released updates to fix 79 security vulnerabilities in Windows, including an unpatched bug affecting some Windows 10 PCs. One critical bug, CVE-2024-43491, caused the rollback of fixes for certain Windows 10 systems. Two zero-day flaws affecting Microsoft Publisher and Office, CVE-2024-38226 and CVE-2024-38217, were disclosed.
The Crimson Palace cyber threat operation has resumed with new tools and tactics to target governments and organizations in South East Asia. This blog post presents various diagrams and timelines showing the details of Crimson Palace's operations. It also discusses the evolution of the malware, as well as efforts to evade detection.
Australia's Prime Minister wants to introduce age restrictions for social media to protect children from harmful content.
Flipper Zero releases Firmware 1.0 after three years of development, introducing enhanced features like dynamic app loading and improved NFC performance.
Canaries are now essential for mature security programs.
Over 40 state attorneys general urged Congress to place labels on social media platforms warning of their potential risks to children, rallying substantial bipartisan support behind a proposal championed by U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy. In a June op-ed, Murthy called on federal lawmakers to pass legislation authorizing the placement of tobacco-style surgeon general's labels, stating that social media is associated with significant mental health harms for adolescents.
Europe's top court ruled that Apple must pay 13 billion euros and Google 2.4 billion euros in fines, marking the end of long-standing battles with the EU. Apple's case, related to tax advantages in Ireland, comes just after its iPhone 16 launch. Google faced antitrust fines over its shopping comparison tool, which the EU found stifled competition from smaller rivals.
A longer dwell time can lead to better SEO rankings, more conversions, and stronger audience trust. A good dwell time is between 2-4 minutes. Tactics to increase dwell time include improving page load speed, using engaging visuals, adding internal links, and Improving readability.
When writing “funny” ads, pick one humor mechanism and build a story around it. Common mechanisms include highlighting the humor in everyday situations, twisting a famous work of art to highlight your product's benefit, and creating a situation where only the character doesn't understand what's happening.
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For dev marketers, probably not. This LinkedIn post by TLDR's founder explains how AI is great for automating the tedious tasks, but it will never replace the human touch needed to build trust with the developer audience. Follow Dan on LinkedIn [9] if you're interested in how TLDR grew to 5M+ subscribers and other marketing tips.
Meta's ad algorithm tends to favor static ads. To combine both static images and videos in one Meta ad, start by using an image as your primary format. Customize video-first placements, such as Reels and Stories, by replacing the creative with a 9x16 video. This ensures that static ads will appear in most placements, while video versions will be shown where viewers expect videos. This setup allows you to optimize for both formats without creating multiple ads.
A little-known feature in Google Ads text versions can highlight promotions, helping advertisers showcase deals this holiday season. Add a Headline or Description at the account- or campaign-level, then pin them to show only in positions one, two, or three. You can also set promotion assets (formerly “promotion extensions”) at the account-, campaign-, or ad group-level, which allow an extra line of text for a monetary or percentage discount.
Almost 46% of the links displayed in the AI Overviews (AIO) overlap with the links shown in the traditional Google Search results. A link in the first position has a 53% chance of appearing in an AIO. Results from “People also search for” and reformulated queries are also commonly found in a direct match AIO. YouTube.com is the most common domain for URLs that appear in an AIO, but not in the organic search results below it.
3 converging revolutions — B2B marketing, the Ehrenberg-Bass (EBI) approach, and AI — will shape the future of marketing. B2B is now recognized as a major economic force, with faster growth than traditional B2C. The EBI revolution emphasizes mental market share over short-term metrics like CTRs, driving long-term brand growth. AI is making marketing tasks faster and more affordable. Those who leverage AI alongside the EBI framework will lead the way in the future of marketing.
Enzo Avigo, CEO of June.so, discusses how to align brand, marketing, and product into what he calls "Position-Market Fit."
A breakdown of a recent Kylie Cosmetics' product launch email.
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This developer built the same web application using different web frameworks: FastAPI, FastHTML, Next.js, SvelteKit, and FastAPI combined with Svelte. They compared the developer experience and unique features of each framework by implementing CRUD operations in a simple "Look at Your Data" app. FastAPI and FastHTML were more concise in code, while Next.js and SvelteKit required more code but offered a more structured approach and better UI elements.
Cloudflare's "pingora-origin" service processes a massive amount of HTTP requests - a small function called "clear_internal_headers" was identified as consuming a significant portion of its CPU time. To optimize this function, Cloudflare explored different data structures, eventually settling on a trie-based approach, which resulted in a new open-source Rust crate called "trie-hard". The trie-hard implementation reduced the CPU utilization of the function, achieving a 1.28% decrease in compute time, which matters a lot at scale.
High-quality fonts have hidden features like variable axes for customizing appearance, stylistic alternates for different letter variations, swashes for decorative accents, and multiple numeral styles. Each of these features can be accessed using CSS properties, as shown with examples throughout this article.
This developer writes about a few software development habits that have helped him write better software faster. They focus on writing small commits frequently, refactoring continuously, and deploying often. They also often write tests first to define API structures early.
Exceptions are a superior error handling mechanism compared to returning error values. This is because exceptions offer a better user and developer experience by providing more graceful error handling and leading to faster execution. The common practice of using error values in languages like Rust and Go leads to excessive boilerplate and has a higher potential for hidden system errors.