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WHY THE "MATH MAFIA" IS DOING WELL

Math and science olympiads produce exceptional founders by developing rigorous problem-solving, resilience under pressure, and communities that reinforce ambitious career paths.

PRODUCT MARKET FIT IS HARD TO FIND, BUT FALSE PMF IS EVEN MORE PAINFUL

False product-market fit can sometimes be even worse than no PMF, because you're ramping up activity and spending while running in a straight line towards a cliff.

THEY PREFER THE APP

Companies push users towards apps only so they can better harvest information from them.

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GEN Z'S ‘BORROWED NOSTALGIA' IS RESHAPING BRAND MARKETING

Growing up with instant access to decades of archived content is compressing the nostalgia cycle for Gen Z, who now form emotional attachments to eras that predate their birth at a far higher rate than older generations. Two-thirds of Gen Z report this "borrowed nostalgia", compared with Gen X's tilt toward the 80s and millennials' toward the 90s and 2000s. Music ranks as the strongest trigger across generations, which is why campaigns like Gap's Katseye ad, built around Kelis's 2003 hit "Milkshake", land with both the generation that remembers the song and the one discovering it fresh.

HOW A 180-YEAR-OLD NEWS INSTITUTION PREPARES FOR ITS NEXT REINVENTION

The Associated Press is turning 180 years of journalism into a data business, deconstructing its reporting into structured and unstructured data sold to other industries alongside its traditional news distribution. The shift runs alongside a deliberately short AI licensing strategy, one-to-three-year deals built on protecting journalists' intellectual property and securing fair value as models train on AP content. Newspapers, once AP's dominant customer base, now generate under 10% of its revenue, with data licensing and diversified income filling the rest.

ADVERTISING WORKS DIFFERENTLY FOR MILLENNIALS AND GENERATION Z

Millennials show higher advertising recall than Generation Z across nearly every channel, digital and traditional alike, from a 30-point gap on television, 56% vs. 26%, to smaller but consistent gaps on social media, search, and streaming video. The exception is video games, where recall is nearly identical between the two generations. Gen Z's lower recall tracks lower overall media consumption, but the generation is more responsive to influencer-driven purchases than Millennials, 39% vs. 34%.

LIFECYCLE MARKETING VS. LEAD LIFECYCLE

B2B teams often confuse lifecycle marketing with lead lifecycle. Lifecycle marketing drives activation, retention, and expansion, while lead lifecycle manages pipeline stages. The two work together through pre-sale nurture, closed-lost reactivation, expansion campaigns, and lead quality feedback loops. Sales-assisted PLG teams can also use signals like usage limits, feature requests, and ICP fit to trigger sales handoffs.

NAIL PROFIT BEFORE SITE EXTRAS, OWNER SAYS

Focus first on profitability before adding advanced features to your e-commerce website. Reduce returns, improve customer service, and build a shipping model that works before investing in AI tools or extra apps. Design every product and collection page as a landing page because visitors often arrive from ads, social posts, or other links instead of the home page. A 15 to 30 second product video can increase conversions, and fast-loading MP4 videos with clear audio create a better brand experience than GIFs or poor-quality video.

HOW DO I MEASURE THE PIPELINE CONTRIBUTION OF PAID MEDIA?

Connect paid media to the CRM before launching campaigns so every optimization ties back to pipeline instead of platform metrics. Use multi-touch attribution, causal modeling, and incrementality testing together because each method fills gaps the others miss and gives a more reliable view of channel performance. Report results in business metrics such as contribution margin, LTV to CAC, payback period, cost per first meeting, and cost per pipeline dollar because those numbers align marketing with finance. Companies that optimized for pipeline instead of clicks cut cost per MQL by 27%, increased conversion rate by 18%, and improved ROAS by 138%.

CART CULTURE: THE DATA RETAILERS WANT BEFORE YOU WALK IN THE DOOR (WEBINAR)

This webinar breaks down what retailers expect before listing a product, focusing on data, not gut feel. It covers how to bridge the gap between DTC traction and in-store readiness and how to build a credible data story months before pitching to improve your chances of landing shelf space. It takes place today at 2:30 PM ET.

400+ SITES ANALYZED: 5 DATA-BACKED TRAITS TO THRIVE IN GOOGLE & AEO WITH CYRUS SHEPARD (WEBINAR)

Cyrus Shepard, founder of Zyppy SEO, analyzed 400+ sites to find 5 traits driving organic growth and 17 content types that still perform in a zero-click world. This webinar will explain how to rethink AI's role by cutting low-impact output and focusing on assets that earn visibility in Google and AI search. It will take place on July 23 at 3 PM ET.

WHAT A FORMER TIKTOK SHOP MANAGER LEARNED FROM $14M IN LIVE SALES

TikTok Shop expert Jason Termechi analyzed $14M+ in live sales and found most brands go live before building the foundation needed to convert. He recommends establishing TikTok Shop sales history first, then optimizing broadcasts with metrics like GPM, tap-through rate, watch time, and click-to-order rate. His playbook includes flash sales, weeks of pre-promotion, rotating hosts, and real-time adjustments to improve engagement and sales.

WHY SEARCH ROAS DEPENDS ON PAID SOCIAL MORE THAN YOU THINK

Search ROAS often looks strong only because paid social is running alongside it, generating brand awareness that later surfaces as branded search queries search then gets credited for capturing. Last-click attribution can't see social impressions that never converted directly, creating a structural bias where search inherits demand it didn't create. The effect is delayed by four to eight weeks, so teams that cut social based on isolated ROAS comparisons often see search CPAs climb months later without connecting the two. Geo holdout tests and brand search volume tracking are the more reliable way to measure the actual cross-channel effect.

X IS TEACHING ITS AI ALGORITHM SOMETHING SOCIAL NETWORKS ONCE UNDERSTOOD

X is now weighting mutual followers more heavily in replies and recommendations, after finding its ranking algorithm wasn't using relationship data.

27 THINGS THAT ACTUALLY GET A SAAS TO $10K MRR

Pick a tiny niche, talk to users before building, and ship fast, ugly versions early to get real feedback and traction before wasting time on guesses.

WHY MARKETING CONFERENCES ARE STILL WORTH IT

Conferences feel costly and exhausting, but they accelerate relationships and opportunities faster than remote work.

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IOS 27 PUBLIC BETA IS HERE WITH SIRI AI, IPHONE SPEED UPGRADES, AND MORE

The first public beta of iOS 27 is now available. It works on every iPhone that runs iOS 26, but Apple Intelligence features will require an iPhone 15 Pro or newer. The update is focused on performance, stability, and making the iPhone feel even better to use. The biggest addition is Siri AI, which can now hold an ongoing conversation, understand onscreen context, take actions in apps, and answer broad questions.

APPLE'S LAWSUIT THREATENS TO DISRUPT OPENAI'S BID TO RIVAL THE IPHONE

Apple's lawsuit accusing OpenAI of systematically stealing its intellectual property could disrupt OpenAI's device ambitions long before the case is resolved. The claims may cause many Apple employees to reconsider leaving for OpenAI, and that could slow OpenAI's recruiting pipeline, keep more engineers at Apple, and reduce the flow of institutional knowledge into OpenAI. This, along with several other factors, threatens to slow development. OpenAI is reportedly still on track to announce its first product this year with a release in 2027.

SPACEX IS GEARING UP FOR STARSHIP'S 13TH TEST FLIGHT LATER THIS WEEK

The next Starship test flight could take off as soon as Thursday. The mission will be similar to the last Starship flight in May, but there will be real Starlink satellites inside the vehicle's cargo bay. The Starlink V3 satellites will not be a part of SpaceX's operational network. SpaceX engineers will attempt to briefly establish laser communication links between the Starlink V3s and other spacecraft flying in low-Earth orbit, after which they will fall back into the atmosphere and burn up during reentry.

MEET THE NEWLY PUBLIC, BEZOS-BACKED COMPANY THAT'S RECREATING THE SUN AND STARS

General Fusion recently debuted on the NASDAQ as part of a SPAC merger with Spring Valley Acquisition Corp III. The firm uses a hybrid approach called Magnetized Target Fusion, which combines magnetism and shockwaves to generate intense heat and compress atoms. Its goal is to have a fusion power plant running by 2035. This article features an interview with its CEO, Greg Twinney, where he discusses the company's roadmap.

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APPLE'S NEW SPEECH API VS WHISPER: THE FIRST REAL BENCHMARK

Apple's SpeechAnalyzer cuts word error rate compared with SFSpeechRecognizer by 3.5x to 4x on the same audio. It beats Whisper Small by a comfortable margin with roughly a third of the compute time per second of audio. SpeechAnalyzer is now the strongest on-device option for English on Apple hardware. Whisper covers far more languages and runs anywhere, but the days of it being the automatic accuracy pick are over.

CONTROL THE IDEAS, NOT THE CODE

Many programmers are not as impactful as they could be because they are looking at the code. Looking at the code is suboptimal and often pointless. The amount of code that LLMs generate makes it impractical to read, understand, and edit every line of code. It's more efficient to just control the ideas - how things work, what is the best design, and how to reach a certain level of performance - and then check the implementation for correctness.

STATES PREPARE LAWSUIT TO BLOCK PARAMOUNT'S MERGER WITH WARNER BROS.

Several states are preparing to file a lawsuit to block Paramount's acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery as soon as this week. The lawsuit claims that the $111 billion deal would harm competition in the market for tentpole films. Paramount says it is prepared to address legitimate antitrust issues and that the merger raises no such concerns. The companies plan to close the deal in the third quarter of this year. Paramount will pay Warner Bros. Discovery's shareholders about $650 million in cash for each quarter the deal doesn't close starting in October.

THE MOST HUMAN TECHNOLOGY EVER MADE

For most of history, the bottleneck in making something was the grind - acquiring years of skill, raising money, assembling a team, and getting permission. This caused many ideas to die unmade. AI lifts that bottleneck. The future will be full of strange, beautiful, and slightly pointless things made by individuals who share them to see what happens.

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WEBMCP FOR DOCUMENTATION

WebMCP is a proposed web standard for building and exposing structured tools that AI agents can call directly.

CLOUDFLARE GIVES OPENAI NETWORK SIGNALS COVERING 20% OF THE WEB

The partnership is aimed at improving the accuracy and timeliness of AI-generated answers.

WHAT WILL BE LEFT FOR US TO WORK ON?

The human effort will shift from manual work to direction and evaluation.

WHY THE “MATH MAFIA” IS DOING WELL

Olympiads breed people who normalize hard work and don't shy away from intense competition.

YOUR DROPBOX IS NOW A SKILL SERVER

sx is an open source package manager for AI assets that uses a shared Dropbox folder as its backend.

Join us July 23 to see it in action.

TODAY, WE ARE RELEASING VERIFIERS V1

Prime Intellect's verifiers v1 is an overhaul of its environment stack for the modern era of agentic RL and evals. It decomposes environments into a task set, a harness, and a runtime. verifiers v1 enables complex agentic tasks like coding and computer use at scale in any harness.

SMART CELLULAR BRICKS: TOWARDS COLLECTIVE INTELLIGENCE FOR THE PHYSICAL WORLD

Sakana AI's research on collective intelligence has extended into physical hardware with "Smart Cellular Bricks." These bricks employ local communication and neural networks to autonomously classify and reconstruct 3D shapes without centralized control. In experiments, the system achieved high accuracy in shape classification and demonstrated robustness against noise and module failures.

WHAT XAI GROK BUILD CLI ACTUALLY SENDS TO XAI

This post looks at the data that xAI's official Grok Build coding CLI transmits and stores. The CLI transmits the contents of the files it reads to xAI verbatim and unredacted. It uploads whole repositories independent of what the agent reads. The storage destination is a Google Cloud Storage bucket. There's no proof that xAI trains on the data.

MAKING FABLE CHEAPER THAN OPUS

Cognition replaced Opus 4.8 with Fable 5, and Devin's bill went down. Fable 5 costs twice as much per token as Opus 4.8, but Cognition created an architecture that resulted in Fable costing less while scoring higher. This post looks at how the company achieved this and what that means for pricing agentic work.

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HOW MICROSOFT SHIPS THOUSANDS OF PRODUCTION AI AGENTS

Microsoft described the infrastructure and key mechanisms needed to operate AI agents across Foundry and its large-scale Copilot products. Key practices included treating retrieval as a sub-agent, assigning agents distinct identities and workspaces, and using rubric-based evaluations with automated improvement loops.

MANTIS SKILLS: PORTABLE TOOLKIT FOR BUILDING SECURITY REVIEW HARNESSES

Mantis Skill is a decoupled, sequential, and security-focused set of Skills designed for use with Coding Agents. It is intended to be a flexible foundation that users can adapt, tune, and extend, rather than a rigid set of instructions. Google recommends using AI to iterate on the skills and use internal documentation, coding standards, and build systems to augment the threat model. It also strongly recommends adapting risk calibration to the environment and risk tolerance.

VIDEO GENERATORS AS GENERAL-PURPOSE VISION MODELS

DeepMind researchers introduced GenCeption, which repurposes a pretrained video generation model as a unified vision system controlled through text instructions.