Search the archive

WHY CREATIVE AGENCIES NEED TO KNOW ABOUT NEW ADOBE FIREFLY BOARDS

Adobe Firefly Boards, a collaborative mood-boarding tool, has officially launched after exiting beta.

Read the Delve case study.

THE SAAS MIDLIFE CRISIS - HOW TO REINVENT YOURSELF LIKE INTERCOM/FIN

SaaS unicorns with $100-300M ARR face a growth crisis as public software companies slow while AI startups like Anthropic hit massive numbers. Intercom shows the reinvention playbook - its AI agent Fin went from $0 to $100M ARR in 2.5 quarters, potentially boosting its valuation from $1.25B to $3B and proving you can re-horn yourself without killing the core business.

CIRCLE'S VALUATION IS GETTING NUTTY

Circle's stock rocketed from $31 to $227 per share despite generating “only” $578.6 million in Q1 revenue for a $48.4 billion valuation that gets even wonkier after splitting USDC economics with Coinbase.

AI TALENT WARS BRING UNPRECEDENTED PAY PACKAGES AS META THROWS DOWN

Meta is offering unprecedented compensation packages, ranging from $8 million over four years to $20 million annually, primarily in stock, to attract elite AI talent. This move intensifies the recruitment frenzy in the already competitive AI talent market. Despite these lucrative offers, Meta faces challenges in poaching top researchers from rivals like OpenAI.

RUTHLESS PRIORITIZATION WHILE THE DOG PEES ON THE FLOOR

Time is zero-sum, so you can only do 1-10% of what needs doing, and it forces a binary choice between 10x tasks that transform your company and 0.1x tasks you must eliminate or delegate. The hardest part isn't choosing priorities, but explaining why you're letting important fires burn while focusing on what matters most - which looks insane to employees who don't understand the complete strategic picture.

WHY MOST FOUNDERS FAIL TO RAISE IN 2025 AND HOW YOU WON'T

Most fundraising advice is two years outdated or written by people who haven't raised a cent. The new reality requires treating fundraising like targeted sales, not hope - start with 25 precisely chosen VCs who are actively deploying, sequence outreach to build momentum, and use your deck as a weapon to create urgency rather than an academic presentation that explains everything politely.

HOW PAGERDUTY PREPARED FOR IPO

PagerDuty's 2019 IPO emphasized enhancing customer trust over mere valuation gains. It went public at $100 million in revenue to reassure enterprise clients of their stability and credibility. The preparation involved focusing on essential one-time tasks like filing an S-1, splitting efforts between short-term IPO activities and long-term operational excellence.

CIRCLEBACK

Circleback is an AI-powered tool that captures meeting notes and automates follow-ups, task creation, and CRM updates for teams.

MRGE

mrge is an AI-powered code review tool that automates PR reviews and enhances developer workflows for fast-moving teams.

KOTAE

Kotae is an AI chatbot that turns your website into a 24/7 lead generation and customer support tool with smart text and voice chat.

A FUNGIBLE WORLDVIEW

Cluely raised $15M from a16z with a series of viral marketing tactics: hiring strippers, getting kicked out of Columbia for building cheating tools, and marketing with the tagline "cheating on everything" - then converting the controversy into enterprise contracts. This exemplifies how a venture's pursuit of scale creates a "fungible worldview" where individual choices matter less.

ASSESSING THE REAL IMPACT OF AUTOMATION ON JOBS

MIT economist David Autor found that automation exposure doesn't equal job loss by tracking task changes from 1977 to 2018 - Uber drivers saw 249% employment growth despite wage stagnation while proofreaders earned more but fewer jobs existed. The key insight is expertise fungibility: experts can do nonexpert work when displaced, but automation's impact depends on whether it removes routine tasks while adding abstract ones or strips away what makes a job specialized.

THE SHAPE OF THE ESSAY FIELD

People don't know things for three reasons: it's unimportant, they're obtuse, or they're inexperienced.

WHAT EARLY GTM BENCHMARKS ARE TELLING US

Only 40% of startups achieved 4x pipeline coverage in Q1 2025, and CAC payback is getting worse with 50% of sub-$5M ARR companies hitting under 12 months but zero companies in the $10-50M range managing that timeframe.

IS ARR GROWTH DURABLE?

Goldman Sachs now defines "high growth" as just 20% revenue growth, but many SaaS companies are masking deeper problems by juicing numbers with price increases, M&A, and new product launches.

Join Persona's engineering team for a live discussion and demo

covering:

Register for the live event →

16 BILLION APPLE, FACEBOOK, GOOGLE, AND OTHER PASSWORDS LEAKED

A record 16 billion login credentials have leaked online, exposing passwords from major services. Experts urge users to stop reusing passwords, adopt password managers, enable multi-factor authentication, and switch to passkeys for better security. The leak is not from a single breach but multiple infostealer sources.

ATTACK ON OXFORD CITY COUNCIL EXPOSES 21 YEARS OF ELECTION WORKER DATA

Oxford City Council suffered a cyberattack on June 7-8, compromising 21 years of election worker data (2001-2022). The breach affected current and former council officers' personal information. Automated security systems detected and stopped the attack and have since been restored. There is no evidence that suggests data was shared externally or mass-downloaded.

ANUBIS RANSOMWARE LISTS DISNEYLAND PARIS AS NEW VICTIM

The Anubis ransomware group asserts that it has acquired 64GB of data from Disneyland Paris, mostly concerning construction and renovation efforts. They claim to have accessed the files by breaching a partner company and have shared images and videos as evidence. It remains uncertain whether customer data was also compromised. Disneyland Paris has not verified the breach.

CLOUDTRAIL LOGGING EVASION: WHERE POLICY SIZE MATTERS

Researchers from Permiso Security discovered a novel CloudTrail log bypass that abuses differing policy size calculations. AWS' documentation states that whitespace does not count when determining the maximum size of an IAM policy. However, the researchers determined that the policy would fail validation if the whitespace caused the size to exceed 131,072 characters. The researchers discovered that CloudTrail fails to capture full request details for requests in the size range of 102,401 to 131,072.

DO NOT RUN ANY CARGO COMMANDS ON UNTRUSTED PROJECTS

This post highlights two attack vectors by which malicious Rust code could target the cargo system. The first attack vector abuses the fact that a project could remap the `rustc` binary to any arbitrary path, which would compromise any cargo commands. The second attack vector could compromise plugins that don't use the cargo config files, such as `cargo crev`, by defining an alias for that command in the config.toml.

DETECTION PITFALLS YOU MIGHT BE SLEEPING ON

This post presents five common Windows detection pitfalls that can lead to gaps in detection. The pitfalls include parameters being able to be called in multiple different ways, & and | causing multiple log entries for a single command, extra whitespace in commands, other forms of command obfuscation, and commands that don't cause process creation events. Each pitfall also includes detection tips to circumvent it.

or Apple AirPods Pro! Claim your offer

GPGFRONTEND

Modern, cross-platform OpenPGP GUI—easy for beginners, powerful for experts, fully portable and open-source.

AWS ROLLS OUT 3 KEY SECURITY CAPABILITIES AT RE:INFORCE, HELPING CUSTOMERS SIMPLIFY AND SCALE

AWS announced three new security services at re:Inforce conference to address AI-era threats. Security Hub centralizes threat identification and prioritization. Shield proactively analyzes network configurations to prevent attacks like SQL injection and DDoS. GuardDuty Extended Threat Detection now protects container applications, detecting sophisticated multi-stage attack patterns.

TOOLHIVE

ToolHive is a tool that allows for running any MCP server in a locked-down container with a single command.

MASSIVE 7.3 TBPS DDOS ATTACK DELIVERS 37.4 TB IN 45 SECONDS, TARGETING HOSTING PROVIDER

Cloudflare blocked a record-breaking 7.3 Tbps DDoS attack targeting a hosting provider in May. The 45-second attack delivered 37.4 terabytes from over 122,000 IP addresses across 161 countries.

IRAN'S GOVERNMENT SAYS IT SHUT DOWN INTERNET TO PROTECT AGAINST CYBERATTACKS

Iran shut down its internet nationwide this week, calling it a "near-total blackout." The government confirmed it ordered the shutdown to protect against Israeli cyberattacks, citing recent hacks on Iranian banks and cryptocurrency exchanges by the pro-Israel group Predatory Sparrow.

SCAMMERS USE INFERNO DRAINER TO STEAL $43K FROM COINMARKETCAP USERS

Hackers deceived CoinMarketCap users into linking their crypto wallets to a counterfeit prompt, resulting in the theft of over $43,000 through a tool known as Inferno Drainer, which disseminated a hidden code across the site.

WALMART TO PAY $10M TO SETTLE LAWSUIT OVER MONEY TRANSFER SCAM

Walmart has agreed to pay $10 million to settle FTC allegations that it allowed scammers to exploit its money transfer services between 2013 and 2018, which resulted in hundreds of millions of dollars stolen from customers through fraud schemes.

RUSSIAN HACKERS BYPASS GMAIL MFA USING STOLEN APP PASSWORDS

Russian hackers impersonated U.S. State Department officials to deceive individuals into providing passwords that allowed them to circumvent Gmail's security measures, specifically targeting experts and critics of Russia.

HOW INFLUENCER MARKETING LOST ITS EDGE

Influencer marketing remains valuable but is showing signs of decline due to oversaturation and growing consumer skepticism. Tools like SponsorBlock and negative reactions to hashtags like “#ad” show users are actively avoiding influencer content. Trust has eroded further due to controversies like Honey and BetterHelp, with only 12% of people likely to buy influencer-promoted products and 42% of those regretting it.

48% OF CREATIVES IDENTIFY AS NEURODIVERGENT

Almost half of creative industry professionals identify as neurodivergent. Yet 1 in 3 are dissatisfied with their roles and many face bias. About 90% report masking and 50% say stigma prevents them from disclosing their neurodivergence at work. Most creatives feel held back by a system that favors speed and real-time output over deep, divergent thinking. Although only 18% of neurodivergent employees request accommodations, nearly 80% of those who do are satisfied with the results.

OPENAI USED A 50-YEAR-OLD PRICING METHOD TO NAIL CHATGPT PRO'S $20/MONTH PRICE

OpenAI used the Van Westendorp Price Sensitivity Model to set ChatGPT Pro's $20 monthly price. The model relies on four survey questions that ask when a product is too expensive, too cheap, getting expensive, and a bargain. By plotting the responses, OpenAI identified where perceptions of value and cost overlapped, revealing the optimal price range based on real user feedback rather than internal guesswork.

HOW SENJA CRACKED VIRAL PRODUCT-LED GROWTH

Senja is a testimonial tool that grew to $70K in monthly revenue within 3 years by focusing on simplicity, speed, and user experience. It delivers value in under 5 minutes with a frictionless process that makes users feel like marketers through a smart freemium model. Its "powered by Senja" badges generate tens of thousands of monthly impressions, turning free users into brand ambassadors. The platform relies on user behavior data instead of assumptions, proving that great products can scale without ads or sales teams.

LOCALIZATION SEO THAT WORKS: 10 REAL-WORLD LESSONS FROM 14 MARKETS

Ahrefs quadrupled traffic to its Spanish blog in 18 months by localizing content rather than just translating it, growing from 5.4K to over 22K visits. It used culturally relevant language variants like Brazilian Portuguese and local keyword research instead of direct translation. Market prioritization was based on billing data, search trends, and tech adoption, targeting countries such as Indonesia and Japan. Content was created or adapted to fit local norms and voice, building trust and attracting backlinks. Ahrefs also maintained consistent terminology, used AI for bulk tasks with human review, and kept strong technical SEO to support localization.

HOW TO FIX THE MARKETING AND SALES SILOS WITH ABM (WEBINAR)

Organizations face friction when marketing and sales teams operate in silos, leading to wasted resources. This webinar focuses on reasons for misalignment, how to balance brand building with sales activation, and how to operationalize partnership between the groups. It's free to attend and will take place on June 25 at 10 am ET.

APPLOVIN: THE ADVERTISING GIANT IN THE MAKING

AppLovin's AXON engine powers real-time campaign optimization by analyzing billions of daily ad interactions to adjust bids, placements, and creative delivery at scale. This could translate into higher ROI through smarter user targeting, lower acquisition costs, and improved ad relevance without manual tuning. With built-in tools for predictive lifetime value modeling and churn analysis, the platform connects campaign spend to user behavior over time, offering deeper visibility into performance beyond installs.

OAT MILK MEETS MEXICO CITY: OATLY'S TROUBLING (BUT SUCCESSFUL) MEXICAN MARKETING CAMPAIGN

Oatly's campaign in Mexico City sparked backlash for using English ads in a Spanish-speaking country. The brand focused on gentrified neighborhoods like Roma Norte and Condesa, where expats and affluent locals live. Critics called out the lack of cultural adaptation and the health concerns of its product. Yet the campaign worked. Oatly partnered with trendy cafes, ran pop-ups, and referenced local sounds like “Se compran colchones”.

SUBSTACK IS THE BEST PLACE ON THE INTERNET – LET'S HOPE THE BRANDS DON'T RUIN IT

Substack has avoided the typical decline of social platforms by rejecting ads and focusing on direct creator-reader relationships. It earns revenue by taking a cut of subscription fees, with over 50 creators making more than $1M annually. While its growth and recent brand involvement, including American Eagle and Hinge campaigns, raise questions about preserving its original appeal, creative brand use that fits the platform's style could benefit both creators and advertisers. The challenge will be maintaining Substack's special, ad-free experience as it evolves.

“A DECISION WAS MADE HERE”: OREO FINDS GENIUS IN THE AISLE

This Oreo ad highlights a common shopping behavior where someone grabs a product, changes their mind, and leaves it above a pack of Oreos. Instead of hiding this messy reality, Oreo embraced it with raw visuals and the simple phrase, “A decision was made here”. Without actors, slogans, or polish, the campaign uses observational humor to reveal true brand preference. This is an example of behavioral marketing that trusts the audience's intelligence and shows that sometimes the quietest message is the most powerful.

PRICE TESTING 101 WITH JUSTIN FARRIS

Pricing insights from Zillow and GitLab, including when A/B testing works, how to gather honest feedback, and 3 principles for designing scalable discount frameworks.

AI ACTORS AND DEEPFAKES AREN'T COMING TO YOUTUBE ADS. THEY'RE ALREADY HERE

YouTube banned 700K scam ads in 2024, but AI-generated fakes continue to circulate undetected.

Schedule a demo to learn more