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THE BAR TODAY FOR A SERIES B

Data from 10,755 US startups shows only 40-50% of Series A companies eventually reach Series B, and it takes 2-3 years on average. The bar has gotten higher since 2021 - SaaS companies now need $4-8M ARR (up from $2-4M), 2-3x growth, and clear paths to profitability. Most founders underestimate the timeline and run out of money. The good news is recent cohorts show "signs of life," with graduation rates creeping back up.

THE MOST UNDERRATED EARLY HIRE IN A STARTUP

Every startup has someone who steps into chaos and makes sense of it - the first operator. They pull together messy data, build dashboards, and quietly shape how the company thinks about itself. Usually titled Head of Finance or BizOps Lead, they touch every key metric: ARR, funnel conversion, payback periods, and LTV.

WHY IS QUALITY SO RARE?

We can build faster than ever, yet quality feels rare because we've replaced craft with metrics. Software went from small teams crafting with care to "move fast and break things" - optimizing for conversion over feeling right. AI makes this worse by trying to outsource judgment and taste itself.

THE PICTURE SUPERIORITY EFFECT: WHY IMAGES BEAT WORDS

Two food trucks sell subs - one has a text menu, the other has hand-drawn sketches of each sandwich. You remember every sketch from the second truck but forget most items from the first. This is the Picture Superiority Effect: images get encoded twice in memory (visually and verbally) while words only get encoded once. In one study, people remembered 83% of 10,000 images shown for just seconds each.

BUILDING EXECUTIVE PRESENCE

Executive presence involves effectively communicating with senior leaders by focusing on clarity, aligning discussions with company goals, and understanding organizational subtext. Prioritize solutions over problems, know senior leaders' priorities, and build personal connections. Inspire confidence and trust by driving conversations towards clarity and decision-making.

NAVIGATING SALES CHALLENGES AS A SOLOPRENEUR IN PODCASTING

Podscan.fm, a podcast and social monitoring tool, has reached profitability. The founder struggles with sales to non-technical users and is considering hiring a part-time or commission-based salesperson. Recognizing limits and leveraging network expertise could drive growth.

Secure Enclave technology.

SUPABOARD AI

Supaboard AI builds powerful dashboards and delivers precise insights from your data with industry-trained AI analysts—no expertise required.

LANGFLOW DESKTOP

Langflow Desktop lets developers build and deploy AI agents in minutes with a visual editor and built-in API server. It supports all major LLMs and vector databases.

VIVA LABS

Viva Labs creates AI-powered video ads that convert, using agents to research messaging, generate UGC/B-roll, and analyze performance in minutes.

PRIVATE LIVES: A CASE FOR LIVING WITHOUT AN AUDIENCE

We've entered a phase where invisibility signals threat, not freedom. People without digital presence feel "a little off" - it's like existing without performing is suspicious. We've confused vulnerability with exposure and transparency with intimacy. Even happiness requires documentation or we suspect it didn't happen. Not everything needs to be explained, captured, or converted into content.

DAVID AI'S $25M SERIES A

David AI secured a $25 million Series A round to expand its focus on high-quality audio datasets for AI, led by Alt Capital and Amplify Partners. Its aim is to tackle the audio data bottleneck that limits voice AI applications and advance real-world AI interfaces like humanoid robots and wearable devices. The company has already achieved an eight-figure annual revenue run rate and now plans to expand its team across various departments.

IS LOCATION STILL RELEVANT FOR SUCCESS? HOW TO BUILD A BUSINESS OUTSIDE YOUR TARGET MARKET

Entrepreneurs are increasingly building global businesses, leveraging digital tools to transcend traditional location constraints. This strategic global mindset diversifies risk, drives innovation, and allows businesses to adapt to varied market needs. Remote work has also broadened access to talent, enabling startups to compete on an international scale from inception.

THE 2026 SALES TEAM: 50% HUMANS, 50% AIS

By 2026, sales teams will be half human, half AI - just like what's already happening in customer support where AI handles 30-40% of tickets with top 10% satisfaction scores.

FORECAST ACCURACY LIVES AT THE EDGE

One of the best FP&A leaders spent most of his time talking to BDRs instead of staring at dashboards.

DFJ GROWTH CLOSES $1.2B FLAGSHIP FUND

DFJ Growth raised $1.2 billion for its largest fund, which focuses on AI, robotics, aerospace, and biotech.

threats escalate. Get the guide

MATHWORKS, CREATOR OF MATLAB, CONFIRMS RANSOMWARE ATTACK

MathWorks, creator of MATLAB computing platform, disclosed a ransomware attack that began May 18 that affected customer-facing applications and internal systems. The company has been gradually restoring services with cybersecurity experts' help and has notified federal authorities, but it hasn't revealed which ransomware group was responsible or whether data was stolen.

ADIDAS CONFIRMS CRIMINALS STOLE DATA FROM CUSTOMER SERVICE PROVIDER

Adidas disclosed that an unauthorized person stole customer contact information from a third-party customer service provider. The data included names and email addresses of customers who previously contacted support, but excluded passwords and payment information. The company is notifying affected customers and authorities while investigating the breach.

GITHUB MCP EXPLOITED: ACCESSING PRIVATE REPOSITORIES VIA MCP

A critical vulnerability in GitHub's MCP integration allows attackers to use prompt injection in public issues to trick coding agents (e.g., Claude) into leaking data from private repositories. This exploit, termed a "toxic agent flow," does not rely on compromised tools but exploits trusted agents' interactions with untrusted external content. The issue requires system-level mitigations—like runtime guardrails and continuous MCP traffic monitoring—since model-level alignment is insufficient to prevent such context-driven attacks.

THREAT SPOTLIGHT: HIJACKED ROUTERS AND FAKE SEARCHES FUELING PAYROLL HEIST

ReliaQuest has discovered a campaign that uses SEO poisoning to target employee mobile devices for payroll fraud. Attackers create fake company login pages that appear in search results, steal credentials when employees access them, and then redirect paychecks to attacker-controlled accounts. This post dives into the campaign, the attacks, and how they keep evading detection.

REDISRAIDER: WEAPONIZING MISCONFIGURED REDIS TO MINE CRYPTOCURRENCY AT SCALE

RedisRaider is a new Linux malware campaign that scans the internet for public Redis servers running on Linux and then abuses the Redis SET command to inject a cron job. The cron job downloads the RedisRaider binary to /tmp/mysql, makes it executable, and then executes it using nohup. The RedisRaider binary is a heavily obfuscated dropper for a modified version of the XMRig cryptominer that uses a custom packer to further complicate reversing and forensic analysis.

MASTER TAILSCALE ACLS FOR YOUR ENTERPRISE ENVIRONMENT: A STEP-BY-STEP GUIDE

Tailscale can use ACLs to provide zero-trust network access to internal resources. This guide presents and walks through a sample Enterprise ACL and then deep-dives into how ACLs can be written and modified for some common use cases, such as RBAC, secure device access, hybrid infrastructure, and SSH auditing.

SECATOR

secator is a task and workflow runner used for security assessments. It supports dozens of well-known security tools and is designed to improve productivity for pentesters and security researchers.

TOP 5 TOOLS FOR ACTIVE DIRECTORY PENETRATION TESTING

The top five tools for hacking Active Directory domains are PingCastle, ldapdomaindump, BloodHound & PlumHound, Responder, and HashCat.

AZUREVELO

azurevelo deploys a Velociraptor container on Azure App Service to aid incident responders.

DUTCH INTELLIGENCE AGENCIES SAY RUSSIAN HACKERS STOLE POLICE DATA IN CYBERATTACK

"Laundry Bear," a Russian state-backed hacker group, breached Dutch police systems in September, accessing all officers' contact details. The group targets Western nations supporting Ukraine, seeking military equipment information.

FIREFOX SECURITY RESPONSE TO PWN2OWN 2025

Two new content-process exploits were demonstrated against Firefox at Pwn2Own 2025, but neither bypassed the browser's sandbox. Mozilla released patched versions the same day and urged users to update immediately. These results reflect recent architectural hardening and reinforce Firefox's security resilience.

THREAT OF TCC BYPASSES ON MACOS

macOS's TCC framework blocks unauthorized access to sensitive data, even for malware with root access, but many third-party apps expose vulnerabilities that bypass these protections. A flaw in Cursor.app shows how malware can inherit TCC permissions and access protected files without user knowledge. Developers and vendors often ignore these issues, despite their real threat to user privacy and system integrity.

ZSCALER TO ACQUIRE MDR SPECIALIST RED CANARY

Zscaler announced its intention to acquire Red Canary, known for Managed Detection and Response (MDR) services, to enhance its integration of artificial intelligence, automation, and human expertise into security.

CLOUDFLARE BOSS SENDS STARK WARNING OVER LALIGA ANTI-PIRACY CAMPAIGN

Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince warned that LaLiga's broad anti-piracy IP blocks, which target Cloudflare infrastructure, are causing significant collateral damage by disrupting access to critical and legitimate websites, including emergency services in Spain.

IRANIAN PLEADS GUILTY TO ROBBINHOOD RANSOMWARE ATTACKS, FACES 30 YEARS

An Iranian man has confessed to his involvement in the Robbinhood ransomware attacks that targeted U.S. cities and organizations from 2019 to 2024, stealing data and demanding Bitcoin ransoms.

THE PLATFORM 92% OF SOCIAL MARKETERS CONSIDER A PRIORITY

A survey of social media marketers found that Instagram is still the top priority for most (92%), followed surprisingly by LinkedIn (52%), then TikTok (50%). TikTok is considered the hardest platform to succeed on by 32.5% of respondents, while Instagram's flexibility makes it the top choice if marketers had to pick only one platform. Carousel posts have edged out short-form videos as the best-performing format, with 70.3% rating them highly. Professionally, 51% of respondents feel worse off than last year, and 61% reported budget and resource changes, with 58% seeing cuts. The biggest challenges social media professionals face are lack of time, limited creative support, and leadership that doesn't fully understand social strategy.

AI IN CONTENT CREATION 2025

Over 80% of creators use AI in their workflows, and 40% rely on it end-to-end. Video is the top format, with 52.5% of creators focused on it. Chat tools remain the most used at 37.6%, followed by increasing use of audio and image tools, especially among educators and L&D teams. Adoption is highest among L&D (100%), educators (90%), and agency teams (85%). Younger creators under 25 lag behind, with only 41.8% using AI throughout their process. Most creators use 3 or more tools, reflecting a shift toward multimodal and stackable AI-powered workflows.

HOW KEURIG BREWED A RETURN TO GROWTH

Keurig's GTM strategy originally focused on machine placement to drive high-frequency pod purchases, but it stalled growth due to customer backlash due to excessive DRM restrictions. Under the new CEO, the company shifted from a saturation mindset to segmentation, targeting new usage occasions and environments such as dorms, offices, and small households. Strengthening partner incentives and rethinking pricing also helped rebuild alignment across retail and brand collaborators.

45% RESPONSE RATES: WHAT CLAY KNOWS THAT YOU DON'T

Cold outreach campaigns on Clay are seeing 45% reply rates by activating messages at the exact moment buyer intent is detected. Rather than rely on preset segments or scheduled sends, marketers use orchestration flows that adapt in real time based on behavioral and contextual signals. This shifts marketing from batch campaigns to continuous, signal-driven engagement that reaches customers at the optimal time on their journey.

BEYOND THE OBVIOUS: UNLOCKING GROWTH WITH CREATIVE MARKETING STRATEGIES

Sock Candy, a fashion sock brand known for its sheer, artistic designs, quadrupled monthly revenue from $10,000 to $40,000 through creative Meta ad testing and weekly optimization. Growth was also fueled by indirect marketing on Reddit, where organic community engagement outperformed traditional promotional tactics. Strategic pivots based on customer behavior and selective platform use helped define a distinct brand identity focused on self-expression.

experts for their approach. Read the full report here (ungated)

ACROLINX

Acrolinx helps create clear, consistent, and compliant content at scale. It digitizes company-specific style guides, terminology, and tone of voice, providing real-time guidance to writers within their existing authoring tools. By integrating into workflows, Acrolinx ensures content aligns with brand standards, regulatory requirements, and inclusivity goals.

PODS, DASHBOARDS, AND PURPOSE-BUILT AUTOMATION: THE NEW ZAPIER AGENTS ARE BUILT TO SCALE

Zapier overhauled its Agents to support fully autonomous workflows. Features include single-purpose agents, organized Pods, an activity dashboard for oversight, and a faster creation process with new templates. These updates make it easier to build, monitor, and scale AI-powered automations that act independently across over 8K apps. Ready-to-use agent templates are available for sales, marketing, customer support, and productivity.

THE LESS PEOPLE KNOW ABOUT AI, THE MORE THEY USE IT

People with low AI literacy are more likely to adopt AI tools because they perceive them as magical. In a global survey of 19,504 people, those with less AI knowledge were 31% more likely to use AI and 29% more likely to describe it as magical. This sense of awe makes them prefer AI for tasks like writing or planning. To increase adoption, companies should highlight the "magic" of AI when targeting non-technical users, but avoid this approach with more technically savvy audiences.

GENERATIONAL MARKETING: WHY MARKETERS SHOULD NOT DISCOUNT AGE IN TODAY'S MEDIA LANDSCAPE

Age remains one of the strongest predictors of media preferences, shaping how different generations engage with platforms, devices, and content formats. While digital adoption is widespread, younger audiences often prioritize short-form, mobile-first experiences, whereas older generations continue to favor linear content, longer formats, and familiar platforms. These behavioral differences reflect deeper contrasts in motivations, such as the desire for discovery versus comfort, or speed versus depth, making age-informed segmentation essential for any campaign.

HOW THE EAGLES ARE TURNING TUSH PUSH DRAMA INTO A MARKETING MASTERCLASS

The Philadelphia Eagles are capitalizing on the NFL's failure to ban the "tush push" by turning it into a marketing campaign and fan rallying point. The team released a $40 "Push On" shirt and launched a wave of social media content, including a 26-minute video of tush push plays. A proposal to outlaw the play fell two votes short, with 22 in favor and 10 against, and only one of the Eagles' 2025 opponents voted to keep it. Retired center Jason Kelce reportedly helped influence the vote. The team has embraced the play as a core part of its identity and branding.

YOUTUBE TOPS DISNEY AND NETFLIX IN TV VIEWING, NIELSEN FINDS

YouTube is now the top TV distributor in the US, holding 12.4% of viewing time, up from 9.6% a year ago.

NIKHIL KAMATH X YOUTUBE CEO, NEAL MOHAN (65 MINUTE VIDEO)

YouTube CEO Neal Mohan joins Nikhil Kamath to discuss the platform's growth, why audiences trust podcasters more than traditional news, and how AI can enhance creativity.

6 ABANDONED CART EMAIL TEMPLATES THAT RECOVER REVENUE

The templates include simple reminders, discounts/incentives, and personalized recommendations.