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DISNEY INVESTS $1.5B IN FORTNITE MAKER EPIC GAMES

THE BAR FOR GOING PUBLIC

The bar for IPOs keeps creeping up. Median stats from 2015-2020 were $200m ARR, 50% YoY growth, and >120% net retention. With an abundance of impressive public SaaS companies from previous vintages, new IPOs will have to prove even more in order to attract attention.

WHY SILICON VALLEY IS STILL THE MOST FOUNDER-FRIENDLY PLACE TO RAISE CAPITAL

To get a term sheet, you need to kiss quite a few frogs. To get several, you need to kiss a lot. SV is the only place in the world that has enough depth, number of investors, and amount of capital to enable founders to shop around for term sheets at scale. This competition amongst investors gives leverage to founders, making the terms they get offered more friendly.

PRODUCT HUNT HAS BECOME PAY-TO-WIN, BUT YOU SHOULD STILL USE IT (5 MIN READ)

What does it take to succeed on Product Hunt today? A 6-time PH launching startup shares insights from its latest launch experience, covering how the platform has changed, its results, and tips to optimize your strategy.

HOW TO BUILD A SIMPLE GROWTH MODEL (10 MIN READ)

A growth model is a bit like a financial model. It’s something built on a spreadsheet designed to enable you to tweak inputs and see how they impact your growth so you can make better decisions about where you invest your time and efforts in acquiring users. For many early-stage startups, a full growth model is too complex. Here’s a more simple framework to use.

BUILDING A USAGE-BASED COMPENSATION PLAN FOR SALES (6 MIN READ)

With the increasing popularity of usage-based pricing, it's essential to create a sales compensation plan that is in line with this pricing model. This article provides a structure for developing a sales compensation plan that motivates the sales team to prioritize customer success.

GALILEO AI (PRODUCT)

Generate interface designs at lightning speeds.

FIGMA TO SHOPIFY (PRODUCT)

Copy and paste any Figma frame and export to Shopify.

GUIDE MAGNET (PRODUCT)

Create beautiful product marketing demos that convert.

INSIGHTS ABOUT THE MOST COMMON TERMS IN SAAS COMMERCIAL AGREEMENTS

You’re a new founder. You’re about to win your first enterprise customer. You send the contract, and they come back with a ton of red lines. What do you do? Read this. This benchmark report is the product of examining 1,000 SaaS commercial contracts in order to benchmark terms. It can help you make better decisions and get your contracts signed faster.

VERCEL’S PATH TO PRODUCT-MARKET FIT

Guillermo Rauch takes us through his journey building Next.js, an open-source web framework he created, to achieve extreme product-market fit with developer platform Vercel. This article unpacks the lessons he learned turning a passion project into a billion-dollar business.

THE STATE OF B2B CONTRACTS IN 2024

Your objective in negotiation is to make each party feel like they’re walking away with a good deal. This article unpacks some essential components of contracts, from terms to tactics around getting that final signature over the line before the end of the quarter.

HOW REPOSITIONING A PRODUCT ALLOWS YOU TO 8X ITS PRICE

Growth is far more valuable than lowering costs for most companies. You can likely justify pricing your product significantly higher by repositioning your offering from cost savings to helping your customers grow revenue.

THE CHALLENGE WITH USER RESEARCH

Do you run surveys with your users or ideal customer demographics to get insights? Well, how you build the question set is just as important as how you read the data. Take your time and pine over the words you use.

ADAM NEUMANN IS TRYING TO BUY BACK WEWORK

WeWork co-founder Adam Neumann, who stepped down in 2019, is attempting to buy the company out of bankruptcy. WeWork was once valued at $47 billion. It filed for bankruptcy last November, listing debts of over $18.6 billion at the time of filing.

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SECURITY FLAW IN A POPULAR SMART HELMET ALLOWED SILENT LOCATION TRACKING

Livall fixed a flaw allowing real-time location tracking of its connected helmets. The skiing and biking helmets featured group chats and location sharing via apps. Accessing a group only required an easy-to-guess numeric ID. Anyone was able to listen in and track locations.

CHINESE HACKING CAMPAIGN AIMED AT CRITICAL INFRASTRUCTURE GOES BACK FIVE YEARS

A CISA reveals that the Chinese threat actor Volt Typhoon has maintained footholds in critical infrastructure for at least five years. The report doesn’t mention any specific companies but mentions the rail, aviation, mass transit, highway, maritime, pipeline, water, and sewage industries.

CRITICAL BOOT LOADER VULNERABILITY IN SHIM IMPACTS NEARLY ALL LINUX DISTROS

The maintainers of Shim have released a new version to fix 6 security vulnerabilities, including one critical flaw that could allow for remote code execution. Shim is used as a first-stage bootloader in many Linux distros for UEFI systems. The vulnerability stems from Shim’s HTTP boot support trusting attacker-controlled values when parsing an HTTP response.

YARA THREAT DETECTION LAB

This article covers how to identify file IoCs and create YARA rules to detect malicious activity using tools like yarGen and Arya for generation and testing. Developing YARA skills is critical for security roles to detect and mitigate threats. YARA allows creating customized rules matching an organization's needs to classify malware based on signatures.

KMS KEY POLICY PRIVILEGE ESCALATION

This post presents an attack chain that could allow an AWS Administrator to override a KMS key policy that was restricted to only a specific identity. In this attack scenario, one admin can lock down a KMS key to their specific use, but another admin can bypass these restrictions by deleting the first admin’s IAM user, changing the contact on the AWS account, and then opening a ticket with AWS support to recover the key. As no identity will be able to access the key, AWS support will then contact the new phone number to verify the request and facilitate the reset. The post ends with some potential mitigations.

SHELLCODE EVASION USING WEBASSEMBLY AND RUST

Meterpreter and its helper PEs are easily detected by antivirus programs due to their age and widespread use. This can be overcome by leveraging WebAssembly, a low-level assembly-like language that can be run in web browsers and written in multiple backend languages. This article provides code examples in Rust and explains how to compile Rust to Wasm.

ANSIBLE ROLE HARDENING

Ansible role to apply a security baseline. Systemd edition.

RENGINE

reNgine is an automated reconnaissance framework for web applications with a focus on highly configurable streamlined recon processes via Engines, recon data correlation, and organization. It supports continuous monitoring and is backed by a database. reNgine has a simple yet intuitive User Interface.

ELECTRONIZ3R

electroniz3r is a tool that can take over macOS Electron apps’ TCC permissions and inject code into them.

CYBERCRIME DUO ACCUSED OF PICKING $2.5M FROM APPLE'S ORCHARD

Apple was likely defrauded of a total of $2.6M in gift cards/hardware by hackers Noah Roskin-Frazee and Keith Latteri via an Apple contractor. Though unnamed in the case, the victim matches Apple's description and location. The duo allegedly stole and resold items, cashing in on the theft from Apple and its customer support contractor.

US AGENCY DECLARES AI CLONED VOICE ROBOCALLS ILLEGAL

The FCC has officially banned robocalls using AI-generated voices, deeming them "artificial" and illegal under existing laws like the Telephone Consumer Protection Act. While fake AI celebrity calls will likely still plague phones, this makes it clear that such scams violate robocall prohibitions.

SURGE IN DEEPFAKE “FACE SWAP” ATTACKS PUTS REMOTE IDENTITY VERIFICATION AT RISK

A new report by biometric firm iProov shows that deepfake "face swap" attacks have increased by 704% from the first to the second half of 2023. Fraudsters are using off-the-shelf tools to create manipulated images and videos, making it easier to create convincing deepfakes. These deepfakes can trick remote identity verification systems into believing that the subject's "liveness" is real.

CRITICAL SECURITY ISSUE AFFECTING TEAMCITY ON-PREMISES (CVE-2024-23917) – UPDATE TO 2023.11.3 NOW

The vulnerability (CVSS 9.8 out of 10) affects all TeamCity On-Premises versions from 2017.1 through 2023.11.2 and allows for unauthenticated attacks.

HACK TRICKS PLAGIARIZED CONTENT FROM CLOUD CREATORS (X THREAD)

HackTricks stole content from others and may have included stolen content in its course. This thread contains screenshots with examples of the stolen content.

RANSOMWARE PAYMENTS REACHED RECORD $1.1B IN 2023

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CELEBRITIES AND BRANDS: IT’S TIME TO BEREAL

RealPeople and RealBrands are now live on BeReal. Notable celebrity accounts include Niall Horan, Joe Jonas, and Dixie D’Amelio. RealBrands accounts are supposed to include “real, spontaneous moments” – not ads. The app suggests brands post content such as a photo of the set-up for a big event or someone from a product team holding a prototype for the first time.

PODCASTERS CAN NOW UPLOAD THEIR RSS FEED TO YOUTUBE

Podcast creators can now submit their RSS feeds to YouTube and YouTube Music. Other platforms only make RSS feeds available for listeners, whereas YouTube takes episodes from an RSS feed and turns them into YouTube videos. This benefits audio-first podcasters since YouTube automatically takes an uploaded RSS feed and creates videos with the podcast’s show art as a static image.

CONNECT WITH YOUR IDEAL AUDIENCE WITH LINKEDIN THOUGHT LEADER ADS

The founder of Fame, a B2B podcast agency, posts thought leader content on his personal LinkedIn account and then boosts high-performing posts with LinkedIn Ads. He promotes these posts to a specific audience based on emails gathered from an AI-assisted targeting tool. This results in better-performing ads and more inbound leads.

THE 6 M’S OF AN ORGANIC SOCIAL MARKETING STRATEGY

This guide shares a 6-step social media strategy framework based on the book “Organic Social Media” by Jenny Li Fowler. The framework is centered on organically nurturing “base fans” rather than continually chasing new channels with no retention. It’s broken down into the 6 M’s: defining the Mission, crafting compelling Messages, creating a Process Management system, evaluating each Medium, tracking Metrics, and Monitoring conversations.

HOW TO BOOST YOUR SALES WITH A 7-STEP REFERRAL MARKETING PLAN

The 7 steps in building out a referral program include calculating the cost of acquisition (CAC), defining successful referrals, choosing rewards, defining the reward structure, and tracking progress. This post breaks down common structures for referral rewards including double-sided vs. single-sided campaigns, tiered rewards, and commission-based rewards. It also highlights key metrics to measure including the participation rate, referral rate, and ROI.

SPY ON YOUR COMPETITORS' ADS: 3 ESSENTIAL TOOLS

LinkedIn Ad Library is ideal for B2B marketers to analyze competitors’ messaging and targeting approaches on the platform. Google Ads Transparency enables you to gain insights into the ad copy and offers that work for your industry. Facebook Ad Library allows you to view your competitors' active Facebook and Instagram ads.

17 HIGH-CONVERTING LANDING PAGE EXAMPLES FOR INSPIRATION

This article contains high-converting landing page examples and best practices sourced from 37 companies. Effective landing pages are optimized for speed, have clear and prominent CTAs, and have had A/B tests conducted for various page elements. Additionally, they contain informative copywriting and engaging visuals or multimedia content.

10 WAYS TO HOOK PEOPLE

This detailed guide compiles the best ways to hook people and get their attention. It delves into 10 tactics, drawing from an analysis of thousands of viral posts and offering practical examples. A great hook is especially relevant on social media posts, YouTube videos, and presentations. Examples include leveraging credibility, inducing fear, sparking curiosity, presenting counter-narratives, and using eloquence.

ARE ADS MANAGER RESULTS TOO GOOD TO BE TRUE?

Ads Manager sometimes presents results that seem too good to be true, prompting advertisers to question their validity. Reasons for potential results inflation include over-reporting, discrepancies in attribution settings, and the possibility of event duplication or overcounting. This article suggests validating results through real-world comparison, checking attribution settings, and ensuring event tracking accuracy to confirm the data from the Ads Manager.

GOOGLE DEBUTS MORE POWERFUL “ULTRA 1.0” AI MODEL IN REBRANDED “GEMINI” CHATBOT

Google is introducing its enhanced AI model, "Ultra 1.0," as part of the rebranded "Gemini Advanced". Gemini is also coming to Google Workspace apps like Gmail, Docs, and Sheets.

THIS 'MEDICAL CONDITION' WAS LITERALLY INVENTED BY MARKETERS

By medicalizing bad breath as "halitosis," Listerine ingeniously transformed a common concern into a perceived medical condition. The move boosted sales significantly and set a precedent for marketing strategies that capitalize on consumer anxieties.

BLUESKY BARRELS TOWARD 1 MILLION NEW SIGN-UPS IN A DAY

Bluesky witnessed a remarkable influx of users within just a day of leaving its invitation-only beta phase, with over 850,000 new sign-ups.

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Read it here: Embedded iPaaS vs Unified APIs

THE FUTURE OF PROSUMER: THE RISE OF "AI NATIVE" WORKFLOWS

This piece discusses the potential of Generative AI in revolutionizing workflows, predicting a new wave of AI-native companies. It outlines key features such as generation tools, multimodal combinations, intelligent editing, in-platform refinement, and remixable output, envisioning a future where prosumer products seamlessly integrate AI and human-generated content.

THE APPLE VISION PRO

Reflecting on the transition from Diamond Rio to the iPod, this article explores Apple's Vision Pro's potential to revolutionize personal video consumption, drawing parallels with the iPod's past impact. Despite high expectations, the Vision Pro's current iteration falls short as a productivity tool, focusing instead on providing an exceptional entertainment experience.