Stories, ideas, and updates
Performance marketing captures demand. Brand creates it. Just ask Nike.
Nike sells shoes, yet the swoosh makes you feel more than a shoe company. Then they shifted the budget to performance marketing, the brand hollowed out, and Hoka took running. Performance captures demand; brand creates it. If Nike can forget that, your Series B can too.
Why “data is the new oil” falls apart in creative work
Founders love to say data is the new oil and the proprietary dataset wins. For infrastructure, sure. But in brand and creative work, more data just buys you more average. The real asset is a strategist willing to say the obvious thing nobody else will.
Why AI labs are racing to hire forward deployed engineers
Forward deployed engineer roles are up 800% and the AI labs are pouring billions into "deployment companies." The people winning them aren’t prompt wizards. They’re translators who can read a legacy schema and survive a compliance review.