Digital Leadership in Technology

4 months ago we got an impossible brief...gain 500K users in 3 months. I'm proud to say we just hit 2M users in 4 months, and still growing 10% WOW. To do this we didn't send a single email, pay for an ad, or an influencer, instead we used our community and our tech. Here's our Web3 growth playbook👇 The Web3 Growth Playbook: 1 - Build trust in the market: First you have to have people trust that you are worth their time. There are many projects offering quests, so why do yours? We highlighted our team, our tech, and our successes to prove we were a legit project and worth their time. 2 - Open the aperture: Wallet based quests limit you to Web3 natives. Our tech enables anyone with email or Apple/Google wallet to join in. This allowed us to go beyond just Web3 natives, to create a much larger community by making it easy to participate. 3 - Nail The Value Exchange: There needs to be value for people to take action. We used a combination of early community rewards paid out from our upcoming listing, partner rewards, early access to other projects, mentorships, NFT's, and Discord roles. 4 - Design Quests for key goals : We didn't just ask you to follow us on Discord, rather multiple steps; follow us, and then get a specific role. We didn't just ask you to tweet, we created AI prompts ensuring tweets were unique allowing us to create new trending hashtags each week. 5 - Keep up the momentum: We released new quests regularly, and enabled one off ways to earn points so our admins could award points to any member easily for things like answering question in Discord, participating in a emoji contest, or alerting us to a bug. 6 - Create Rewards: We leveraged our NFT technology to create the Smart Cats, an NFT derivative of a Cool Cat we own. Our community minted over 500K of them in a week. 7 - Create Ambassadors: We created an ambassador program and guided them as to what content to create. In exchange we gave them mentorship, status, and points in return. 8 - Activate your Ecosystem: We are now working with our partners to integrate our quests into theirs, have them offer rewards to our community, and to allow them to personalize experiences with our Smart Pass. So now the pass is the key to our ecosystem, not just our project giving it greater value. We built all of this from scratch with our tech because we didn't see what we wanted in the market. It's provided us with the flexibility to go beyond other questing solutions to drive rapid growth. > 4m individual quests completed in 120 days > 2M users in 120 days > 500K NFT minted in 1 week > 200k unique tweets in 2 weeks > Trending multiple #hashtags > 5k average attendance for Twitter Spaces This effort has been so successful we are now offering the playbook and the Growth Tooling to others. DM me if you're interested to see what we could do for your project.

Telstra just announced a MASSIVE bet on AI. Here's what you need to know 👇 → 𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗵𝗮𝗽𝗽𝗲𝗻𝗲𝗱? • Just one day after I predicted Aussie organisations will put AI to the test, Telstra announced 𝗮 𝗺𝗮𝘀𝘀𝗶𝘃𝗲 𝗔$700𝗠 𝗔𝗜 𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗿𝗵𝗮𝘂𝗹 in a joint venture with Accenture. → 𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁'𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗶𝗿 𝗽𝗹𝗮𝗻? • Details are still scarce but looks like a business-wide transformation to... • Scale AI broadly, from Gen AI to machine learning. • Target gains across the board from personalisation to productivity. → 𝗜𝘀 𝗔$700𝗠 𝗰𝗿𝗮𝘇𝘆? • Context: Telstra made $23.5bn in income and $7.5bn in EBITDA for FY24. • Most companies spend far less. This reflects Telstra’s scale and ambition. • I've built this stuff at world scale and it needs a lot of "non-AI" stuff like: - data platforms, vendor partnerships, leadership, top-tier talent, data engineering and science, program and product managers, experimentation, observability, and much more. • So, crazy? Maybe. Understandable? Definitely. → 𝗪𝗶𝗹𝗹 𝗶𝘁 𝗯𝗲 𝘄𝗼𝗿𝘁𝗵 𝗶𝘁? • Only time (and expert measurement) will tell. • 𝗕𝗲𝘀𝘁 𝗰𝗮𝘀𝗲: Huge returns and market leadership. • 𝗪𝗼𝗿𝘀𝘁 𝗰𝗮𝘀𝗲: $700M wasted on poor execution, damaging the business. → 𝗖𝗮𝗻 𝗜 𝘂𝘀𝗲 𝗔𝗜 𝗶𝗳 𝗜 𝗱𝗼𝗻'𝘁 𝗵𝗮𝘃𝗲 𝗔$700𝗠? • Absolutely. Smaller, focused AI projects can deliver big value. • Talk to an expert for tailored advice 👋😉 Telstra’s move is bold—and it’s worth watching. 𝗕𝘂𝘁 𝗵𝗲𝗿𝗲’𝘀 𝗺𝘆 𝗮𝗱𝘃𝗶𝗰𝗲: Don’t rush into AI decisions because of FOMO. Talk to someone who can give you an honest perspective first (like yours truly). What questions do you have about Telstra’s move—or AI in general? Let’s discuss below.

One of the most important findings coming out of the new behavioral science of AI is that LLMs are acquiring superhuman powers of persuasion. Adding to a string of recent papers, a new article found that LLMs were more effective than humans in changing people’s mind about sociopolitical issues, but only when they were provided basic demographic information about the person to be persuaded. Without personalization the LLM was not significantly more persuasive than people (although the direction of the difference points to a potentially significant effect with a larger sample). Interestingly, personal information did not help people be more persuasive in this study. The results show the effectiveness of microtargeting at scale via LLMs and have broad implications for business (especially marketing) and democracy. I’ll make a note to develop a fuller segment on this topic in my “AI in Our Lives” course at The Wharton School Link to article in comment. Wharton AI & Analytics Initiative

The CXO’s guide to Quantum Security Customers often tell me that the migration to post-quantum cryptography (PQC) will take them years, and some assets won’t ever be upgraded. While quantum’s long-term threat is clear, security leaders are grappling with the practical, multiyear journey of upgrading potentially thousands of devices, applications and data stores to be quantum-resistant. The “harvest now, decrypt later” threat raises the stakes. Nation-state actors are siphoning and stockpiling encrypted data today, waiting for the arrival of quantum computers to retroactively break it. The implication? Sensitive data may already be in the wrong hands and it’s only a matter of time before it can be put to use. What CXOs need is a clear path forward: Discover - Complete a comprehensive crypto inventory across your environment. You cannot protect what you cannot see. Protect - Achieve post-quantum decryption at scale with NGFW that have crypto-agility built right in, enabling your security as standards evolve.   Accelerate - Leverage segmentation along with emerging new capabilities, like cipher translation, to instantly upgrade legacy devices and applications to secure your data now while your organization upgrades devices and applications.  Read more https://bit.ly/4nVkurw

When we talk about AI in business, the focus is often on technology. Algorithms. Tools. Platforms. But here’s the truth: the real differentiator won’t be the tech. It will be leadership and culture. In the military, we lived by a simple mantra: adapt and overcome. No plan survives first contact. What matters is clarity of mission, resilience, and trust in your team. There’s a story every Naval Academy graduate knows: A Message to Garcia. During the Spanish-American War, President McKinley gave Lt. Rowan a letter to deliver to General García, hidden deep in the Cuban mountains. No instructions, no map—just the intent. Rowan found him and delivered it. That story captures what leadership in uncertainty requires: leaders define the why and the what, and trust their people to figure out the how. And that’s exactly what the AI era demands. AI is not just another channel shift like the move from traditional to digital. It’s a change in how organizations work. To thrive, leaders must set intent clearly and teams must build the right culture to execute. That means: ✅ Breaking silos early – AI doesn’t respect org charts; collaboration across brand, tech, media, and IT is non-negotiable. ✅ Committing to continuous learning – what works today may be obsolete in six months. Curiosity is a competitive advantage. ✅ Experimenting safely – best practices don’t exist yet; run safe-to-fail pilots and learn faster than competitors. ✅ Balancing speed with governance – one reckless move in AI can cost more in trust and reputation than any efficiency gain. ✅ Developing generalists – T-shaped professionals who understand not just their specialty, but how the pieces fit together. Boiled down: Leadership in the AI era means setting intent. Team culture means creating the conditions for that intent to succeed. Together, they are the true differentiator. AI isn’t just a technology wave. It’s a test of leadership and culture. Those who can adapt and overcome will define the future of business. 👉 I’d love to hear your perspective: What are you doing to prepare your teams—and your leadership—for the realities of AI?

CISA, NIST, and NSA recommend how to prepare now for postquantum cryptography The National Security Agency (NSA), Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA), and National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) warn in a new report that cyber actors could target our nation’s most sensitive information now and leverage future quantum computing technology to break traditional non-quantum-resistant cryptographic algorithms. This could be particularly devastating to sensitive information with long-term secrecy requirements.   “The transition to a secured quantum computing era is a long-term intensive community effort that will require extensive collaboration between government and industry. The key is to be on this journey today and not wait until the last minute” said Rob Joyce, Director of NSA Cybersecurity.   The report contains recommendations for organizations to develop a quantum-readiness roadmap and prepare for future implementation of the post-quantum cryptographic (PQC) standards, which NIST expects to publish in 2024. CISA, NIST, and NSA urge organizations to start preparing for the implementation of post-quantum cryptography by doing the following: 👉 Establish a Quantum-Readiness Roadmap 👉 Engage with technology vendors to discuss post-quantum roadmaps. 👉 Conduct an inventory to identify and understand cryptographic systems and assets. 👉 Create migration plans that prioritize the most sensitive and critical assets.   https://lnkd.in/d-pwgbWC #postquantumcryptography #quantumcomputing #cybersecurity

Everyone’s been obsessing over where LLMs get their information. From Reddit, Medium, Quora, community posts. Turns out that’s true for awareness queries, but not for buying intent queries. Kevin White and the Scrunch team just dropped research that completely reframes this. They analyzed 10 product categories and 25+ buying-intent prompts per category, then mapped which sites LLMs (ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, etc.) actually cite. Reddit didn’t even make the top three. For high-intent searches, niche expert sites, product review ecosystems, and category authorities dominate. Over 70% of all citations came from what Kevin calls the long, long tail, smaller, trusted niche sites. ‼️ That’s the piece B2B tech marketers need to consider when they think about AI visibility. When buyers ask things like: “What’s the best observability platform for large-scale data pipelines?” or “Which endpoint security tools scale best for hybrid environments?” LLMs aren’t pulling from your homepage or your latest thought-leadership post. They’re pulling from third-party nodes like analyst reports, customer communities, review ecosystems, integration directories, niche publishers, and technical blogs that have domain-level trust within your category. If you’re serious about being surfaced in AI-driven buying intent searches, the strategy shifts from: • chasing rankings to seeding authoritative nodes; • optimizing your pages to optimizing your ecosystem presence; • publishing content to engineering credible citations    Your AI visibility footprint isn’t where your content lives, but it’s where your credibility gets validated. Brilliant work from Kevin and the Scrunch team. This data finally quantifies something we’ve been observing in audits for months: LLMs mirror how trust clusters in the buying funnel. And if your brand isn’t part of that trust graph, you’re invisible when it matters most. (link to Scrunch research in comments)

When was the last time you heard a telco proudly talk about disrupting ITSELF? Not the usual BS about "digital transformation" while still running on systems from 1997. I'm talking about real, foundational change. Just dropped a great conversation with Mark Sanders, Telstra's Chief Architect and Head of Autonomous Networks and AI Enablement. While most telcos are still trying to figure out what AI even means for them, Telstra is already codifying telco knowledge into structured ontologies to power truly autonomous networks. Mark and I dive into: • How they're moving beyond automation to true autonomy in networks • Why their composable architecture (TRAM) is the secret weapon for innovation • The role of ontology and knowledge in creating agentic AI systems that can actually REASON like your best network engineer If you're waiting for AI to mature before making your move, you're already behind. As Mark says, "I don't think in my 30 years I've ever seen such a significant change in technology and in the industry as we're going through right now." The telcos who survive won't be the ones with the biggest networks or the most customers - they'll be the ones bold enough to fundamentally rethink how they operate. Listen now. Link in first comment. #telecommunications #AI #agenticai

The biggest winners in web3 won’t just build products—they’ll build ecosystems Here’s how we accidentally ended up doing both: When we entered web3 in 2021, we thought we were building a tech platform to help crypto companies grow But it quickly became clear: There was no growth ecosystem yet No playbooks. No community. No investor interest in the tools growth leaders actually needed So before we could build a product, we had to build the market around it In February 2022, we launched the first-ever community for crypto marketers—40 people sharing ideas, challenges, and lessons As the community grew, so did the category More builders entered. Tools for analytics, messaging, incentives, and attribution started to appear But investors still didn’t take web3 growth seriously. So in October 2022, we published the first market map with 70 growth tooling companies That changed everything What was once ignored had structure: • VCs paid attention • Funding flowed • And we got funded too (our lead VC came to us inbound 🤗) And by 2023, “web3 growth” was a real market Only then did we begin scaling our own customer data platform But there was still one more problem: marketing lacked credibility in crypto Unlike in web2, web3 marketers didn’t have influence—yet So in February 2024, we hosted the first-ever Safary Summit—a full day dedicated to web3 marketing, with 25 top minds across 11 panels The impact was immediate More summits followed. More communities launched. In 2022 and 2023, there were zero web3 marketing conferences. In 2024, there were dozens At the same time, top web3 marketers began building personal brands—giving the function visibility, legitimacy, and power Some people pushed back That’s when we knew it was working Today, our platform is growing faster than ever—because we didn’t just build a product We built the sandbox everyone else is now playing in That’s the opportunity in web3: Don’t just chase markets—create them

Ignore it at your peril: Domain authority’s generative AI facelift is already upending SEO in massive ways. It’s a profound reputational trust signal for large language models (LLMs) that increasingly shape what people see, know, and believe. The best PR and advocacy campaigns have always understood this: 📣 Get quoted in The Wall Street Journal or GovTech(or similar trade publication) 🧠 Land in a respected journal or .gov brief 🎤 Amplify through experts and third parties But here’s what’s changed: In the past, you could fake it with keyword stuffing, clever backlinks, or glossy brand PDFs. Now, LLMs don’t just crawl the web. They rank trust and they’re ruthless about what counts. You can’t cheat your way into AI’s top answers. You have to earn your place. Here’s what it takes in 2025 versus 2023: 1️⃣ It’s not just about your site—it’s your full reputational footprint. LLMs love to elevate: 💘Credible news outlets that cite you (and that have licensing deals with one of the big engines like OpenAI) 💘.gov/.edu domains linking to you 💘Peer-reviewed publications and vetted transcripts 💘Podcasts, hearings, and expert panels where your message shows up If your story lives only or mostly in branded spaces, it may not train the model at all. 2️⃣ Repetition = Recognition Generative AI doesn’t care too much about your one-off splash. It cares about consistent signals from multiple credible sources beyond you. In this world, repetition ≠ spam. Repetition = truth. 3️⃣ A company blog ≠ a quote in STAT News LLMs reward: ✅ High-trust, long tenured media platforms ✅ Named experts with credible bios ✅ Clean, traceable attribution and citations. ✅ Crawlable, licensed open-access content They discount: ❌ Anonymous thought leadership ❌ PDFs with no metadata ❌ Vague, overpolished brand-speak and advotorial ❌ Untrusted or parody “news” sites. 4️⃣ Real authority = being cited, not just being loud To influence models (and humans), your message needs: 📍 Attribution 📍 Verifiability 📍 Third-party alignment You’re not just training GPT—you’re training the ecosystem around it. ⚠️ TL;DR: You’re no longer building domain authority for old school Google. You’re building it for ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude; and every policymaker, journalist, investor, or patient asking them for answers. This is reputational infrastructure. And in the generative AI era, domain authority is narrative authority and it must be EARNED the old fashioned way. Build it with intention folks or be left behind