OP #256: Blackberry, Phishing, and Caitlin Clark's New Shoe Deal

Happy Tuesday OP Community,

I hope you had a wonderful weekend and your week is off to a great start.

This will be the last Operating Partner letter for the next couple of weeks as I will be head down with some work trips and some final preparations for the Silicon Alley Sports event. I think there are less than 10 schmoozer tickets available if anyone wants to attend.

The family and I just got back from just under a week in Bermuda. It’s one of our favorite destinations because it’s less than two hours away and you are on a beautiful island with both European + Caribbean charm. The waters are gorgeous and rival some of the best Caribbean islands we’ve been to. The people are super friendly and the food is delicious, especially the Wahoo and Red Snapper, which are pulled fresh from the water.

📈 ComScore released it’s 2024 State of Digital Commerce Report. To be honest, it’s a bit of a snoozer but it has a few nuggets.

👟🏀 Love this piece in the WSJ about how Nike Won The Battle for Caitlin Clark. Sabrina Ionescu’s “Sabrina 1” are all over the NBA… imagine what Clark can do as well…

💡 For those who were at Possible (Miami) this year, how was it? Caroline McCarthy (hi!) had a solid writeup on behalf of Infillion: The 5 Biggest Trends at Possible 2024. The Drum also provides a good recap of the conference.

🎞 Love seeing Aug X Labs listed in this article in AdWeek about 12 Hot AI Startups that Brands Are Working With. I am an early angel investor in the business which turns words into videos in minutes: AI video editing.

🏀 What a letter by Jalen Brunson to the NYC fanbase. He’s won the hearts and minds of New York and is our true leader. Lots of Derek Jeter-esque qualities from Jalen. As a passionate Knicks fan, I couldn’t be happier with him on the team.

📶 I watched the Blackberry movie on my holiday. I had no idea it existed until I saw it on the JetBlue movie menu. I thought it was really good - my wife agreed and mentioned that it had the Social Network movie vibe to it. I had the 8700 and the Curve. They worked almost flawlessly for me and I loved them. The movie reminded me that at one point, BB had 45% of the mobile phone market… until 2008 and the iPhone came along.

Here are some links to get us started:

• What Is a Magazine Now? A Deep Dive Into Highsnobiety (NYT)

• Millennials Are Coming for Your Golf Communities (WSJ)

• The POV from Possible: When Will The Digital Ad Industry Stop Navel-Gazing and Realize Its Potential? (AdExchanger)

• There Are Plenty of Power Publicists. But Only One Works For Taylor Swift (WSJ)

• 4 Signs Your Email Was Written by AI and Why It Matters (Fast Company)

I hope you enjoy this week’s Operating Partner letter. If you have any feedback, please do not hesitate to reach out.

Darren

Beyond the Nigerian Prince: The Alarming Future of Scams in the Age of AI

It’s hard not to smile or laugh when you receive an email from the “Nigerian Prince” who wants to offer you $1,000,000 if you provide your bank account details. We’ve all been there and have received our fair share of scam emails. The economics of the scam emails actually work and there are plenty of folks who fall for this.

I am legitimately concerned for where the future of scamming and phishing attacks are headed. When voice and image can be replicated almost flawlessly, scams will go up exponentially. This is scary to think about.

Interesting to see the Google Trends data showing phishing attacks surpassing Nigerian Prince interest over time.

To give a sense of size and scale, it’s estimated that Google blocks 100M phishing attack emails per day. With that said, over 3B phishing emails are sent per day, so even with Google, we’re blocking only a small %.

My brother and I tell my parents who are in their 70s to send us any and all emails that look suspicious which they might consider responding to. Many of these emails are scams or fraud.

In the past year, I have almost fallen for two scams that used text/voice/email and leaned into my crypto holdings. I generally have a good sense of what could be fraudulent and if I was close to falling for it, I imagine many others would as well.

Realizing there is no way to stop attacks from happening as scammers will just adopt an evolved process, how do we protect ourselves? Enterprises are working on this and at work, we have a variety of investments in this space. But what about individuals?

This has been a topic that’s been on my mind for a while now. I think GenAI advantages the scammer in many regards.

Are any OP subscribers working on anything in this space?

OP Links

Here are some interesting articles that I read in the last week. If you come across an article that you believe would be a great addition to future OP letters, don't hesitate to share it with me. However, please note that I retain the discretion to decide on the content that goes into each OP letter.

The Case for CEO Succession Planning (Russell Reynolds)

How Neopets Nostalgic Revival Tripled Users in 6 Months (The Guardian)

Music GPT’s Moment (Beats & Bites)

Brands Like Sweetgreen Are Wrestling With Google Search’s Growing Complexity (AdWeek)

Snap Plans to Add Watermarks to It’s AI Generated Content (Techcrunch)

New Ad Agencies Are Opening Rapidly - Inside the Trend and How They Can Survive (AdAge)

How Undersea Internet Cables Are Maintained (The Verge)

Inside Amazon’s Secret Operation to Gather Intel on Rivals (WSJ)

AI Isn’t Useless. But Is It Worth It? (Citation Needed)

Retreat to MMM Podcast (AdExchanger)

The CMO’s Remit Is Expanding Dramatically, Say Top Marketers at Possible (The Drum)

Creators at Cannes Lions 2024 - Inside the Revamped Influencer Marketing Plans at the Festival (AdAge)

Why Time’s Taylor Swift Feature Was Marked Brand Unsafe (AdWeek)

Gamers Are Renting Their Idle GPUs to Generate AI Porn (404 Media)

Which Half of Your Media Isn’t Working? (Nathan Hugenberger)

Netflix Dealt With the Freeloaders. Its Next Act Will Be Tougher. (WSJ)

4A’s Measurement Committee Says New Currencies Aren’t Ready (AdExchanger)

Adtech Intelligence with Keith Gooberman

A few OP’s ago, I mentioned a video series that friend and former colleague, Keith Gooberman was doing on LinkedIn. His video episodes (2 mins each) have been dropping on Monday mornings. They are in the weeds of ad/marketing technology and a good watch. Click the image below for the latest.

Kudos to Tyler for making these videos happen with Keith.