Cloudflare supports more than 20% of total internet traffic. The company recently made headlines with breakthrough technology that blocks AI companies from scraping online content with impunity. Cofounder and CEO Matthew Prince shares how the new tools are poised to dramatically impact AI firms, publishers, and the future of the internet.
This is an abridged transcript of an interview from Rapid Response, hosted by Robert Safian, former editor-in-chief of Fast Company. From the team behind the Masters of Scale podcast, Rapid Response features candid conversations with todays top business leaders navigating real-time challenges. Subscribe to Rapid Response wherever you get your podcasts to ensure you never miss an episode.
You released a new tool that’s got a lot of folks buzzing: a blocker for AI crawlersthe bots that scrape content from websites without their consent. You’ve called this new tool the biggest thing you or the company has ever accomplished?
Yeah. I feel incredibly fortunate to have built what today is a $60 billion company on the back of the internet. And we became aware about 18 months ago of a new threat to the internet, to content creators, which was being posed by these AI companies. When we realized that there was something we could do about it, we spent about a year talking to everyone in the content creation space, everyone in the AI space. . . . We’re going to change the rules of the road, and say that if you’re not paying for content as an AI company, then you don’t get that content.
Today it’s almost 10 times harder to get actual traffic from Google for the same amount of content you created. The minute you show an AI overview, it’s less likely that people click on links. And again, that is better for the Google user, but it is worse for the content creator because it means that you can’t sell a subscription, you can’t sell ads, and you can’t even get the ego boost of knowing that people are reading your stuff.
Today, OpenAI is 750 times harder to get traffic from than the Google of old. Anthropic is 30,000 times harder to get traffic from than the Google of old. And so, if content creation is struggling today [when its] 10 times harder, I worry that it won’t survive [if its] 750 times or 30,000 times harder [to read] original content. . . . And if people don’t have the incentive to create content, they’re not going to create content. So there needs to be some business model behind the future of the web, and it’s not going to be around traffic because an AI-driven web doesn’t drive traffic.
And the irony is that the AI itself needs the content to be able to make those answers. Now who knows where they’re going to get their answers from.
That’s the key: 80% of the major AI companies use Cloudflare in their infrastructure. What they have all said, with a few exceptions, is We agree, content creators need to get paid for content, but it has to be a level playing field. What nobody wants to do is pay for content where all of their competitors get it for free. So, creating that level playing field is incredibly important.
Just Anthropic will scrape a site 60,000 times for every one visitor that’s there. Someone has to pay for that traffic. Just from a pure fairness perspective, they should be compensating creators that they’re pulling that content from.
We started as a cybersecurity company. We go to war every day with Russian hackers, Iranian hackers, North Korean hackers, Chinese hackers who are trying to get in and thwart our systems. So when we first started talking to publishers about this, it was almost this sort of nihilistic, Oh my gosh, what are we possibly going to do? There’s no way we can stop it. These guys are so smart, they’re a bunch of nerds in Palo Alto. . . . We can’t ever possibly block them. And I remember thinking, We block the North Koreans every day. AI companies are a piece of cake.
Before you release the first round of this tool, did you give the AI companies a heads-up?
I think there are some bad actors out there, and I think it’ll surprise some people who the bad actors are. We’re monitoring them, and very soon we will publish and we will name and shame who is actually a bad actor in this space. And we will take from what has been basically posting a speed limit sign that says Don’t drive more than 55 miles an hour . . . and we’ll make it into something that is actually much more strict. We’re saying, Listen, we’re taking away your car, you’re not allowed to drive on the road anymore.
I understand you’re exploring sort of a pay-per-crawl model with some of the content publishers, which to me sounds a little bit like a toll on the highwaythat you have to pay a toll if you want to come through.
If you are generating a huge amount of cost by crawling somebody, but you’re not giving them any benefit, then step one is block them. Then once you’ve created scarcity, then there can be a market, right?
There has to be some compensation for taking content, and it’s not going to be traffic anymore, it’s going to be something else. Now the question is, Okay, how do you pay? And I think a lot of times, big AI companies and big publishers are just going to negotiate deals themselves. So if you’re Condé Nast, you go out and do an OpenAI deal, or a Google deal, or something else, and you negotiate it yourself. We don’t have any role in that. I think for the smaller AI companies, or for the long tail of publishers, Cloudflare can hopefully sit in between and help negotiate what is the best deal. And we don’t know exactly what that will look like yet. It could be a micropayment every time a page is accessed. It could be something that’s closer to a Spotify model where there’s a pool of funds and that gets distributed out to all of the different content providers. . . . That will develop, but step one in any market has to be scarcity. If you don’t have scarcity, you don’t have a market.
I’m actually optimistic [that] all of us are going to have subscriptions to a certain number of AI agents that are out there. And how AI companies will differentiate themselves is access to unique content that they have and they have alone. So, imagine Taylor Swift is about to release a new album, and she does an interview with some journalists, and they are willing to give that interview to one AI company exclusively for a week. How much is that worth? Probably quite a bit, right? A lot of people are going to sign up. And so, I’m actually optimistic that we might be at the precipice of a golden age of content creation.
If we do this right, and we get the incentives right, it might be that instead of us all worshiping the deity that Google taught us to worship, which is traffic, which has always been a really bad proxy for value, if instead we find a way to compensate creators based on when they actually create something which is worthwhile and advances human knowledge, we can actually do some real good in the world, at the same time that wehelp the content creators get paid more.
Successful innovationespecially breakthrough innovation that drives sustainable, long-term growthrequires getting a lot of things right along the whole innovation journey, from concept development to commercial launch.
Some of the key steps along this path are well understood and generate lots of attention, among them understanding and building product/market fit, soliciting customer feedback early, and gauging customer willingness to pay.
But even the best companies and the most innovation-minded, C-suites can get innovation wrong. In our book Predictable Winners, we leveraged the experience of hundreds of projects, analyzed company case studies, and examined a lookback study of 100 innovations.
As a result, we determined that several mistakes are quite commonand can put the overall success of an innovation at risk.
There are three deadly sins that stifle innovation. Most innovators make them. They are:
Sin #1: Picking the wrong early adopters
A key decision in any businessand a critical one for innovatorsis determining who your target customers are and arent. The right answer is a byproduct of effective customer segmentation.
For innovators, its especially critical to identify early adopters. But doing that correctly is not as simple as it seems.
Many innovators assume that early adopters are simply those customers who are willing to use their products first. Not so. Anyone can sell a handful of products to friends, family, and tech junkies. The right question to ask during the initial market-testing phase is, which customers seem most excited and passionate about the product? Who is clamoring for the opportunity to try it? Early adopters are not just customers willing to buy your product before anyone elsethey are the customers who love your product.
Their passion and loyalty help you build a sustainable base of customers who serve as a reference and can unlock network effects for later adopters. In other words, early adopters need to care disproportionately about your value proposition. Often, they are a subset or micro-segment within a broader group you have identified through your segmentation processoften the bull’s-eye of that customer segment. Lululemons initial strategy was to target young women with active lifestyles for their line of fashionable but action-friendly apparel. Within that segment, female yoga teachers became the early adopter group. Intuitive Surgical found that the early adopters for their da Vinci robotic-assisted surgery systems were not, as expected, cardiac surgeons but rather urologists who loved da Vinci because it gave them their first-ever option for removing prostates via a minimally invasive surgical procedure.
As an innovator, you need to intentionally define the early adopters. Then, determine what the subsequent target customer segments will be. The right group of early adopters can build a lasting foundation and help unlock the customer runway. Intentionality makes this a strategic and conscious choice. Dont let your early adopters just happen to you.
Sin #2: Playing chess with yourself
A great innovation will generate swift, fierce competition. Many innovators are surprised at the speed and intensity of competitive response.
In fact, one of the most common mistakes innovators make is to underestimate their competitors and underinvest in understanding how their competitors will respond. Theyre too focused on their own product and their own customers. They do insufficient research on their expected competitorsand on the individuals who lead those companies. They subconsciously bias their moves based on what they want the other side to do. They assess competitive responses far too optimistically and fail to anticipate the full range of competitors actions. As a result, they often underestimate how quickly competitors come to market and how much impact that speed to market can havethis holds true in markets as different as pharmaceuticals and automotive (e.g., Teslas launch of the Model 3).
What these innovators are doing is playing chess with themselves instead of the competition. When you do that, youre always tempted to have your opponent play the game you want them to play. This is just human nature, right?
A better move is to conduct a wargame. An effective wargame forces you and your team to role-play as if you were the competitor. If you can do that successfully, you will be well positioned to understand how and why your competitors go to market. That means you will be able to predict their behaviorwhich in turn, will enable you to pursue the right strategy to win in the marketplace.
Wargaming demands that you gather data on your competitors. These days, theres typically no shortage of data available. But many innovators do this homework incompletely. Keep this in mind: you cant know your competitors too well. Data gathering will help you understand their true competitive advantages. The exercise will help you understand the range of competitive actions but also keep them in bounds. In effective wargaming, many ideas for possible actions can come up, but in most cases only a few paths will appear to be rational and likely.
The focus should be on competitive advantage. Lets keep it simple: A competitive advantage is the reason a competitor wins. Often, there arent that many entries on that list, and theyre not necessarily the most inspiring attributes. They may be strong relationships with hard-to-reach customers, control of a channel, expertise with manipulating a raw material, brand longevity, size of an installed base, and so onall examples of real, tangible competitive advantages, which are both hard to replicate and contribute significantly to a winning strategy. Again, your competitive homework needs to help you to understand whats on the short list for each of your key competitors.
This cuts both ways, though. Sometimes, your competitive advantage may simply be the flexibility to do things your competitors cant. Among U.K. supermarkets in the early 1990s, Tesco was always a little behind the market leader, Sainsbury’s: lower share, lower margins, and a more down-market positioning. Ten years later, Tesco was twice the size of Sainsbury’s. How did that happen? While its true that Tesco innovated, for example with its loyalty program, the big reason they were able to gain share was simply that they built more stores. Sainsbury’swith the founding family still owning a significant stake targeted a hefty 21% return on equity. Tesco, by contrast, was happy with 18%. This helped fund expansion and gave them more freedom to respond to low-price discounters. Investors were happy, too, because they could see the company was growing and gaining share.
The disciplined competitive analysis that results from wargaming can reveal similar trajectories. In our experience, we have seen aha moments arise when previously hypothesized actions or scenarios are proven to be off-base and are replaced by more likely and more nuanced expectations for competitive responses.
Butand this is an important caveatnot all competitive responses and not all business strategies are rational. This is where knowing individual leaders pays off. Factoring in the styles, track record, and biases of competitors leaders is essential if you are going to anticipate their moves.
No matter how you proceed, keep in mind that the essential point of wargamingand indeed, of most steps along the path of innovationis to never assume that yu are smarter than your competitors. Dont underestimate them.Its almost always better to overestimate themand then be pleasantly surprised when they play into your chess game.
Sin #3: Discovering barriers to adoption only when you launch
All of the innovation planning in the world comes to nothing if the new product or service fails at launch. There is one goal at launchcustomer adoption. Here is where planning can and must pay off.
Perhaps the most impactful mistake innovators make is failing to develop a deep enough understanding of their customers before launch.
In particular: Before launch is when you must proactively identify and mitigate barriers to adoption that can spell the death of your innovation.
The last thing you want is to find out that there is something that keeps your customers away from your productand that you only found out about it when youve started commercialization.
True, you can still take action at that point. But your options are severely limited. At best, you can adapt and find a way to overcome them. At worst, you can scuttle your launchand hope you dont scuttle the company along with it.
Best practitioners understand the whole scope of the customers purchasing journey and all the possible barriers that arise at each step. It is also essential to understand the relative importance of these barriers. How severe are they? And how many of your potential customers do they impact?
Once you have a thorough handle on your customer purchasing dynamics, you then canand mustmake it your key prelaunch objective to identify and mitigate those adoption barriers.
Those barriers are simply reasons not to adopt. They vary by customer segment, by stakeholder, and by where they occur along the purchasing journey.
You wont necessarily be able to impact all of thembut if you anticipate them, you can at least know which ones you may be able to impact. Take a systematic approachuse the customer purchase journey as an organizing principle. This journey can be generalized into several phases: Awareness, Consideration, and Conversion. Many other versions of the customer journey (or marketing funnel) exist. You can tailor them to your specific needs.
Uber succeeded in identifying three barriersnot having the legal right to operate locally, not having enough drivers, and not attracting enough customers. With that knowledge in hand, Uber was able to formulate a plan of attack. Without the resources to lobby each local market, Uber chose to ignore the established regulatory framework, first establishing itself as a gig economy alternative for drivers and a less expensive, more convenient option for customers. Only then did it address policymakersusing its drivers and riders as a political force. The company had specific plans to overcome the adoption barriers for each target community. Incentives and bonuses helped build driver ranks. Careful analysis quantified how many consumers might leak out at each stage of the customer journey and indicated how to mitigate those barriers (and which to prioritize). Extensive (and localized) advertising and marketing along with safety features like GPS tracking served to allay consumer concerns and turn them into Uber riders. Many of Ubers tactics were questionablenot all were praiseworthy. For example, their decision to ignore local regulations in some communities was rightly subject to sharp criticism. But Ubers story does serve to illustrate how a systematic approach to barriers drives strategic choicesand how those choices in turn drive adoption.
Uber also illustrates that not all adoption barriers are created equal. It turns out that in many situations, its possible to quantitatively assess the impact of each adoption barrier, and this assessment can help you prioritize the order in which to tackle them. An effective way to do this is to conduct a leakage analysis along the customer journeysimply stated, how many customers leak out from the purchasing journey at each step? Understanding why such leakage occurs, where it is most significant, and what steps you as the innovator can take to minimize leakage can be very powerful.
Sin no more
While there is no doubt that the innovation sins can be deadly, they can also be overcome. A systematic approach is the key. By anticipating competitors actions and establishing a deep understanding of the customer journeyand by establishing gates and safeguards at each critical stepits possible to greatly reduce the risks of innovation and ensure that the process of developing breakthrough products and services will be predictablewith much greater odds of success.
Zohran Mamdanis victory in the New York City Democratic mayoral primary is sending shockwaves through the real estate market. But even though the 33-year-old won at the polls, some influential New Yorkers aren’t sold on his democratic socialist policiesincluding a promise to freeze rents.
The mayoral candidate campaigned on a promise to immediately freeze the rent for all 2 million-plus New Yorkers living in rent-stabilized apartments, and to triple the citys stock of affordable housing by constructing 200,000 new units over the next 10 years.
That plan is certainly ruffling some feathers. Mamdani’s mayoral primary victory in June was followed by a one-day sell-off in shares of companies with significant exposure to the New York real estate market, as well as threats of a mass exodus by some of the citys wealthiest denizens.
Such policies might sound attractive (and clearly appealed to voters), but there are those in the real estate industry who are skeptical. In particular, some experts caution that while Mamdani is well-intentioned, he may be naive about the realities of New Yorks housing situation. And even if a rent freeze could be enacted rather quickly, it takes many years to get an adequate supply of new housing on the market.
The concern among the real estate community is that while a rent freeze might provide short-term relief for tenants, it also risks raising market rents and causing long-term damage to building maintenance, rental supply, and investment interest, John Walkup, cofounder of New York-based UrbanDigs, tells Fast Company, noting that a rent freeze could accelerate the bifurcation between rental rates for regulated versus market-rate housing.
According to Walkup, if landlords with mixed portfolios of housing units aggressively increase the rents for market-rate apartments to offset the losses for regulated units, the people who ultimately stand to pay the price of well-intentioned policies are other renters. And there are other potential consequences: Landlords could defer maintenance or upgrades, while there might be a rise in warehoused units that landlords intentionally keep off the market.
(Mamdanis campaign did not respond to several requests to offer comment on the arguments described in this story.)
Maintenance woes
Landlords of smaller properties are going to face the most challenges, argues Peter Bafitis, managing principal at RKTB Architects in New York.
Many buildings with subsidized and rent-stabilized housing are older, and older buildings typically require more maintenance. Meanwhile, Bafitis says, the cost of materials and labor have skyrocketed in recent years.
These owners are struggling to keep up with regular building maintenance and needed repairs, he says. Whats been happening is that these smaller landlords have not been renovating apartments and theyre letting them be vacant because the finances dont make sense.
These landlords rely on moderate rent increases to maintain their buildings, Bafitis says, noting that if thats taken off the tableand theres no commensurate relief for landlords, say in the form of reduced taxes or utilities coststhey will face a legitimate burden that will ultimately affect renters.
Supply issues
Like Walkup, Bafitis says any holistic solution to New Yorks housing problem must address supply: If you only deal with one side of the equation, its not going to work.
The construction of regulated housing depends on private investment, but a rent freeze could deter outside investments in buildings that are often valued based on potential rent increases, Walkup says, noting that if theres no carrot for investorsbe it in the form of rent increases, subsidies, or tax incentivesthey could find it less appealing to invest in regulated buildings and more attractive to invest in market-rate buildings instead.
Because of the public-private partnership thats required to build this type of housing, if elected, Mamdani would have to find a way to partner with the private sector. There has to be something in it for them, thats the only way for it to work, Bafitis says.
And even with partners on board, there are logistical hurdles to overcome. Building a large supply of new houses quickly? Fuggedaboudit, Bafitis says. “Not in New York City.”
Thats a reality he deals with on a daily basis as an architect. Whereas it once took one to three years to bring a small-scale project to completion, the timeline has now stretched to more like five to seven years. Its just because of the red tape, he says. Its mind-boggling.
Finding middle ground
While both Walkup and Bafitis commend Mamdani for focusing his campaign on issues of housing affordability, they say a holistic solution is necessary to truly address this problem. And, to be fair, there are a lot of ifs to be sorted out between now, the general election in November, and Mamdani potentially taking office.
Like many politicians before him, Mamdani, if elected mayor, may walk back some of the promises he made as a candidate. While a rent freeze is a great slogan, Mamdani would have to be a consensus-builder as mayor and find ways to work with the various well-entrenched forces in the industry, Bafitis says, adding, Housing is an incredibly complicated business in New York.
Finally, all the bluster this month about Mamdanis potential impact on the housing market might be a bit much, particularly with more than three months until the general electionand plenty of time for him to refine his agenda.
Usually, the initial reaction is a knee jerk that leans in the direction of the worst-case scenario, Walkup says.
Ty Haney is wearing a blinged-out zip hoodie, with the words “Doing Things” emblazoned in diamanté. This was the motto of Outdoor Voices, the activewear brand she founded in 2013 at the age of 23.
Five years ago, Haney left Outdoor Voices in the midst of crisis. Reports swirled that Haney was experiencing conflict with retail magnate Mickey Drexler, who had been brought in as chairman, and that the company was losing money. Last year, Outdoor Voices shuttered all retail stores and was acquired by the private equity group Consortium Brand Partners. And in a twist, Consortium reached out to Haney to see if she would want to come back to lead the company again.
Haney said no. In her time away from Outdoor Voices, she had launched two other companies: Joggy, an energy drink brand that is now sold at Target, and Try Your Best (TYB), a consumer loyalty platform with 200 brands on it. “I was, like, ‘No, I’m busy,” she recalls. “I enjoy what I’m doing.”
[Photo: Outdoor Voices]
It wasn’t just that Haney had a lot on her plate, running two startups as a mother of two. It was also that her departure had been so traumatic. Haney was part of a broader wave of female founders who left their companies over the last five years, sometimes in a shroud of disgrace, in what has been described as the end of the girlboss era. Steph Korey, cofounder of Away, stepped down after being accused of creating a toxic work environment. Yael Aflalo, founder of Reformation, stepped aside because of allegations of racism. Gregg Renfrew, founder of Beautycounter, was ousted from her company after she sold it to private equity group Carlyle.
In Haney’s case, the problems were largely focused on profitability. The company had raised more than $60 million from investors like Forerunner and General Catalyst, who bet that Outdoor Voices could one day grow to the size of Nike or Lululemon. But six years in, it was losing $2 million a month, with annual sales of $40 million. Drexler was brought in to help steer the ship, but his strategies and leadership style were at odds with Haney’s. And she saw no other path but to leave her fledgling brand.
But even after turning down Consortium’s offer, the private equity firm kept coming back. And it struck Haney that she had an opportunity to revive the brand she had poured so much of her life into building, and to make it relevant to the next generation of consumers. “They saw a brand without a founder and a brand without vision, and that’s not a good scenario,” she says. “I began to think this could be a really awesome creative outlet.”
[Photo: Outdoor Voices]
Haney quietly returned to Outdoor Voices a year ago. But she’s announcing her return this week in conjunction with the brand’s relaunch. Today, the website comes back online with a new collection of clothes thoughtfully designed to appeal both to the brand’s original millennial audience, but also to Gen Z. The products will be exclusively available to the TYB community, but will be shoppable to the wider public on August 5.
“We want to reactivate the original millennial loyalists,” Haney says. “But we’re introducing the ‘Doing Things’ philosophy to the next generation. The collection is boldly fashion-forward and fits into your lifestyle. I’m seeing Gen Z mixing in vintage and natural materials into their looks.”
I sat down with Haney to discuss why so many female founders came under attack, and how she plans to run Outdoor Voices differently this time around.
Looking back, why do you think so many female founders left their businesses? What do you make of the narrative of “the fall of the girlboss”?
There were a lot of dynamics at play. Firstly, the direct-to-consumer venture-funded model wasn’t a home run success. All of these sexy businesses and founders got a lot of capitalin my case, when I was quite young. The expectations to grow were massive. We were growing, but we were not a technology business. When you get inventory involved, growth becomes very challenging.
But challenges in business are normal. You face a hundred of them a day. It was unfortunate that the culture at the time was to take down women who had a lot of success.
What I’m most concerned about is the effects these massive takedowns of female founders have had on women’s appetite to start their own businesses, raise money, and go for big things. Right now, I want to model that a female founder can return. And that women should want to build big companies.
[Photo: Outdoor Voices]
As I’ve written before, many of the female founders who were the face of their brands experienced the most misogyny. And female founders who were behind the scenes often avoided the worst of these attacks. Unfortunately, I think this has made many women in business more camera-shy. How do you feel now, coming back?
It’s still very important for me to own the message. Even for this relaunch, there’s a video in which I’m narrating and breaking the news. In my experience, using PR and social media to amplify the story has been very helpful. And I’ve learned that it is important for me to be the first to speak.
I’m not first-time founder anymore. When I was 23, I was scared of allegations and articles that would end my career, or my life as I knew it. I keep coming back to the fact that this is par for the course if you’re going to build a business in the public eye.
I want to show that you can get through negative press. There are always going to be mistakes and unfortunate incidents in business, but we can solve them. That’s what I care about most.
Given how traumatic it was to leave the company, why did you choose to come back? Why not launch something entirely new?
I’m irrationally optimistic. It’s almost like childbirth; you kind of forget the bad things. I am very grateful for that first chapter. When I look back, I feel like 90% of building Outdoor Voices was awesome, and 10% was hard. But that’s life.
But also, there is still a lot of brand equity with Outdoor Voices. There’s an emotional connection to Outdoor Voices because of its mission, which is to move. We have a strong foundation, so I am eager to see how we can reactivate that.
[Photo: Outdoor Voices]
With this new chapter of Outdoor Voices, you’re integrating your other companiesJoggy and Try Your Best. Were you surprised that Consortium was so eager for you to bring all these businesses together?
All of these companies are synergistic. TYB has more than 200 of the top consumer brands on the platform. The tool is really working to help brands engage with their community and make them more valuable over time. So it’s a tool that was made for Outdoor Voices in many ways.
And for Joggy, it has a similar mission to maximize happiness through movement. So having a can in hand while you’re “doing things” just makes sense. It’s not that deep, but you’ll see how the brands continue to work together.
I think it’s very meaningful that Consortium really sees me, and came to me first. I believe in my ability to set a vision and execute against it. Being here feels right, and I think it’s a recipe for success.
The concept of menu hacking, or modifying an existing fast-food menu item with a few ingredient tweaks, has been around for years. But with the rise of food-based content creators on TikTok, #menuhack has become its own genre of content, spawning trends from a McDonalds ice cream dipped in coffee to a Starbucks Frappuccino inspired by the Barbie movie. Amid this flurry of custom orders, few menus have been hacked more than Taco Bells.
Now, Taco Bell is formalizing menu hacking with a new feature called Fan Style. The tool, which is currently available via Taco Bells app for the brands Rewards members, lets fans design their own custom orders, name them, and earn extra Rewards points when other fans order them. Later this year, Taco Bell plans to select some of the most popular Fan Styles to appear on its national menu.
[Photo: Taco Bell]
Taco Bell isnt the first fast-food giant to land on the bright idea of turning menu-hacking culture into an actual product offering. In 2022, McDonalds launched its own limited-time Menu Hacks menu. In 2023, Chipotle launched a fajita quesadilla inspired by a TikTok trend. And early this month, Starbucks turned its iconic secret menu into an actual rotating menu inspired by online drink creations.
As digital ordering becomes increasingly popular and social media powers a constant food trend cycle, fast-food hacks are no longer reserved for fans in the know. Now, theyre an integrated part of the ordering experience.
[Photo: Taco Bell]
Taco Bell menu hacks take off
According to Dane Mathews, Taco Bells chief digital and technology officer, the companys digital salesincluding via the app, kiosks, and third-party deliveryhave grown 37% year over year. Now, 42% of Taco Bells total sales come through digital channels. Alongside the move away from in-person ordering has come a spike in customizations: Today, 66% of all Taco Bell app orders contain at least one customized product.
Over the past few months, Taco Bell fans on TikTok have found countless ways to remix the brands relatively limited ingredient profile into custom creations, whether that be to score a better deal, make the chains classic offerings a bit healthier, or to boost the flavor profile of a plain bean-and-cheese burrito. While Mathews says that having a personal go-to order has been a status symbol of true Taco Bell fandom for decades, its certainly becoming a more mainstream concept.
Fan Style elevates menu hacks out of the comment sections and gives the biggest fans an opportunity to earn points, ad placements, and even a spot on the national menu, he adds.
How to use Taco Bell “Fan Style” Feature
To create a Fan Style order, users can navigate to the Fan Style section of the app and build an item as they see fit, adding and subtracting ingredients until it matches their preferences. Then, theyll need to save the custom order to their profile by clicking the share button and giving it a personalized name.
Imagine Dan Made This Style: a Cheesy Gordita Crunch that removes the Spicy Ranch and adds Creamy Jalapeo Sauce and jalapeos for extra spice, a Taco Bell press release suggests.
[Photo: Taco Bell]
From there, users can share their menu hack order on social media, which will allow them to receive Rewards points anytime someone else orders their Fan Styleturning the feature into whats essentially a free marketing blitz for Taco Bell.
[Screenshot: courtesy of the author]
Unfortunately, the app itself doesn’t currently display others’ Fan Styles, so fans have to find them on social media or through Taco Bell’s out-of-home ad campaign in order to actually try someone else’s creation. Sometime later this year (the company didn’t provide specifics), Taco Bell will select a few Fan Styles to appear on the national menu for a limited time.
When it comes to potential logistical challenges associated with giving fans free rein to hack the menu, Mathews says that isnt a major concern, considering that employees have become pretty familiar with assembling customizations in recent years.
[Photo: Taco Bell]
Whether it be swapping protein choices, adding craveable sauces [like the all-new Sweet Chipotle BBQ], or hacking a rendition to emulate a retired favorite itemour team members have always helped bring these customizations to life, he says.
Like with Starbucks’s new secret menu feature, Fan Style gives Taco Bell a simple way to tap into viral trends without actually creating those trends in-house; essentially outsourcing the ideation process to the creators who already do it best. As fast-food giants catch on to fans desire for individualized orders, its safe to say that the “secret menu” is not so secret anymore.
While much of the buzz about AI today revolves around flashy copilots and productivity hacks, the reality for most data scientists and data engineering teams remains far less glamorous. Even in 2025, they still spend much of their time on the most tedious part of the job: cleaning and preparing data, i.e., dealing with missing values, duplicates, and inconsistencies.
But Snowflake CEO Sridhar Ramaswamy wants to change thatnot by replacing the people doing the work, but by eliminating the friction that slows them down, such as the endless cycles of reactive reporting. His bold bet is on agentic AI: autonomous model instances that can ingest data, reason over it, and make real-time decisions with minimal human engineering input.
Until now, AI tools have been excellent at one-step tasks: You ask a question, you get an answer; you ask for code, you get a snippet. They are powerful assistants, but they require constant direction, Ramaswamy tells Fast Company. In the enterprise [space], agentic AI means goal-directed autonomy.
From Data Silos to Conversational Insight
Ramaswamy, a former head of Google Ads, Greylock partner, and CEO of search startup Neeva, took the reins at Snowflake in February 2024 after it acquired Neeva. He brought deep AI and search expertise, quickly realigning the companys go-to-market strategy and accelerating AI talent infusion through acquisitions like Crunchy Data, Samooha, and Datavolo. As a result, Snowflake reported its first billion-dollar quarter in May 2025, marking a 26% year-over-year increase.
Now his vision centers on embedding intelligent agents into the very fabric of Snowflakes platform, transforming AI from a surface-level feature to a foundational layer of enterprise computing.
Ramaswamy says agentic AI moves beyond static dashboards by using smart agents that understand business goals, pull the right data, run analyses, and deliver clear, multistep answers. The real value, he adds, comes from building these agents on solid data so they can deliver lasting results across the business. “Agents built on top of a strong data foundation will unlock tremendous value across the enterprise,” he says.
This year, Snowflake has launched a wave of agentic AI-powered product releases, including Snowflake Intelligence, the Data Science Agent, Cortex AISQL, and agent-driven apps in the Snowflake Marketplace. What was once primarily a warehouse for storing and querying data is now evolving into a full-fledged “AI data cloud.” Ramaswamy believes the real opportunity lies in making AI useful and accessible to the hundreds or thousands of people who need to make data-driven decisions every day.
Todays enterprises are overwhelmed by complexity, Ramaswamy says, and adding more disconnected AI tools only makes things worse. Snowflakes focus has been on simplifying access to data, something its refined over the past decade. You can only trust AI outputs if you trust the data foundation,” he says.
The End of Data Science? Not Quite.
Data science is fundamentally about turning raw, structured, and unstructured data into actionable insights. For years, data scientists have often been buried in technical tasks, far removed from the boardroom or customer conversation. However, with Snowflakes Data Science Agent (currently in private preview), much of that manual effort is being automated, freeing up data teams to focus more on strategy, insight, and impact.
The agent handles data quality assessment, automatic preprocessing, feature design based on best practices, model selection and training using Snowpark code, and performance evaluation, all in under an hour. Compared with traditional workflows that take days or weeks, this dramatically accelerates pipeline creation. Moreover, generated pipelines include validated code, model lineage tracking, and integrated documentation.
According to Ramaswamy, the divide between technical and business teams wasnt due to unwillingness to collaborate, but rather a lack of shared tools and language. Now, with AI enabling natural language as the interface to data, more people can contribute to data-driven outcomes. When experts in different fields can access insights on their own, it improves collaboration and speeds up smarter decision-making. Or, as Ramaswamy explains: “Its about bringing the data to everyone.
And its not just for data scientists or engineers. With the public release of Cortex AISQL in June 2025, Snowflake has extended SQL for data teams and business users alike with AI-native operators. Ramaswamy says enterprises most valuable insights have long been trapped at the intersection of structured and unstructured data, but it was nearly impossible to analyze them together. Cortex AISQL changes that by empowering data teams to query all data types.
The distinction between a database table and a PDF will become irrelevant to the end user. You will simply ask your business question, and the platform will be intelligent enough to find and synthesize the answer from all of your enterprise data, wherever it resides, he says.
New data operators allow users to filter, classify, summarize, and analyze text and images directly within SQL queries. Likewise, the platforms new FILE data type can store multimedia content inside Snowflake, making it possible to work with documents, audio, images, and text alongside structured data.
For instance, a product analytics team can join sales figures with sentiment from support transcripts or defect images in a single pass, with results that are both explainable and auditable. Ramaswamy claims Cortex AI has already become a foundational pillar of many customers enterprise AI strategies.
For example, health wearables company Whoop used Snowflake Cortex AI to create an agent-powered chat app that makes data accessible across the organization. This tool frees up the analytics team to focus on higher-impact work (like strategy and forecasting) instead of routine data pulls.
Likewise, SaaS platform for financial services TS Imagine used Snowflake Cortex AI to build Taia, an AI agent that automates customer casings, work that once involved three full-time employees. Built by data analysts with little AI experience, Taia now handles over 60,000 inquiries annually, freeing up staff for higher-value decisions, Ramaswamy says.
The most visible piece of Snowflakes agentic evolution is Snowflake Intelligence, a new conversational AI experience built atop LLMs from OpenAI and Anthropic. Snowflake Intelligence can handle query generation, data synthesis, and insight summarization across structured and unstructured formats.
But if AI agents can handle the grunt work of data science, where does that leave the data team?
Ramaswamy, for his part, acknowledges concerns about AI replacing jobs
Sextech has always operated without the safety nets most industries take for granted, and because of this, entrepreneurs in the space have become experts at navigating structural barriers. Whether in the face of ad bans, payment processor restrictions, social taboos, regulatory gray areas, or even economic downturns, sexual wellness brands have continued to innovate and expand the market, which was estimated at $42.6 billion in 2024 and is projected to reach $82 billion by 2030.
But in 2025, with President Trumps ongoing trade war with China creating economic whiplash, sextech brands are scrambling to adapt.
Its incredibly difficult to create a strategy during times of economic volatility because its impossible to predict what will happen next, says Polly Rodriguez, cofounder and CEO of sexual wellness brand Unbound, whose products are manufactured in China. Any long-term strategy is null and void. So instead, weve stayed . . . nimble, working closely with our manufacturers and freight forwarders to respond to daily changes in trade policy.
Polly Rodriguez [Photo: courtesy Unbound]
To help absorb the cost increases that tariffs have levied on her business, Rodriguez says shes started bundling freight costs, cutting back on packaging, and sending goods via slower carrier methods. Right now, tariffs on Chinese-made goods stand at 51%, but that could balloon to 145% if a trade deal is not reached by August 12.
Either way, Rodriguez says there wont be any going back to business as usual. If the first 100 days of this administration have taught me anything, it’s to expect nothing but sheer chaos, she says. I’m not expecting any long-term stability anytime soon.
[Photo: courtesy Unbound]
Todays political and economic climate has become even more challenging by the global reality of manufacturing: Most of it happens overseas. An estimated 70% to 80% of the world’s sex toys are made in China. That includes the raw materials sourced from mainland China, not to mention the custom molds, which are too heavy to transport stateside.
Currently, there is just nowhere else in the world that can manufacture the goods we make anywhere close to the level that China can, Rodriguez says. It does not make financial or economic sense to move our manufacturing out of China, and I think anyone worth their salt in the adult industry would agree with me.
[Photo: courtesy Unbound]
Still, she insists this crisis has only strengthened her relationships with suppliers. Over the last nine years, we’ve developed lasting relationships with the individuals who run these manufacturing facilities, Rodriguez says. They are an extension of our company, and there would be no Unbound without them. We share holiday greeting cards, baby and vacation photos, and look forward to visiting them every year in Shenzhen. We care not only about their businesses but about them as individuals, as our partners and friends.
[Photo: courtesy Unbound]
An industry under attack
While founders like Rodriguez are weathering the economic turbulence, a broader conservative resurgence, particularly in the U.S., is impacting sexual wellness brands as well. Were seeing brands in this space really struggle right now, says Bryony Cole, sextech founder and global trends expert. Whether its Sephora pulling back from their sexual wellness section or investors becoming more cautious, anything tied to sexuality or bodily autonomy feels under attack right now.
For an industry that was finally gaining mainstream legitimacy, breaking into national retailers and riding the tailwinds of the MeToo movement, todays cultural climate feels like a sharp reversal to the progress made over the past decade. There was this influx of optimism and innovation 10 years ago, Cole recalls. We thought female-founded brands were finally going to make it. But today, its more like were operating in the shadows, just trying to withstand the storm.
And though Cole notes that sextech has never operated in a truly stable environment, the difference now is the scale and intensity of that volatility. Cole, who founded Sextech School, a pre-accelerator designed for entrepreneurs, job seekers, and investors entering the sextech market, points to a wave of diversification as founders explore digital education, alternative revenue streams, and community-based funding strategies. /p>
At Sextech School, we think a lot about how to move beyond just delivering physical products, Cole says, noting that there are online programs and new verticals available. People are getting smarter by necessity and fostering more support for one another within our community.
But lean operations are only part of the survival equation. So is faith in the long arc of cultural progress and the staying power of sexual wellness. In 1970, only 1% of women used vibrators, Rodriguez says. Today, its over 65%. That trajectory doesnt reverse just because a bunch of old white men are uncomfortable with us enjoying our bodies.
Still, neither Cole nor Rodriguez is naive about what lies ahead. Cole worries that many small businesses wont survive the combined pressures of economic chaos and social regression. Its tough to predict, she says. But I always talk about through-topia, the idea that even amid dystopia and utopia, some incredible things can still emerge. . . . We just have to hold the line and keep going.
This year alone, companies have announced over 740,000 job cuts so far, a high since 2020. And thats just in the US.
But for a growing number of professionals (even before 2025), the solution hasn’t been in polishing their résumés, but in building personal brands that create true job security for them.
Building a personal brand can let you:
Showcase your talents
Create an audience/network
Get people to know who you are, what you do, and what to come to you for
When done well, a strong personal brand attracts job offers before roles are even posted, leads to consulting or speaking opportunities, and opens the door to new networks that cant be accessed with a résumé alone.
For me, building my personal brand over the past 10+ years has meant creating content online (mostly on LinkedIn & Twitter), and writing for publications like Entrepreneur, Inc., The Next Web, and many others.
All these efforts have opened a lot of doorsfrom starting out as a freelance writer to running a six-figure content marketing agency, and then eventually becoming the cofounder of Leaps (an AI platform that helps people and teams turn their raw expertise and experience into content that builds their personal brands).
For this article, I spoke with four professionals whove used their personal brands to turn their careers around.
Andres Vourakis, a data scientist, built a safety net of opportunities and extra income after layoffs shook his early career. Ana Calin left a 15-year executive role and became the creator of one of Substacks fastest-growing newsletters, giving her complete freedom and a thriving business. Paul O’Brien, a veteran marketer, leveraged his reputation to evolve from the SEO guy into a thought leader on startup economics and public policy. And Joei Chan, once a content marketing leader, turned unemployment into a creative rebrand that now draws clients who want her to tell their truth, show up fully, and build their brand with authenticity.
We got into fears, breakthroughs, identity work, and how building a personal brand is transforming not just their careers, but their lives.
From layoffs to lightbulbs
What made you realize you needed a personal brand, and how did that moment spark your journey?
Andres Vourakis: I was unfortunately laid off early in my career, and that experience opened my eyes to the real meaning of job security. I realized that job security wasn’t about working hard to become an essential worker, because at any moment, a business could decide to let you go.
And over the past few years, I’ve seen many talented friends become victims of massive layoffs in tech. Thats when it really clicked for me: real job security is staying future-proof.
Building my personal brand is not only allowing me to grow, share my data science expertise, and connect with lots of great people, but its also helping me generate extra income. It helps me sleep better at night knowing that my livelihood wont be decided by a business that may no longer find my work valuable tomorrow.
Ana Calin: I didnt set out to “build a personal brand.” I just wanted freedom. I had just left my 15-year executive role; big title, global travel, the whole you made it package. And yet, I felt done, ready for something that felt mine.
I remember staring at a blank LinkedIn post, wondering what to say. I had no niche, no strategy, no idea what people would care about. But I wrote anyway, about quitting, about reinvention, about starting from scratch. And people listened and responded. That was the spark. From that one post came DMs, leads, and ultimately a real business.
The first step: finding the confidence to show up
What was your very first step in building your personal brand, and what gave you the courage to share it publicly?
Joei Chan: The first real step was launching Brand New, my Substack newsletter. I was freshly unemployed, creatively raw, unsure of my next chapter. But I had this deep urge to tell the truth. To turn my mess into a message.
So I started writing. When I started posting online after being fired, there was definitely hesitation. I worried about looking unprofessional, scaring off future employers, or being labeled as emotional or difficult. But now I see vulnerability as a creative strategy. Its not oversharing, its storytelling that names the deeper truth and helps others feel less alone.
From there, I started a video series called “Rebranding My Life After Losing My 9 to 5.” It was scrappy and personal, just me, documenting the messy middle.
Paul O’Brien: Having come from Yahoo! and then helping HP take advantage of search engine optimization (SEO) and Google, it just clicked and made sense to kick off my personal brand and start sharing my expertise in public. What gave me confidence was that in 2002, very few people knew how to do SEO. Confidence to put yourself out there often comes from knowing that people will find value in what you have to offer.
Ana Calin: I stopped trying to sound smart and started sounding like myself. I didnt have a niche, and I wasnt selling anything.
But I had real stories about quitting, reinventing, and failing forward. I wrote a post on LinkedIn about walking away from my executive role. And it wasnt the highlight reel; the actual messy version. No strategy or call to action, but just truth. That one post brought in over 50,000 views. And that gave me the nudge I needed.
The unexpected rewards of showing up authentically
Looking back, whats one surprising way your life or career has improved because of your personal brand?
Ana Calin: I thought I was building a brand. Turns out, I was building a life. One with no boss, no Sunday scaries, no pretending. I found my voice, the one I had buried under professionalism for 15 years. And when you find your voice, everything shifts. And you stop chasing opportunities, you start choosing the ones to accept as they come, thanks to your personal brand.
Joei Chan: I feel more me than I have in years. What began as a career crisis became the greatest rebrand of my life. It led me back to my voice, my creativity, and a deeper truth: The branding and creative work I love isnt just strategic, its spiritual. And unexpectedly, this is the work people now come to me for: helping them reclaim their own story and show up fully as themselves.
Paul OBrien: Being out there lets you evolve over time, as we all do. I started out known for SEO; I even leaned int it with the nickname SEOBrien, thanks to my early work at Yahoo! and HP. But as I kept writing and sharing, my interests shifted toward startups, economic development, and innovation. Over time, the content I created followed that shift, and so did my audience. Now, instead of being known for search, Im sought out for my work as a startup economist and my perspectives on public policy for entrepreneurs. That evolution wouldnt have happened without a personal brand that allowed me to grow in public.
Andres Vourakis: Its improved my confidence, my ability to communicate ideas, and even how effectively I do my work as a data scientist. Ive spent so much time reflecting on what I do and why I do it, especially when creating content, that I now have way more clarity in how I approach problems and explain my thinking.
Your story is your safety net
Traditional job security is fading away fast. I cant count how many top performers Ive seen with impressive résumés who are finding themselves out of work with little warning.
But what does exist, and is increasingly powerful, is the ability to position your skills and experience in a way that makes people want to work with you. Thats what a personal brand does. It makes you visible, builds trust, and shows not just what you do, but how you think.
And that combination attracts new opportunities (job offers, clients, collaborators, even investors) often before roles are ever publicly posted.
Personal brands are the new, real job securitythe safety net that ensures people know who you are, what you bring to the table, and why youre worth betting on. So start now. Start sharing your expertise, your story, your perspective. The earlier you build your brand, the more protected, and in demand, youll be.
Earlier this month, Microsoft confirmed that attackers had exploited a critical vulnerability in SharePoint servers. A patch had already been issued, but it failed to fully resolve the problem. Within days, sophisticated attackers found a way around the fix, compromising thousands of systems.
The flaw was real. So was the patch. The breach happened anyway.
Think of it like finding a crack in a dam, sealing it up, but still waking up to floodingsomehow, the water found another way through.This was a patch that didnt stick, and no one caught it in time.
The SharePoint incident shows that vulnerabilities happen in every environment. What matters most is how quickly an organization detects an issue, responds to it, and contains the fallout when something goes wrong.
That response involves different teams working together under pressure.
Vulnerabilities are expected. Effective responses are key.
Its normal for new flaws to be discovered every dayin code, in third-party dependencies, and in internal tooling. No organization can prevent every vulnerability from appearing.
Whats more important is the ability to respond quickly and effectively when they emerge.
In this case, a fix was assumed to be sufficient when it wasnt. The vulnerability continued to exist, but there was no immediate signal that the patch had fallen short.
Whats worse is that we know researchers were able to reproduce the vulnerability by examining the difference between versions of the patch Microsoft first gave.
In many companies, a fix gets logged as complete and quietly dropped. Weeks later, the same issue resurfaces because the update never made it everywhere it was needed. No alert, no second check. Everyone thought it was done. It wasnt.This points to a deeper challenge in how modern software is secured. When security updates are shipped, the job isnt over. The team responsible for the system must monitor whether the fix is effective, whether attackers are still probing it, and whether follow-up action is needed.Organizations that build and ship software must treat response as an ongoing responsibility.
Where companies can improve their response
The SharePoint breach shows how even fast responses can fall short if no one checks whether the fix actually worked. This applies to any organization that manages software, whether internal systems or external platforms (which is the large majority).These are technical failures, but theyre rooted in human ones: missed signals, misaligned teams, and no agreement on what still needs fixing.
Here are five ways to respond more effectively:
1. Know whats still exposed
Fixing a problem isnt the same as removing the risk. Teams need a clear view of which systems remain vulnerable after a patch goes out.
2. Make sure the right people see the issue
Security alerts often sit in tools that developers dont use (or like to use). Engineers should be able to see and act on what needs fixing without extra steps.
3. Focus on real risk
When every alert looks urgent, the ones that matter get missed. Prioritize whats actually exploitable and affects the systems you rely on.
4. Follow through after the fix
An exploited vulnerability is rarely a one-time event. Teams should keep an eye on it to confirm the threat is fully contained.
5. Track how long real problems stay open
Its easy to count alerts. Its more useful to track how long serious vulnerabilities take to get resolved. That shows whether your response is actually working.
Shifting this mindset takes empathy. The person responsible for security should think about developers in the same way Apples product team thinks of their customers. Is the information clear? Is it delivered where they already work? Are we helping them succeed? Or, are we just giving them one more ticket in a backlog that never ends?
And beyond tools, it takes trust. Teams need permission to speak up when somethings unclear, and they need clarity on who owns what.
Clarity is key
The SharePoint breach revealed a blind spot in how teams track, validate, and follow through on the risks they already know about.
Security is failing because teams dont have the visibility to see whats still vulnerable, the clarity to focus on what matters, or the workflows to make fixes stick. Without that, speed doesnt matter, because you’re still exposed.
The organizations that avoid the next breach won’t be the ones who patch the fastest. They’ll be the ones who can see the whole picture, cut through the noise, communicate effectively, and close the loop before attackers get there first.
Holding a patent could be a lot costlier for businesses and founders in the years to come. The Trump administration is reportedly considering a substantial change to the patent process, which would raise trillions of dollars for the government but could substantially increase fees for patent holders.
The Wall Street Journal reports the Commerce Department is considering charging patent holders between 1% and 5% of their overall patent value. It’s unclear if that will replace the current model, where companies and individuals pay up to three flat maintenance fees over a series of years (which typically works out to a few thousand dollars), or be in addition to those charges.
Draft proposals and financial models are being worked on now, The Journal reports. If the change goes through, it could be especially onerous for Big Tech firms like Apple or Amazon, which file for thousands of patents per year, the vast majority of which are filed for defensive purposes and never utilized.
The money raised from the fees would be used to pay down the $37 trillion national deficit and possibly other unidentified tasks.
The Commerce Department did not reply to Fast Company‘s request for comment about the possible changes.
No other country charges patent holders a percentage of a patent’s value. In the U.S., utility patent holders currently pay maintenance fees at 3.5, 7.5, and 11.5 years after issuance. The 11.5-year feethe largest of the threeis $8,280, and roughly half of all patents are abandoned before reaching that point, placing the innovation into the public domain. (Design patents are exempt from maintenance fees.)
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is a self-funded agency that covers its costs by collecting fees for the application for and issuance of patents and trademarks. Last year, it took in just under $4 billion in patent fees and $583 million in trademark feesand it maintains operational reserves to cover any financial shortfalls.
A radical change to the 235-year-old office could bring about significant pushback from businesses, both domestic and international. Many would likely cut back on their patent filings, perhaps instead publishing information about innovations, which would prevent others from claiming a patent on that creation.
Another potential hurdle is assigning valuations to patentssomething the USPTO has never done. Developing a reliable method would take time and money, and policymakers would also need to decide how to handle patents with little or no value (i.e., when the cost of obtaining the patent exceeds the products market value).
The post-DOGE USPTO
The potential changes to patent fees come just four months after the USPTO was the focus of a review by the Department of Government Efficiency. While it’s still unclear how many workers might have been laid off or taken early retirement, the department was ordered to halt its plans to recruit approximately 800 new employees, primarily patent examiners.
In addition, Vaishali Udupa, the agency’s commissioner for patents, resigned in Februaryand people who work regularly with the department say theyve heard of other, lower-level departures.
The wait time today to patent a product averages 30 months. (Trademarks take about 10 months to process.) Without the new employees, that could significantly extend those timesand adding a new patent process into the mix could stretch it out further.
Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick oversees the USPTO and pledged during his confirmation hearing to tackle the application backlog, which he called unacceptable.
