From the constant LinkedIn updates of ex-colleagues climbing the corporate ladder, to friends hitting career milestones or landing their dream roles . . . its easier than ever to feel professionally behind.
Theres a name for that feeling you cant shake: career dysmorphia.
Youve probably heard of body dysmorphia (an actual medical diagnosis) or money dysmorphia (not a medical diagnosis). Career dysmorphia is an anecdotal term that follows a similar line of thinking: a disconnect between someone’s professional achievements and their perception of their worth.
Some classic signs: You hold back from going for promotions because you feel unprepared, even when others insist youre more than capable. You keep collecting certifications and degreesnot out of ambition, but from a lingering fear of never being enough. Or maybe you sit through meetings with ideas in your head, but hesitate to speak up.
Also called job dysmorphia, the topic has gained traction in recent months: on LinkedIn posts, in YouTube videos, in articles on lifestyle sites, news sites, and youth publications.
Similar to imposter syndrome (minus the fear of being exposed), career dysmorphia describes not just a singular moment of self-doubtbut an outlook that defines your view of your entire career. Its unsurprising. We live in an era where success is curated and easily shareable via LinkedIn updates (Im excited to announce . . .). Many feel inadequate.
According to a 2024 Gallup survey, employees across America are feeling increasingly detached from their jobs. Others are impacted by toxic bosses or workplaces that don’t recognize and reward their contributions, which could potentially fuel job dysmorphia. Only 30% of U.S employees feel that someone at work encourages their development, down from 36% in March 2020, another 2025 Gallup survey found.
Career dysmorphia born out of workplace discrimination adds another layer of complexity. The old adage “you have to work twice as hard to get just as far” holds true for many women, people from low-income backgrounds, people of color, and many other marginalized communities in the workplace.
Whether its caused by an innate feeling of inadequacy or by external pressures and societal inequalities, career dysmorphia is a cycle that can hold workers back from reaching their true potential. Its always worthwhile to employ the same techniques as you would with general comparison anxiety: set social media boundaries, naming and processing your feelings, or spending time with people who admire you and build you up.
Overcoming confidence issuesin the workplace or otherwisealways takes time. (If nothing else, you can try laughing at LinkedIn vs. Reality posts like this, this and this.)
As news worsens, the potential for comedy rises.
No one understands this inverse relationship better than the team behind The Onion, which has channeled todays dystopian political slide into banger headlines (Trump Spends Entire U.K. Trip Trying To Figure Out Where He Knows Prince Andrew From). The news site has attracted nearly 54,000 subscribers since its relaunch last year, and is on track to generate $6 million in revenue in 2025, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Which is why it seemed particularly comical when, in May, the satirical news outlet issued a press release announcing a foray into advertising in order to expand its marketplace dominance. Companies could enlist writers at The Onion for creative projects, because nothingnot spouses, not children, not fragile elderly parentsmatters more . . . than helping brands tell their stories.
It seemed like a classic Onion spoof of capitalism and corporate jargon. But for once, The Onion was not doing a bit. Or at least we dont think it was.
The Onion has launched what its describing as a strategy and creative agency that operates adjacent to, yet distinct from, the publication. Called Americas Finestnamed for The Onions tagline, Americas Finest News Sourcethe agency is avowedly not a gag. Yet it gleefully satirizes itself in its own press release and social media posts.
For The Onion, the agency represents an opportunity to create a new revenue stream: providing corporate clients with copy that is fresh, funny, and written by actual writers, to stand out from AI slop. Americas Finest currently has between five and ten clients, and has done work for Paramount, an ETF fund, and a nonprofit.
Its comedy, but packaged as a brand message, says The Onions chief marketing officer, Leila Brillson.
The Onions CEO, Ben Collins, sees no downside to the effort, unless we start working with ICE and Raytheon, he says.
The Onion launches an Agency
The Onion has been lampooning the news for almost 40 years, running classic headlines like “Black Guy Given Nation’s Worst Job” following Obamas election, and “‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens,” after countless mass shootings. A surprising new coalition took over the website in April 2024, led by former NBC News reporter Collins, who pledged as the new CEO to give the writers more creative freedom. The publication relaunched a print version in August 2024; Collins reported recently that it is now the now the 13th largest print newspaper in the United States by subscribers, on a list right between the Boston Globe and the Chicago Tribune, and growing fast.
Brillson, who previously worked in marketing at Disney, Netflix, and Bumble, and then ran her own agency, says that it was she whod ushered through the agency idea. I don’t want to say that there were naysayers, she says of her initial pitch, but a lot of people didn’t fully understand what it looked like until it was up and running.
The concept of an agency living within a media company is hardly newThe New York Timess T Brand Studio and The Washington Posts WP Creative Group have been operating custom content divisions since 2014 and 2021 respectively, creating stories that may look like standard articles but are really marketing for brands (and acknowledged as such).
The Onion itself used to do something similar. Its previous owners, G/O Media, ran an in-house agency called Onion Labs from 2013 to 2019, which produced ads for brands such as Mr. Peanut and Whitecastle. It generated the kind of sponsored content that mirrored Onion stories, along with ads that ran on The Onion‘s own website.
It was no small operation. At one point, Brillson says, 30 people worked for this full-service studio that had video capacity, which was costly to maintain. We simply dont live in that market anymore, Brillson says.
Americas Finest operates differently. It produces copy for everything from social media posts to billboard adsbut The Onion plays no part in hosting or distributing the work. People are like, Will The Onion write about this? And we have to say, no, Brillson says. We have a pretty strong separation of church and state.
Marnie Shure, the former managing editor of The Onion who now works as creative producer for Americas Finest, explains that we’re not necessarily trying to make everybody sound like The Onion. And while video capabilities exist, the focus is more tightly on copy, content, and strategy.
To that end, The Onion is commissioning former writers. Louisa Kellogg, a senior staff writer from 2015 to 2018, now accepts agency assignments as they come in, and as they suit her schedule. Her first assignment, in October 2024, was a campaign for The Onion itself, writing fake testimonials from subscribers. She now writes copy for external clients.
Comedy writers for hire
The company put out the ambiguous press announcing Americas Finest in May; today, Americas Finest has a team of roughly eight writers, specifically ones who dont live in Chicago, including the L.A.-based Kellogg.
Living near the The Onions Chicago headquarters is one of the news outlets rigid rules for editorial staffers, but it has left some Hall of Famers out there in the wilderness, Collins says. Americas Finest is a way for Onion management to support writers during a shaky time, in the aftermath of the writers strike, COVID, and the L.A. fires. We wanted to give them a chance to make some rent, he says, and use some of the world’s best comedy writers wh otherwise should be writing for Colbert. But that show is dead now.
Americas Finest copywriters use the same system they did in the Onion newsroom: best joke wins. That very deliberate process, honed for almost 40 years, is something you can apply to projects, Shure says, even when the project is not a satirical newspaper. Since theyre remote, Kellogg says writers often email in their jokes (the ad copy), and Shure chooses the winner. The key difference is that its not just the punchline, but also the client brief, that will determine the victor.
Clients like the real writingan antidote to the AI-generated slop that’s being presented as advertising right now, Collins saysand the fact that it can be comical. Ads just aren’t funny anymore, and it’s a disease, he says. I cant remember the last time I laughed at an advertisement.
‘If you cant beat em, join em’
Many of Americas Finests early clients are in the entertainment realm: the agency has written for Paramount, including for The Naked Gun, which did well in theaters this summer as R-rated comedies have floundered in recent years. (The agency is hesitant to identify other movie and TV clients: They don’t want to admit that they delegate out copywriting to anybody else, Collins says.)
[Photo: courtesy of the author]
Other clients have included nonprofits such Subversive ETFs, a fund that invests in equity securities of publicly traded companiesspecifically ones that, public disclosures indicate, sitting U.S. Congress members have invested in. Americas Finest created copy for social media and for posters that were recently wheatpasted around New York City that read: This should not be legal. Congress trades on inside information . . . But if you cant beat em, join em.
The agency also works on events. It threw an off-beat party at SXSW for Project Liberty, a nonprofit, founded by billionaire executive Frank McCourt, aiming to create a people-powered internet by shifting control of data to individuals. (Americas Finest wrote the speeches, too.) It also helped throw a party in September for Mexican sports store Culto, themed around the cult of soccer as a religion (it featured a ball that predicted the future, among other curiosities).
People come to us knowing they’re going to get some unhinged stuff and might be made uncomfortable, Collins says. Some clients have turned down copy pitches, Brillson says, because they were too weird for them.
Parodying LinkedIn from the inside, but still for real
One challenge Americas Finest may face as it grows is maintaining its signature voice while convincing potential clients that the whole thing isnt a gag. The agencys new LinkedIn feed, for example, features refreshingly facetious posts about capitalismYou don’t want to be on your deathbed wondering if you could’ve delivered more value to your clientsalongside more earnest posts, like the invitation to the Culto event: I would love to invite you folks to come hang out with us. Lemme know here if you want to party!
Collins reassures me that it is not, in fact, a joke. Everything involving The Onion, the first instinct is: it’s a bit, he says. That was true when it announced the rerelease of the print paper, or the bid to buy InfoWars from conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. Yet somehow, I still wonder.
Collins finds this ambiguity fun to play with. It’s a strange way to run a business where you’re just constantly having to tell people everything you’re doing is real, actually.
Weve all heard the saying, When you change the incentives, you change the behavior, and most of us even believed it at some point. But with experience, you find that human behavior doesnt fit into such neat little boxes. People act the way they do for all kinds of reasons, some of them rational, some of them not.
The truth is that incentives often backfire because of something called Goodharts law. Once we target something to incentivize, it ceases to be a good target. A classic example occurred when the British offered bounties for dead cobras in India. Instead of hunting cobras, people started breeding them which, needless to say, didnt solve the problem.
Smart leaders understand that behavior is downstream of culture. There are norms that underlie behaviors, and those norms are encoded by rituals that guide everything from how you hire to how you promote, and how you determine compensation. Thats why you cant just tweak incentives. For meaningful change, you need to activate cultural triggers that shift norms from the inside out.
The surface behaviors you see
In 1984, Michael Dell launched his eponymous company from a college dorm room with a simple idea: bypass the reseller channel and sell customized computers directly to customers. The model gave Dell a clear cost advantage by eliminating dealer markupsand even more importantly, it allowed him to receive payment before paying suppliers
This direct model was a simple idea and a clear competitive advantage, but none of the incumbent industry giants, such as Compaq and HP, managed to adopt it. It wasnt for lack of trying. The advantages of Dells model were well known, widely publicized, and seemingly straightforward to replicate. There were a number of efforts to replicate it.
Theoretically, switching to a direct model shouldnt have been that difficult. If a college student like Dell could set it up in a dorm room, surely multibillion-dollar corporations could do the same. They could just easily tweak commissions so that salespeople would be incentivized to focus on selling directly to customers rather than resellers.
Yet the real world isnt so simple. Consider all of the salespeople servicing retail and reseller accounts. Theyd spent years earning status within the organization by building those relationships. Its not just about financial incentives, but the identity and status conferred by the connections everybody worked so hard to build.
Its not just salespeople either. Logistics would have to be completely redesigned. Longtime employees would have to sever relationships and build others, learn new skills, and do their jobs differently. Jobs are more than just transactions; theyre expressions of who we are and how we see ourselves.
The norms that underlie those behaviors
While Dells direct model was gaining dominance, the company that launched the PC revolution, IBM, was going through a crisis of its own. After decades of market leadership, it had become a faltering giant, losing competitiveness in the very industry it had pioneered. It wasnt until Lou Gerstner arrived as CEO in 1993 that the company began to reckon with the deeper cultural issues driving its decline.
Irving Wladawsky-Berger, one of Gerstners chief lieutenants, would later explain what had gone wrong. At IBM we had lost sight of our values, he told me, and then continued:
For example, there was a long tradition of IBM executives dressing formally in a suit and tie. Yet that wasnt a value, it was an early manifestation of a value. In the early days, many of IBMs customers were banks, so IBMs salespeople dressed to reflect their customers . . . IBM had always valued competitiveness, but we had started to compete with each other internally rather than working together to beat the competition.
In a similar vein, when Paul ONeill took over aluminum giant Alcoa, he told reporters and analysts, If you want to understand how Alcoa is doing, you need to look at how we treat safety. If we bring our injury rates down, it wont be because of cheerleading or posters. It will be because the people at this company have agreed to become part of something important: theyve devoted themselves to creating a habit of excellence.
In both cases, transformational leaders, ONeill at Alcoa and Gerstner at IBM, understood that the behaviors they were seeing were a function of norms, some explicit and some otherwise. Both also understood that if they were going to change those behaviors, they had to reshape the rituals that encoded those norms into the culture.
Changing rituals to encode new norms
Gerstner noticed when he arrived at IBM how the companys rituals reinforced internal rivalry. Instead of collaborating, business units often worked to undermine one anotherhoarding information and maneuvering for dominance. As he would later write in his memoir, Who Says Elephants Cant Dance:
Huge staffs spent countless hours debating and managing transfer pricing terms between IBM units instead of facilitating a seamless transfer of products to customers. Staff units were duplicated at every level of the organization because no managers trusted cross-unit colleagues to carry out the work. Meetings to decide issues that cut across units were attended by throngs of people because everyone needed to be present to protect his or her turf.
Gerstner understood that if he was going to change IBMs culture and turn the business around, he needed to dismantle the rituals that were reinforcing dysfunctional norms. Through company-wide emails and personal conversations, he made it clear that collaboration was now a core expectation. He even fired a number of senior executivespreviously regarded as untouchablewho were known for infighting.
While Gerstner broke old rituals that encoded the infighting norms, ONeill focused on creating new ones. He introduced a simple but powerful rule: any time someone was injured on the job, the unit president had to inform him within 24 hours. But to achieve that, their vice presidents needed to be in constant communication with floor managers, which required them to create new rituals of their own.
These rituals encoded new norms ofresponsiveness and transparency that were used to share information that went far beyond safety. Soon, company executives all over the world were actively sharing local market conditions, competitive intelligence, emerging problems, and best practices from across the organization.
Gerstner and ONeill both achieved historic turnarounds at iconic companies because they understood how the cultural triggers of norms and rituals shape behaviors.
Designing a performance culture
Lou Gerstner, reflecting on his legendary turnaround at IBM, wrote, Culture isnt just one aspect of the game, it is the game. In the end, an organization is nothing more than the collective capacity of its people to create value . . . What does the culture reward and punishindividual achievement or team play, risk-taking or consensus building?
Every culture encodes norms through rituals. How you hire, promote, produce budgets, and account for expenses and profits all involve ritualized processes. These reflect both explicit and implicit values that guide people on how theyre expected to act. Deliberately or not, leaders are constantly sending signals and people are constantly reading them.
Its not uncommon for leaders to be unaware of the signals they are sending. Take stack ranking, which requires managers to rank employees by performance and eliminate the bottom 10%. It’s meant to encode norms of excellence. But often it does just the opposite, encouraging employees to undermine each other instead of collaborate together effectively.
All too often, leaders try to shape behavior through incentives. But trying to bribe and bully your way to a performance culture is like closing the barn door after the horse has already bolted. To effectively shape behavior, you need to address the norms and rituals that underlie it. Incentives might enforce compliance, but they wont inspire passion or creativity.
To build a true performance culture, it is not enough to simply plan and direct action; you have to inspire and empower belief. You do that by being deliberate and precise about how you design cultural triggers.
I think these hiring managers are playing in my face.
Ive been on the hunt for a new gig for a large chunk of this year, and it feels like Ive seen it all. Ive watched some appealing job listings be pulled down within hours, while others sit stagnantly for months. Ive heard tales of scammers trying to dupe job seekers; legit employers advertising phantom roles to collect talent data and present an illusion of company growth. These days, the job market is feeling like the wild wild west out here and theres no catchy Will Smith bop to dance along to.
Navigating that treachery is hard enough. But Ive managed on a few occasions to escape the black hole of applications and get some interest from potential employers. With those strides, the churn has become so exhausting that it has me desperate for a much-needed Bali getaway that I ironically need a job to afford. The slog of these intricate application processes is to blame.
A popular meme once asked, What feels like begging but isnt? My answer is what I refer to as the corporate Hunger Gamesa process infamously associated with startup and tech culture in which youre put through rounds and rounds of interviews, tests, and various submissions. When you go through enough of these, which can take weeks at a time, its hard not to feel burned the hell out.
A few months back, I threw my fedora in the ring for a marketing role where I clocked that my experience was a perfect fit. I cooked on that cover letter, calibrated my resumé just right to fend off the ATS filters, and said all the right things on the phone screen. But that was only the beginning. Next was the video entry, which involved awkwardly responding to a series of prompts like Tell me about a time you failed via self-recorded one-minute clips. If I wanted to do an audition tape, Id sign up for America’s Got Talent, but whatever. An IRL meeting with the hiring manager followed, then two panel interviews on Zoom, and an (unpaid) assessment that devoured a whole Saturday.
Several weeks later, I made it to the final boss. But it didnt matter. After much consideration . . . they went with the other guy. Same as the last two applications, where I was on the unfortunate end of a really tough decision. Its giving always the bridesman, never the groom.
After a few of these corporate decathlons, you start to feel it in your spirit. The rejections sting, sure, but its the grind that really takes its toll. Every time you toil away at a resumé revampor pull another weekend shift on a pro bono case studyyoure investing pieces of yourself. And when it doesnt pan out? Its hard not to take that L personally, word to His Airness. The job hunt has a way of chipping away at your confidence until you start questioning whether the skills youve sharpened for years are obsolete.
Its a solitary experience. Telling your friends or family youre still looking sounds passive, like youve just been sitting on your sofa waiting for a gig to land in your lap. They dont see the spreadsheet of job trackers. The hours of prep for interviews that go nowhere. The facepalm moment when you realize the role you were excited about is paying $25,000 less than you deserve.
Im not one for sob stories, though, so this definitely aint that. Put that violin back in its case. Ive managed to maintain my sanity by treating my mental health with as much discipline as my job search. Its the boundaries for me. Three applications per day, max, and then I shut the laptop. Short walks and gym time are booked in my schedule between those virtual calls. And sometimes, yes, sitting on the sectional on a Wednesday afternoon with Highest 2 Lowest playing on the TV is acceptable. Its all about pacing yourself so you dont crash (or crashout) before reaching the finish line.
Searching for a new gig in this economy is not for the weak. Do what you can to secure your bag. And give yourself grace for the things you cant control: the hiring freeze you didnt know about, the manager who already had an internal candidate in mind, the flaky recruiter. Youve got something to offer, and its only a matter of time before someone armed with hiring power (and hopefully a signing bonus) recognizes that.
The Only Black Guy in the Office is copublished with LEVELman.com.
Apollo, the humanoid robot, stands nearly 6 feet tall. It can lift up to 55 pounds and operate 22 hours a day, seven days a week. Apptroniks design is meant to fit into preexisting workspaces, which means Apollo can help with everything from warehouse labor to household chores. Mercedes-Benz and electronics manufacturer Jabil have already deployed it alongside their human employeesand your workplace may be next. The Apollo is a winner of Fast Companys 2025 Innovation by Design Awards.
The room is silent. All eyes are on you. Your heart races, but as you take a deep breath, confidence replaces the nerves. You begin to speak, not just to inform, but to captivate. Public speaking isnt an innate talent; its a skill that can be mastered. With the right techniques, anyone can transform into a compelling speaker. Research shows that 77% of people experience anxiety around public speaking, yet confidence and clarity can be learned.
I frequently speak publicly, addressing teams of executives, industry leaders, and students. As a seasoned financial services executive with two decades of leadership experience and the two-time author of Wisdom on the Way to Wall Street: 22 Steps to Navigate Your Road to Success and The Deep Dive: 7 Life Rafts to Survive Career Currents, Ive seen firsthand how the right techniques can turn nerves into influence. In this article, I share practical strategies to help you thrive as a speaker.
Know Your Audience: Speak to Their Needs
Every great speech starts with understanding the audience. Are they professionals seeking insights? Students hungry for inspiration? Tailoring your message to their interests and level of understanding makes your speech engaging and relevant. Connection begins with comprehension.
Practice Until It Feels Effortless
Rehearsing isnt about memorization more than its about familiarity. Practice in front of a mirror, record yourself, or present to a friend. The more comfortable you are with your key points, the more naturally they will flow. Confidence is built through repetition.
Structure Your Speech Like a Journey As you Tell Stories
A powerful speech has a clear roadmap. Start with a hook that grabs attention, navigate through your main points with seamless transitions, and conclude with a message that resonates. A well-structured speech is not just heard: It will always be remembered. Facts inform, but stories inspire. A well-told anecdote can turn abstract ideas into vivid experiences. Stories create emotional connections, making your message more relatable and memorable.
Make Eye Contact: Engage with Your Voice, Dont Just Speak
A true connection is made when your audience feels seen. Scan the room and make direct eye contact with different individuals. This simple act makes your speech feel personal and creates an invisible thread between you and your listeners. Furthermore, a monotonous tone can make even the most compelling message dull. Vary your pitch, pace, and volume to emphasize key points. A strategic pause can add drama, allowing your words to resonate. Your voice is your instrument: Use it wisely.
Be Authentic: Speak from the Heart
Audiences resonate with sincerity. Dont mimic another speakers style; be sure to embrace your own. Speak with passion, be genuine, and let your enthusiasm shine. When you believe in your message, your audience will too.
Leave a Mark: Own the Stage, Inspire the Audience
Great public speaking isnt about perfection, its about impact. By mastering these techniques, you can transform from a hesitant speaker into a commanding presence. Whether delivering a keynote, leading a meeting, or giving a toast, the ability to speak with confidence and clarity is a powerful asset. As you step onto the stage, own your voice, and leave your audience inspired.
As AI talent salaries soar into the stratospherewith new graduates commanding $200K+ and Meta dishing out $100M+ compensation packagesmany early-stage founders are wondering: How can you build a frontier technology company when single individuals are getting paid well more than the average Series A total financing?
As a partner at Bison Ventures, I back founders working in deep tech, particularly those using AI. Ive seen firsthand the challenges startup teams are experiencing competing with Big Tech compensation packages flush with stock options. Assuming the only way to win is to outbid is a losing strategy. Heres the advice I share with founders.
In this piece (for paid subscribers only), you will learn:
Why your company mission is more important than ever
The one type of AI expert you dont need to try to recruit
How you can use compensation strategically even without Big Tech resources
1. Be honest about which AI talent you actually need
While many early-stage founders believe they need a top AI researcher, the reality is . . . they dont. What most teams really need are great AI engineers, focused less on fundamental theory and more on fine-tuning existing models, rapidly adopting new libraries and approaches, and ultimately shipping high-quality products that they can iterate quickly on with customer feedback.
This does not mean relaxing the bar on quality. What it does mean is being incredibly thoughtful about job descriptions and understanding what you actually need. The best teams will be laser-focused on where innovating in their technology stack actually moves the needle and where smart integration of existing tools is enough.
2. Stay lean and comp well
On a long enough time horizon, its reasonable to believe the cost to write software will drop to near-zero. We are already seeing co-pilots and coding agents drive massive increases in productivity for top users. If your best engineers can now contribute to your codebase at 3x the rate they might have two to three years ago, it means your org chart and hiring plans likely need a reassessment. All organizations get less, not more, efficient as headcount scales.
It also means the people you have likely deserve better compensation! Make sure that their productivity gains are reflected in their pay.
By adopting tools that allow for drastic increases in productivity and hiring individuals that embrace them, you not only free up room in the budget to invest in the best hires, but you can also keep your company at a Goldilocks size for longer. When your company is neither too big nor too small, you can move more quickly and effectively than competitors.
3. When you cant compete on cash, lean on equitygenerously
But bear in mind: Equity only motivates if candidates believe the company can be massive. Everyone, to some extent, is chasing a Figma-esque IPO moment.
That means you have to make the case that your companys equity offers a genuine shot at life-changing upside. Back up your pitch with a clear story about the big vision for what you will become, your edge, and why youre the team to win. This brings us to . . .
4. Lean into the why
The most promising candidates will optimize for more than just salary; theyll optimize for mission. For the same reason engineers are turning down multi-hundred million-dollar pay packages because they would rather work at the frontier with Thinking Machines Lab than sell ads for Instagram Reels, you too have an edge that is more valuable than money. Find it and exploit it.
Perhaps youre working to cure a complex disease or eliminating the need for humans to do unsafe work. Your mission matters for more than just a slide on your pitch deck or tagline on a site. Dont underestimate the power of a personal connection to the problem you are solving to tip the scale in your favor, like the talented robotics engineer who joins an AgTech startup because their family ran a farm in Californias Central Valley or the AI researcher who joins your TechBio company because they have a close friend impacted by the disease areas youre working to solve.
5. Sell personal impact
Roles at larger companies like Meta, Google, and Microsoft are definitionally narrower in scope, and therefore, individual impact. Most engineers own a slice of a slice of a project.
At a startup, on a lean and agile team, scope is limitless. One persons work can make or break the product; one idea can redefine a road map. Remember, before ChatGPT became the fastest growing consumer product of all time, it was originally a hackathon project shipped within 10 days by a team that was relatively early-career. For the right candidates, that high degree of responsibility isnt a deterrentits the allure. Lean into the messiness of early-stage building, where ones impact is only limited by an individual’s creativity and drive. This will attract the exact people you want: those driven by autonomy and impact.
While it may seem daunting competing with Big Tech for AI talent, the truth is that you dont have to.
You can win by being crystal clear about the skills you actually need, offering equity tied to a believable and outsized upside, showing conviction, and leaning into what draws people to startups in the first place: purpose and impact.
Amidst the AI talent war, the founders who win arent the ones who spend the most. Theyre the ones who can persuade the best people (the right people) that the riskand the rewardare worth it.
A young couple is casually hanging out in an apartment. The girl takes a fork full of food off a plate, as the young man asks, “Good?” She nods, furrowing her brow in a way that signals slight surprise that she’s impressed. “Really good.”
As “Fool” by Perfume Genius fades in, the white text of a ChatGPT prompt overlays on the frame: “I need a recipe that says, ‘I like you, but want to play it cool.'”
ChatGPT’s answer? Lemon Garlic Pasta with Cherry Tomatoes.
This is one of a series of new ads in OpenAIs first major brand campaign for ChatGPT. The spots depict everyday uses of ChatGPT, from finding recipes, to sourcing exercise tips, to road-trip planning. Its a stark departure from the brands only other commercial, which aired during the Super Bowl, and lacked any real emotion.
Now, about seven months later, after building up its internal creative team, OpenAI is releasing work that’s capital-A advertising, aiming right at our hearts and minds. And it’s exactly what the company needs at this pivotal moment, as the race to attract users heats up in the AI category.
Its important for people to understand that we’re in this true technological revolution, and we dont all have the same vision for how this will go, says OpenAI chief marketing officer Kate Rouch.
Winning hearts and minds
According to OpenAI, 70% of users say ChatGPT helps them in their daily life. This first campaign aims to showcase the ways those people are already using the technologyand more importantly, it’s a way to get the other 30% to find value in the product.
Just unlocking these small, meaningful moments, people are really feeling this kind of collaboration, this partnership in many areas outside of work productivity use cases, and we really feel like we have an opportunity to highlight that, says Rouch. It can be so easy to think of this as a one-to-one technology, but what we really see is that people are using it as a booster for their lives in ways that are social and very connected to so many things that they want to do.
OpenAI is hoping that tying its brand to these small, meaningful moments will be a key differentiator in what is quickly becoming a crowded and competitive market for our AI loyalties.
AI brands everywhere
ChatGPT quickly established itself as standard bearer among LLMs after its launch in 2022. The platform now boasts more than 700 million global weekly active users. This new campaign reflects an increasingly competitive landscape among the likes of giants like Google, Meta, and Microsoft, as well as fellow AI-era companies like Anthropic. (Googles Gemini app has 450 million global monthly active users, while Claude has more than 30 million.)
Earlier this month, Anthropic launched its own new, splashy ad campaign for Claude called Keep Thinking. Created by agency Mother, its a stylish hype reel of how AI can solve big problemscreative, technological, and everything in between. Meanwhile, Googles recently launched a new campaign for its Pixel 10, which highlights Geminis own everyday uses.
Rouch recognizes the competition, and says the brand team has a responsibility to illustrate both product differences and company values. I think its about communicating with people about what our vision of that future is, how we see this technology empowering and enabling people in their livesin very big and small ways, she says.
To do that, Rouch has been steadily building OpenAIs in-house marketing team. In the past couple of months, the brand has named Omnicoms PHD as its first global media agency of record, and hired Michael Tabtabai (formerly of Coinbase and Google) to be its first vice-president of global creative, as well as Brandon McGraw, who most recently led Anthropics consumer marketing, as its head of product marketing for apps.
Rouch says that the internal creative team has evolved from one led by primarily brand design, into a more full-fledged internal creative studio. We really have found that the best work happens when you have a really strong internal studio that you can partner around the world with amazing external agencies and creatives.
Just ChatGPT It
OpenAI is quick to say that while ChatGPT was used to brainstorm ideas, streamline logistics, and more, the campaign was shaped by a team of very human creatives, directors, photographers, and producers. A spot like Dish, makes the human element here palpable. It also hints at the potential for OpenAI to become an iconic brand like Nike, with the right mix of style and substance.
The music, casting, and product storytelling are pitch perfect in OpenAI’s campaign. The opportunity is for Rouch and her team going forward is to mix this type of quotidian relatability with more aspirational and advanced uses of ChatGPT. Nike has a playbook for this approach. Just look at how the company can straddle the epic talent of world class athletes like Aja Wilson and Caitlin Clark, with the more earthbound but no-less emotionally stirring story of a last place marathon finish.
OpenAI is clearly tryig to set the tone of who it is as a company and brand. By tapping into human stories and emotion, the company is attempting to build goodwill towards its product.
Part of the companys mission, and the original mission of launching ChatGPT at all is so that regular people can have access to this powerful intelligence as it is being developed, says Rouch. That is actually core to why the product exists, and the mission of the company. In our perspective as a brand, this isn’t a replacement for humanity, this is a tool to aid humanity.
The ongoing brand challenge in that is to make sure those values arent just a hallucination.
When Iga ¦wiatek breezed to victory in this years Wimbledon womens final, little mention was made of the head-to-toe On kit she was wearing. The reaction was testament to the “softly, softly” approach used by On these last few yearsbut the victory and subsequent exposure cemented its place among the fastest-growing challengers in a category long dominated by household names like Nike, Adidas, and Puma.
Together, these legacy brands still command a significant portion of the global athletic footwear market, but their grip is loosening. Between 2021 and 2023, challenger brands like Hoka and On (sometimes referred to as On Running) grew their revenues by 29%, compared with just 8% for the incumbents. Hoka recently posted record quarterly sales of $653 million, up 20% year-on-year, despite raising prices and expanding globally. On made roughly $2.6 billion in sales in the 2024 fiscal year, tripling its net profit from the previous year.
Sportswear is a difficult category to enter, let alone disrupt. A strong product isnt enough. To grow in this space, you need a brand strategy thats clear, consistent, and built for scale. Challenger brands like On and Hoka are showing how its done. Here are five lessons for others looking to follow.
It’s more than a look, you need a brand
On launched with a very focussed and modest product range, some proprietary cushioning technology called CloudTec, and a focus on performance. It leveraged its Swiss heritage with a Swiss engineering marque on each pair of shoes. But while its products were technically excellent, it’s also given the brand an emotional feel.
Whereas Nike leans into power, pushing limits, and being the best, On has taken a softer, more inclusive stance. The brand celebrates the pleasure of physical trainingtogetheras well as beating a personal best. Its products look good socially and casually, but they also perform. They were inspired by serious athletes, and despite their mass fashionable appeal, serious athletes still wear them. The companys mission has been to ignite the human spirit through movement.
A brand that wants to scale needs to understand who they are and what they offer, and build that into everything: design, advertising, and tone. Creating that well-articulated brand from the outset helps guide them as they grow.
Know how and when to broaden appeal
Performance can take a brand only so far. At some point, emotional connection becomes the growth driver. But scaling up and becoming a lifestyle brandwhich Nike did decades ago and On has done more recentlyis about timing and relevance.
The mistake brands looking to broaden their appeal often make is to try to appeal to everyone too early. Starting small, with a focused core, is what builds credibility. Mass appeal should come when the foundation is strong enough to support it, and methodically.
For those looking to grow, the challenge is to expand without losing what makes them distinctive. Technical credibility builds trust, but identity and feeling shape long-term loyalty. They need to consider how their product makes people feel. Do they inspire confidence? Belonging? Aspiration? And are these perceptions powerful enough to shape purchasing decisions during that crucial time when a customer is in buying mode?
Build a brand beyond the logo
For smaller brands, its essential to clarify which brand assets are fixedlogo, symbol, color, toneand which can evolve. Nike can play with its assets because it’s so recognizable. But for brands still establishing themselves, repetition and consistency are key.
Ons early identity focused solely on the “On” symbol. It became their most visible asset through sheer repetition, despite many customers still reading the symbol as QC. In its perfectly pitched series of ads with Roger Federer and Elmo, On used this identified confusion to charming comic effect, proving that theres still room for creativity, but within parameters. Younger brands must also be bold in how they deploy these assets, in fast-moving, crowded markets they have to stand out. Identify which brand elements are fixed, which are flexible, and ensure theyre applied with purpose.
Dont get lost chasing growth
Rapha revolutionised cycling apparel by capturing the emotion of the best of the sports history and matching it with uncompromising quality and design. But in recent years, it has lost its way. In October 2024, the brand reported an operational loss of 21 million ($28 million) over the year, the seventh loss-making year in a row.
The brand had grown quickly but seemingly lost control of its core offering. The Rapha Cycling Club sounded smart but hasnt added much: Subsidized bike hire at global hubs isnt relevant to most riders. Over the same period, its club membership dropped by 4,000 to 18,000 members. A flood of newer competitors now mirrors Raphas original proposition, often at lower prices.
For scaling brands, its important to recognise that the opportunities you turn down are just as important as the ones to take up. When a brand gets distracted by growth, it risks losing sight of what made it special in the first place. Holding your ground and not chasing every trend is a strength, not a weakness. Ons “Soft Wins” is more than a slogan, its a signpost to a core brand behavior.
Communities cant be forced
For smaller brands building their market presence, communities are incredibly valuable. They increase loyalty and create fans who share and showcase the brand, helping wider audiences to grow organically. From the outset, On, for example, developed a really core fanbase by telling stories that people wanted to hear, often about the joy of the activity, with kindness and a positive outlook.
However, as Rapha shows, you can create the conditions for a community, but you cant dictate it. In the case of bike brand Brompton, brand communities look totally different in different markets. In the U.K., its bearded tech-heads commuting across London. In China, its color-themed Sunday ride-outs in the park. A brand has to know when to step back, but at the same time it can watch, listen, and learn.
Scaling without losing your edge
It is one thing building a brand and a product that does well, its even harder to be that challenger brand looking to scale up in a crowded market. Growth adds pressure to diversify, monetize, and be everywhere at once.
However, brands like On and Hoka prove that it is possible to reach those taller heights. They are succeeding because theyve built something clear, valuable, and repeatable and then scaled it with focus and a great deal of attention to detail. To be a successful challenger, dont dilute what makes you distinctive, and resist the urge to say yes to everything. Define your brand early and scale on your own terms.
The US government has announced controversial guidance on the prevention and treatment of autism in children.
New health recommendations aim to discourage pregnant women from taking the painkiller paracetamolalso known as acetaminophen and by the brand name Tylenolto prevent autism.
The recommendations also include using the drug leucovorin to treat speech-related difficulties that children with autism sometimes experience.
So what is leucovorin and what does the science say about its ability to treat autism?
What is leucovorin?
Leucovorin is a form of folic acid, a B vitamin our bodies usually get from foods such as legumes, citrus fruits, and fortified grains.
The medication is most often used in cancer treatment. Its typically used alongside the chemotherapy drug fluorouracil, a cancer treatment that stops cancer cells from making DNA and dividing. Leucovorin enhances the effects of fluorouracil.
Leucovorin is also used to reduce the toxic side effects of methotrexate, another chemotherapy drug.
Methotrexate works by blocking the bodys use of folate, which healthy cells need to make DNA. Leucovorin provides an active form of folate that healthy cells can use to make DNA, thereby rescuing them while methotrexate continues to target cancer cells.
Because methotrexate is also used to treat the skin condition psoriasis, leucovorin can also be used as a rescue agent during treatment for this autoimmune condition.
Why is folate important?
Because folate is essential for making DNA and other genetic material, which cells need to grow and repair properly, its especially important during pregnancy.
This is because insufficient folate is linked to the development of spina bifida, a condition where a babys spine does not develop correctly. For this reason, women are advised to take folic acid supplements before conception and during the early months of pregnancy.
Folate is also important for supporting the production of red blood cells and overall brain function.
Why is it being considered to treat autism?
The recommendation to use leucovorin to treat autism seems to stem from a theory that low levels of folate in the brain can lead to a condition called cerebral folate deficiency.
Children with cerebral folate deficiency dont usually display symptoms for the first two years. Then they show signs of speech difficulties, seizures, and intellectual disability.
As the signs of autism are similar and it usually presents at around the same age, some people have proposed a link between cerebral folate deficiency and autism.
What does the evidence say?
So can giving children folate, in the form of leucovorin, help them to function better with autism? The evidence says maybe yes, and heres what we know so far.
A review of the evidence in 2021 analysed the results of 21 studies that used leucovorin for autism or cerebral folate deficiency. Children who took the drug generally had improved autism symptoms. But the authors also said more studies were needed to confirm the findings.
Since then, a small 2024 study involved about 80 children aged two to ten years with autism. Half took a daily maximum dose of 50mg of folinic acid (similar to leucovorin), the other half took a placebo. Children given folinic acid showed more pronounced improvement when compared with those who took the placebo.
A similar 2025 study examined the same dose of folinic acid given to Chinese children with autism. Those given folinic acid had greater improvement in a type of social skill known as social reciprocity when compared with children given placebo.
While promising, none of these trials are at the level to change medical practice. Wed need further, larger studies before doctors can make a proper recommendation.
Like all drugs, leucovorin has side effects. The most serious or common are severe allergic reactions, seizures and fits, and nausea and vomiting.
In a nutshell
Overall, the latest health recommendations are not yet backed by sufficient evidence.
While the US Food and Drug Administration will now allow doctors to prescribe leucovorin to treat autism symptoms, the Australian government should not change its prescribing guidance.
Support for people with autism should continue to follow evidence-based best practice until the data from clinical trials of leucovorin is more robust.
Nial Wheate is a professor at the School of Natural Sciences at Macquarie University and Jasmine Lee is a pharmacist and PhD candidate at the University of Sydney.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
