When you log into Amazon, its AI-powered recommendation engine guides you towards a purchase. After you select your items and order, computer vision guides robots in fulfillment centers to pick up the inventory, and machine learning optimizes delivery routes.
The Amazon order fulfillment system is paradigmatically hybridhundreds of thousands of human employees work closely with AI systems to deliver over 9 billion packages on the same or the next day to customers all around the world.
This isnt the future. This is how your groceries get delivered. Its the hybrid world, where transactions blend multiple intelligences, and where leadership requires convergence.
The Great Convergence
We thought digital transformation was a destination: install software, train teams, done. We were wrong.
Whats actually happening is a profound reshaping of business realitythe creation of a world where previously hard distinctions like humandigital, physicalvirtual, and emotionalalgorithmic are softening and blurring, a world where humans and AI systems are becoming inseparably entangled.
Consider three seismic shifts:
Markets Have Become Hybrid OrganismsCustomers dont distinguish digital from physical. They shop on Instagram, in-store, and via apps, expecting virtual assistants to remember everything. Customers exist everywhere, in all realities, fluidly moving between interacting with human and AI sales agents.
Workforces Are HumanDigital PartnershipsRather than employees simply using digital tools, they are moving towards developing symbiotic relationships with them. For example, medical professionals can use AI to detect patterns invisible to humans, and simultaneously, human feedback trains and improves the AI system. The result is better than either humans or AI could achieve alone.
Leadership Is Multi-Dimensional ChessRunning a company was complicated; now its complex. Complicated problems have solutions. Complex systems have endless, interconnected variables changing unpredictably. Leading in the hybrid world means deciding across dimensions you can never fully see.
‘Digital-First’ No Longer Holds
Leaders often respond to technological transformation by demanding that everything must be reoriented around the new technologythe digital-first approach. But in a hybrid world this approach is mistaken.
In a hybrid world, the challenge isnt that we must choose between physical versus digital or human versus machine. The challenge is that we need to orchestrate their convergence.
This requires a new approach in three areas:
1. Hybrid Markets: Where Algorithms Meet Emotions
Hybrid markets are fluid ecosystems where customers interact through multiple touchpoints hourlyhuman, AI, or blended.
Starbuckss mobile app creates a hybrid experience, with AI-driven personalization generating hundreds of thousands of email variations. Predictive ordering and human barista craftsmanship drive 31% of U.S. orders via mobile, growing active rewards members to 34.3 million in 2023.
But hybrid markets arent just about technologytheyre about emotional coherence. Targets predictive analytics identified pregnant customers but violated privacy expectations, showing algorithmic intelligence needs human judgment.
The Convergence Solution: Blend data science, behavioral psychology, and ethics. Before deploying customer-facing AI, ask:
What does the data say? (Analytics)
How will customers feel? (Psychology)
Should we do this? (Ethics)
2. Hybrid Workforces: Partners, Not Tools
Goldman Sachs estimates AI could impact 300 million jobs, with two-thirds of occupations facing automation. But real value comes from augmentationAI handles routine tasks, humans focus on complex decisions, relationships, and innovation.
For example, AI is revolutionizing the legal industry by speeding up and even fully automating routine operations like reviewing contracts, preparing client summaries, and tracking billable hours. This allows firms to redeploy lawyers to strategic roles like negotiating deals and advising on regulations, boosting both efficiency and job satisfaction.
At Moderna, AI helped design its COVID-19 vaccine. AI created mRNA for scientists to test, scientists experimented with them in the lab, and AI then examined the resulting data to identify which of the mRNA sequences were suitable to advance to animal trials. In just 42 days, Moderna had a COVID-19 vaccine it could test on humansan unprecedented result, and one that would have been impossible without the close collaboration between human beings and AI systems.
The Convergence Solution: Reimagine the workforce as a hybrid organism. Stop separating human resources and digital transformation. Create roles like:
Human-AI Collaboration Designer: Engineers workflows leveraging each intelligences strengths.
Cognitive Load Balancer: Ensures humans arent overwhelmed by digital complexity.
Partnership Ethicist: Navigates moral implications of human-AI collaboration.
3. Hybrid Leadership: Navigating Paradox
The test of a first-rate intelligence, said the American novelist F. Scott Fitzgerald, is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.
Hybrid leaders will have to be first-rate leaders, because hybrid-age leaders must be paradox navigators. Every decision involves opposing extremes, and rather than choosing one or the other, hybrid leaders must hold them both in creative tension.
Some fundamental contrasts are:
Personalization versus Privacy
Efficiency versus Employment
Automation versus Authenticity
Speed versus Reflection
Global versus Local
Virtual versus Physical
Hybrid leaders dont respond to these contrasts with “either-or”they respond with both-and.
The Convergence Solution: Build leadership teams blending:
Technical Fluency: Knowing whats possible
Psychological Insight: Understanding human responses
Systems Thinking: Seeing connections
Philosophical Depth: Navigating ethics
Creative Courage: Embracing paradox as opportunity
The 3 Pillars of Hybrid Success
From studying thriving hybrid companies, three capabilities emerge:
Fluid ArchitectureBuild systems that shift between human-led, AI-led, or blended modessystems that amplify human strengths like creativity when needed and automate tasks like background removal when appropriate.
Convergent TeamsEnd departmental silos. Build teams blending: engineers who understand psychology, marketers who grasp data science, HR leaders who think like systems architects, and finance professionals who consider ethics.
Adaptive GovernanceTraditional governance assumes stability. Hybrid governance assumes flux. Create frameworks handling paradox, ethical councils with technologists and philosophers, and metrics balancing efficiency and meaning.
The Convergence Imperative: Your Next 90 Days
The hybrid world rewards fast action and deep thinking. Heres your plan:
Days 1 to 30: Map Your Hybrid Reality
Identify humandigital interactions in your business.
Document where they create value or friction.
Spot paradoxes youre eliminating instead of leveraging.
Days 31 to 60: Build Convergence Capabilities
Form a convergent team mixing disciplines.
Run a paradox workshop for leaders to practice holding contradictions.
Redesign one process as a humanAI partnership.
Days 61 to 90: Launch Your Hybrid Transformation
Pilot a hybrid market initiative blending digital precision and human intuition.
Redesign one role as a humanAI partnership.
Establish hybrid governance to handle paradox.
Hybrid Reality is Here to Stay
Every interaction, employee experience, and leadership decision now exists in multiple dimensions. And in this multi-dimensional world, success belongs to those who think, lead, and create across all dimensions simultaneously. Thriving companies see hybrid as opportunity, creating convergence where human creativity and digital capability amplify each other, turning paradoxes into possibilities.
And this world isnt temporaryits now the permanent condition of business. Either you decide what that means for your organization, or it will be decided for you.
Hello and welcome to Modern CEO! I’m Stephanie Mehta, CEO and chief content officer of Mansueto Ventures. Each week this newsletter explores inclusive approaches to leadership drawn from conversations with executives and entrepreneurs, and from the pages of Inc. and Fast Company. If you received this newsletter from a friend, you can sign up to get it yourself every Monday morning.
We hear all the time about how generative artificial intelligenceor gen AIis eliminating entry-level jobs and changing the way knowledge workers complete daily tasks. But how are CEOs integrating these tools into the day-to-day work of leading a business? To find out, I reached out to executives across industries to understand which AI tools theyre using and how these technologies are changing the way they lead. Heres what seven chief executivesand one chief commercial officershared, in their own words.
Brad Bogolea, cofounder and CEO, Simbe Robotics, a robotics and engineering company
I use ChatGPT almost every dayits developed a rich contextual memory of how I think, which makes it an incredibly effective partner for writing, decision-making, and pressure-testing strategy. For certain file types and formats, Ill turn to Gemini. The key is knowing which model gives you the best acceleration for the task.
I use generative AI as a thought partner to move faster and think more clearly. Most often, its a [sounding board] for distilling ideas, pressure-testing conversation strategy, and sharpening my messaging. Whether Im prepping for a board call, investor meeting, or industry event, Ill use AI to draft talking points, uncover blind spots, and stress-test the framingoften from an Uber or in flight. At its best, AI helps me clarify what Im trying to say and why it matters. Its become an essential tool for thinking through complexity and communicating with precision.
Elizabeth Buchanan, chief commercial officer, Rokt, an e-commerce technology company
I use AI to accelerate how I consume information and frame decisions, whether thats transforming raw data into strategic narratives, refining product positioning, or stress-testing messaging. Its most powerful when used as a thought partnerhelping me evaluate decisions from multiple angles or refine how we communicate a complex idea with precision. At this stage of scale, decisiveness and speed are nonnegotiable. AI enables both. Its also fantastic to use it to get an update on everything a client has been talking about across touchpoints (their press and official updates to more casual LinkedIn posts from employees) to get an understanding of their current pain points or success stories. Its an absolute lifesaver. I automate these updates for myselfextraordinary time-saver!
Dave Dama, founder and CEO, AquaSonic, and cofounder, Onyx Global Group, a consumer brand incubator
I use AI to sharpen decision-making, speed up communication, and get to clarity faster. It helps me draft positioning frameworks, prep for key meetings, and collaborate with our CMO Jonathan Cohen on external messaging. I dont use it to replace judgmentbut it helps me move through the thinking and refinement process with more speed and less friction. Its become a trusted part of how I work through early-stage ideas.
Spencer Hewett, founder and CEO, RADAR, a software company
Recently, Ive been using tools like Fyxer, which is an AI executive assistant, and Cursor, which is a code editor. I also use ChatGPT and Claude as search engines for quick responses from my phone or desktop.
I use gen AI tools to streamline email management and responses and sometimes use ChatGPT to brainstorm or flesh out ideas before I make a final decision. Ive also been impressed with ChatGPTs ability to surface talented candidates via their public LinkedIn profiles.
Sami Inkinen, CEO, Virta Health, a health technology company
On the strategic front, AI acts like an on-demand thought partnerI use it to synthesize market signals, explore strategic scenarios, and identify emerging risks or opportunities. What used to take a day of analyst work or hours of personal research now takes minutes.
On the execution side, AI helps me move faster. I use it to draft communications, structure memos, and summarize long-form content, which frees me up to focus on high-leverage thinking and decision-making. Its a force multiplier for clarity and output.
Looking ahead, I think AI will reshape how companies are structured. Well move from traditional pyramids to more of a diamond shapefewer layers, more empowered individuals, and highly productive, AI-augmented teams. That has implications not just for org design, but also for budgeting and growth. More companies will grow revenue and impact without growing headcount or spend at the same rate. Thats already happening at Virta.
Steven Kramer, CEO, WorkJam, a software company
Leveraging AI has been a game changer for WorkJam. We use a number of AI tools, such as Googles Gemini coding assistant and Google Agentspace to more effectively search for files across the organization. I have made AI adoption a mandate for all WorkJam team members in 2025, and we have given every employee access to multiple tools and established a steering group that is driving AI innovation everywhere. Our teams are constantly building new agents to improve our production processes, leveraging a whole suite of tools, such as JetBrains, Windsurf, and others. For simple tasks, we have several trained ChatGPT models that are also helpful.
AI easily gives me back five to 10 hours a week, and sometimes more during planning cycles. I use that time to connect with our teams, have more unstructured conversations, and spend time with customers. Thats often where the best ideas surface. AI doesnt just help me do more, it creates the space to think better.
Evan Reiser, cofounder and CEO, Abnormal Security, a cybersecurity company
Generative AI and personalized AI agents are embedded into nearly every aspect of how I operate as CEO. These tools arent just assistantstheyre collaborators that expand my strategic and operational capacity. Here are some of the ways that I use them:
Meeting management: A custom AI agent transcribes and processes most internal meetings, generating concise summaries, action items, and automated follow-up emails. This ensures execution and clarity without manua overhead.
Personal executive coaching: Every week, a personalized Evan AI Coach reviews my meetings and delivers email feedback on where I was effective or where I could improve. It analyzes consistency in how I reinforce our mission, values, and strategy, and helps me reflect on areas like listening more deeply or recognizing team contributions.
Customer intelligence: Prior to customer meetings, a research agent reviews external sources, (e.g., LinkedIn, X, news) and internal data, (e.g., Salesforce, product usage, subscription health) to generate briefing reports. These are delivered, automatically, 24 hours in advance, ensuring I walk into every conversation fully prepared and contextually aware.
Virtual CXO advisers: Ive built custom GPTs trained on hundreds of pages of personal notes and audio transcripts from trusted domain experts. These role-specific agents, (e.g., for AI product strategy, corporate development, etc.) provide critical feedback and help me pressure-test ideasoffering continuity in strategic thinking even when I cant consult advisers in real time.
These agents are highly personalized and fine-tuned to reflect how I think, lead, and operate. They allow me to scale myself across more conversations, decisions, and strategic inputs without sacrificing quality or consistency.
Philip Smolin, cofounder and CEO, Daash Intelligence, a commerce intelligence platform
As such, generative AI functions as both a research and a consulting assistant. My primary use cases are business research and strategic ideation, which are lower-frequency but high-value tasks that help shape critical business decisions and help identify competitive advantages. I also use AI for reviews of legal documents and researching HR and regulatory topics, which would otherwise require outside counsel.
The evolution of executive work
Im struck by how quickly many of these executives have come to rely on generative AI as collaborators (the term thought partner comes up a lot), coaches, and even as strategic partners. How are you using AI to help you manage your time or lead your company? Whats working? What isnt? Feel free to share your experiences by sending an email to stephaniemehta@mansueto.com. Id like to regularly share great insights and tips on how to use AI with this community.
Read more: CEOs and AI
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CEOs start saying the quiet part out loud: AI will wipe out jobs
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When the Trump administration canceled the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities (BRIC) program, it pulled the plug on grant funds from hundreds of communities working to prevent catastrophes.
BRIC wasnt flashy or perfect, but it was essential. Its competitive, complex process favored large, well-resourced cities. Smaller, more vulnerable places often couldnt keep up with the paperwork or wait out the delays. The program was bureaucratic, underfunded, and sometimes slow. But it did something that few else were designed to do: it gave localities from across the country access to federal dollars to proactively reinforce electrical grids, guard water lines, and prepare for floods, fires, and rising seas. In other words, it gave them a fighting chance to withstand increasingly destructive disasters.
With more than 95% of Americans living in counties that have experienced extreme weather since 2011, the benefits were bound to be widespread. And fiscally prudent, too. Every $1 spent on disaster prevention saves $13 in recovery costs, according to a 2024 study by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Thats not wastethats smart policy to shore up schools, homes, and neighborhoods and safeguard lives.
So, what now?
We build anyway.
A New Era of Public-Private Partnership
Urban academic institutions like ours are uniquely positioned to provide applied research, technical expertise, and programmatic support that can help municipalities continue making progress. Universities can serve as innovation labs, testing emerging technologies before jurisdictions invest in full-scale deployment.
Indeed, we need a new era of public-private partnershipnot just with academic institutions, but collaborations where localities, businesses, and philanthropy also come together to do what government cant and shouldnt do alone: build vital facilities to withstand natures increasingly powerful storms and floods. At Cornell Tech, weve spent the last two and a half years doing exactly that. Through the Local Infrastructure Huba national nerve center galvanized by Bloomberg Philanthropies with support from other funders (Ballmer Group, Emerson Collective, Ford Foundation, the Kresge Foundation, and Waverley Street Foundation), specialists, and policy leaderswe are helping city halls strengthen systems and integrate technology-based tools that bolster infrastructure plans, pro bono.
Low-cost solutions
Perhaps most promising, from where I sit, is the role of artificial intelligence in revolutionizing local resilience. Even amid funding uncertainty, municipalities can deploy low-cost solutions to streamline processes, identify problems, and look ahead. Consider New York Universitys Urban Systems Lab and its development of ClimateIQ. Its a free, open-source tool that uses artificial intelligence to map neighborhood-level risks from floods and heat, helping local officials make faster, smarter decisions to prepare for severe weather events.
Likewise, digital twinsvirtual replicas of physical infrastructureallow planners to model impacts and interventions before committing precious capital to projects. Consider the benefits for municipal leaders in coastal towns susceptible to hurricanes and tropical storms. Instead of sketching evacuation routes and emergency responses on a paper map, they can use a digital twin to simulate what would happen if a bridge collapsed or a road flooded during a crisis. They can see how traffic might respond and adjust their plans proactively or in real time.
Thats exactly the kind of thinking behind a partnership between the city of Austin and the University of Texas. They deployed digital twin technology to respond to fast-moving grass fires, especially on the citys east side where dry land and high asthma rates overlap. The system uses drones and weather data to map smoke in real time, then warns schools and senior centersdownwind. It started with 2D maps, but when the data moved into a 3D model, it changed everythingpeople could actually see the risk and take action. It’s not just about shiny software; it’s about leveraging the strengths of each collaborator, building trust among key players, and using real data to protect people.
In Jacksonville, the University of Florida is piloting a digital twin project with the intent of scaling it statewide to model everything from wastewater treatment flows to outdoor areas especially prone to flooding. It will give officials an evidence-backed view of the future. In Chattanooga, a coalition that includes the University of Tennessee, Audi, Qualcomm, and others are using digital twins and cellular vehicle-to-everything (C-V2X) technology to make roads safer. These are the kinds of cross-sector efforts that city halls everywhere should be replicating.
Powerful tools
To be sure, digital twins and artificial intelligence arent silver bullets. But they are powerful tools. AI-driven systems can help cities analyze traffic flows, monitor water quality, and identify structural weaknesses in buildingsbefore disasters strike. With input from academics, assistance from entrepreneurs, and consortiums like the Local Infrastructure Hubwhich has already helped 2,400-plus municipalities unlock national investment to design safer roadways, protect groundwater, mitigate floods, and morelocal governments can implement these strategies today. Thats the model: targeted resources, expert guidance, and innovative ideas delivered by an ecosystem that spans sectors and connects officials to fellow peers.
Insurmountable losses
But we need more. We need nonprofits to expand their support. We need businesses to invest not only in smart cities, but resilient ones. We need researchers to step off campus and onto Americas main streets. And we need mayors to continue to lean into their frontline role as defenders against wildfires, windstorms, and other natural disastersand reimagine the capabilities they need to lead on preparedness and mitigation.
This isnt abstract. Its about whether a community is just one crisis away from insurmountable losses to the local economy, public and private property, and peoples hopes for a dependably safe and sustainable way of life. A North Carolina state report on Hurricane Helenes impact in 2024 said: In addition to the devastating loss of life, the storm destroyed thousands of homes and damaged tens of thousands more. Millions of North Carolinians lost access to critical services like water and sewer, electricity, telecommunications, and healthcare facilities. Thousands of miles of roads and bridges were damaged. . . . The regions economy has suffered a severe blow, threatening livelihoods and the long-term viability of communities.
Lets stop waiting for Washington to fix what localities are ready to solve. Lets partner across sectors to keep our communities safe, secure, and prepared. Strong nations need strong cities. And strong cities dont waitthey build.
The AI companion space will soon see another new entrant. Elon Musk, the owner of xAI and social media platform X, announced recently, Were going to make Baby Grok @xAI, an app dedicated to kid-friendly content.
Were going to make Baby Grok @xAI, an app dedicated to kid-friendly content— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) July 20, 2025
The decision to enter the AI chatbot and companion market seems logical for X: Around three in every four U.S. teens have already used AI companions, and the platform will naturally want to build brand loyalty early.
However, experts in child protection and social media use are raising concerns. Musk, xAI, and child-focused apps may not be a good combination, they warn. The concern is that if X or xAI are going to try to get into the children products zone, clearly they just have a terrible track record with prioritizing child safety, says Haley McNamara, SVP of strategic initiatives and programs at the National Center on Sexual Exploitation (NCOSE). They’ve just proven themselves to not really care, so I think that they should stay away from kids.
McNamara is not alone in her concerns. The apprehension is shared internationally. Elon Musks plans to launch a child-focused version of Grok will cause alarm across civil society, with growing evidence about the risks posed by persuasive design choices in AI chatbots, a lack of effective safeguarding in most major industry models, and no clear strategy to prevent hallucinations, says Andy Burrows, CEO of the Molly Rose Foundation, an organization founded by the parents of U.K. teenager Molly Russell, a 14-year-old who died by suicide after being exposed to harmful content on social media.
Beyond the fact that Baby Grok would come from the same organization that developed Ani, a sexualized AI chatbot that users have quickly coerced into explicit conversations, and Bad Rudi, a red panda chatbot that defaults to insults, experts see broader dangers. Burrows is particularly worried about introducing AI chatbots to children since they may easily form emotional attachments to such technology.
Chatbots can simulate deep and emotional relationships with child users, and there are evident risks that children may use chatbots to seek mental health support or advice in ways that may ultimately prove harmful, Burrows says. Even adults have formed inappropriate emotional bonds with AI chatbots, struggling to differentiate between artificial and real relationships.
For more impressionable children, these connections could take hold more quickly, with potential long-term effects on their mental health. McNamara says companies have an obligation to consider how their platforms affect kids and to take steps to protect themsomething she believes a Grok-bot for children fails to do. (Neither xAI nor Musk responded to Fast Companys request for comment.)
NCOSE also raises concerns about whether Musks platforms can adequately protect young users. McNamara notes that after Musk acquired what was then Twitter, many child safety staff were let go.
X also allows pornography on its platform, which does not require any kind of stringent age or consent verification for those videos, she says, contending that such lax policies have led to a widespread presence of abusive material, and so far theres been little sign that the company is taking meaningful action to address these issues.
Burrows, for his part, points to the U.K.s new Online Safety Act as one layer of oversight that would apply to Baby Grok, though he notes that X has been slow to meet the requirements of the legislation. His larger concern is global. In many countries, he warns, the lack of regulation will mean the rollout of badly designed products will go effectively unchecked.
Musk may see a business opportunity. But for those responsible for protecting children online, the stakes are far higher.
Bright and early on a recent Saturday morning, a line snaked around the block in Boston’s trendy Seaport District. People were patiently waiting to get their hands on PopUp Bagelssoft, steaming hot bagels designed to be torn and dipped directly into tubs of cream cheese or butter.
PopUp Bagels wants to help Americans reimagine our relationship with this beloved breakfast food, and it’s well on its way to doing so. Today, it announces an ambitious expansion from its 13 stores on the East Coast to a fleet of 300 stores from coast to coast with a focus on hubs like Atlanta; Nashville; and Orlando, Florida. “We’re bringing our stores to places where people don’t necessarily think of themselves as ‘bagel people’,” says Adam Goldberg, PopUp Bagels’ founder. “We’re introducing bagels into their routines.”
[Photo: Courtesy of PopUp Bagels]
The company began as a pandemic hobby for Goldberg, a flood mitigation expert from Connecticut. In lockdown, Goldberg started baking. After trying his hand at sourdough bread, he moved on to bagels. With much tinkering, he developed a recipe for a bagel that had a softer, lighter texture than the dense bagels you find in New York. The bagels were so delicious friends and neighbors wanted to buy them by the dozen. Two years later, Goldberg began opening pop-up shops around New York City that attracted large crowds.
To many people, PopUp Bagels offers a fun new take on bagels. Most bagel shops bake their goods in the morning, then toast them for customers. But PopUp Bagels are meant to be served fresh from the oven. They’re satisfying to rip apart, with a crisp exterior that provides contrast with the soft interior. At the Seaport District, people were scattered at picnic tables and benches, dipping their bagels directly into different flavored schmears. They can also be eaten cold in a more traditional way, by slicing them and slathering them with cream cheese and lox.
Goldberg points out that the New York bagel has evolved over the years to become what it is. His bagels are actually reminiscent of those in New York shops from decades ago. “I’ve had so many New Yorkers tell me these bagels remind them of their childhood,” he says. “Back then, people lined up for hot bagels straight out of the oven, when they were at their peak performance.”
Part of the reason bagels stopped being served this way is that it is logistically challenging to serve them hot at scale. Each store needs to predict demand, then bake them at steady rate that keeps pace with the line. PopUp has turned this process into an art with the help of Tory Bartlett, whom Goldberg appointed as CEO last November. Bartlett, who previously saw the expansion of Moe’s Southwest Grill to 600 locations, is familiar with scaling food businesses.
[Photo: Courtesy of PopUp Bagels]
Bartlett says that PopUp Bagels has streamlined its operations by exclusively selling bagels and coffee; it doesn’t make sandwiches. It also sells bagels in bundles of three, six, or a dozen, rather than one at a time. (Prices vary from $13 to $15 for a three pack and a schmear, depending on the market.) This allows them to better predict demand and generate revenue. “The unit economics of a business needs to be competitive as you scale,” says Bartlett. “It’s hard to make money by selling one or two bagels at $3 a pop. But selling a three pack protects the transaction.”
Another reason the shops are profitable is that they don’t require a very large footprint. They just need a couple of ovens and a counter. Employees focus on quickly packing bags of bagels and schmears for customers. “We don’t need a lot of workers,” Bartlett says. “It’s a very streamlined operation.”
[Photo: Courtesy of PopUp Bagels]
The efficiency of the business convinced Bartlett that it was possible to quickly scale PopUp. In 2023, the company received an infusion of $8 million Series A funding, and last year, it took a Series B round, both of which were led by Stripes, a growth equity firm. They then began the process of franchising PopUp.
Bartlett says they were extremely judicious about their partners. They’re only working with 15 franchisees, who will each run dozens of shops. “Thousands of people reached out to work with us, but we were extremely selective about whom we partnered with,” says Bartlett. “We picked people who are very passionate about this business.”
To keep the taste of the bagels consistent, PopUp will make the dough and disseminate regionally. This will allow the franchisees to focus on the operations of delivering hot bagels quickly.
If the other locations are any guide, there are likely to be long lines at all of these new stores, as people experience the novelty of the PopUp experience. But can the company keep up this level of inteest? Goldberg has high hopes. “Conveniently, we’ve landed on a product that has been a staple for many people throughout their entire lives,” he says. “The fact that we’re making something that people love anyway gives us a head start.
Being an effective leader requires a matrix of skills and abilities working in tandem. The ability to foster hope, cultivate trust, and motivate people to action can make a difference in your company’s ability function effectively and retain employees80% of employees responded that theyd stay in a job because they have a manager they trust.
And no small part of the ability to lead is executive or leadership presence. A well-publicized study by Coqual (formerly the Center for Talent Innovation) found executive presencelooking and acting the part of a leadermakes up 26% of what it takes to ascend to top jobs.
If I were to boil everything down, the two fundamental core principles of good, successful, solid leadership is strong and unquestionable authenticity and trust, says executive and leadership development coach Serena Palmer. However, there are some common behaviors and habits that undermine those leadership essentials. Palmer and other experts say being aware of them is the first step to correcting them.
Shifting from ‘me’ to ‘we’
Some leadersespecially those who are new to their roles and may be feeling insecurehave trouble shifting from being individual contributors who need to toot their own horns to get ahead to being a leader and responsible for a teams performance, says leadership expert and coach Emily Walton. This can take a few forms, she says, including emphasizing your own importance in a situation, micromanaging, and failing to give credit to others for the teams success.
Sometimes, people will take these actions because they might be feeling insecure about themselves in their role or [about] their contributions, Walton says. When you shift into leadership, it’s a we thing, and you want to do that because it strengthens your network, and it also strengthens the trust that people have in you: that you’re going to speak up for them, whether they’re in the room or not, and that you’re honest and authentic.
Avoiding the tough parts
The Coqual survey found that gravitas was the No. 1 factor in leadership presence, according to 67% of respondents. Key components of gravitas include exuding confidence, showing grace under pressure, and speaking the truth, even when its difficult.
One of the quickest ways to erode the trust of your team, Watson says, is people-pleasing, especially when it comes to making tough decisions and standing up for your team. If you’re constantly trying to please everyone else, it’s going to frustrate your team, and it’s also going to frustrate your colleagues, because they’re not going to know where you stand, and you’re no longer dependable, Walton says.
Another version of this behavior Palmer calls, dont shoot the messenger. In other words, when difficult decisions are made or bad news surfaces, the leader abdicates responsibility for the decision or news, saying it was someone elses to make, she says. In other cases, the leader just avoids making a decision, such as allowing bad behavior on a team to continue rather than addressing it head-on. Both undermine authenticity of the leader, and again, you will lose people that way, she says.
Being busy without impact
Wearing busyness as a badge of honor without making a significant impact is another action that will erode the trust and confidence of teams in their leaders, says personal branding expert Nicole Hart. When someone is proclaiming how busy they are and the results of that work arent evident, the people around you or your superiors are going to be like, Oh, I don’t have the faith that I can put more on their plate’, she says. And so, it kind of decreases faith for leaders when I think people are actually trying to do the opposite.
Hart adds that insecure leaders may do this to this to try to solidify their place as necessary to a company or organization. However, effective leaders know how to prioritize where their efforts are best devoted.
Spewing negativity
Chronic negativity can also wear on a leaders presence, Hart says. Bringing up negative personal issues when theyre not relevant, being cruel or overly negative when giving feedback, and even being negative about your own ideas as you pitch them, all damage credibility and relationships with the team. Leadership requires vision. Vision requires the ability to see untapped, positive opportunity. Negative leaders cant inspire innovation or loyalty, Hart says.
Avoiding vulnerability
Walton says that communication issues like being a know-it-all and having an inability to apologize can also undermine leadership presence. Similarly, an inability to show vulnerability can do the same, says Palmer. By not doing that, you don’t give permission for people in your team to be able to have a safe space to share whatever it is that they’re having difficulties with, she says.
Leaders who feel like they may be undermining their own leadership presence should try to get to the root of why trust is being lost, Walton says. Own up to it and then, outline what you’re going to do differently and then actually do it, she says. Otherwise, it’s just lip service, and that’s not going to change how people feel.
An intense dream can leave you in sweats and existential wonder. But just moments later, it evaporates from your mind to never be experienced again.The fleeting nature of dreams is why many keep a dream journal by their bedside to jot down the story before it disappears. The design studio Modem imagined another, more modern recording device. Called the Dream Recorder, its something like a bedside clock radio that uses AI to log your dreams and play them back to you.[Photo: Courtesy of Dream Recorder]When you wake up in the morning, you pick up the recorder and dictate what you remember of your dream. That ensuing transcript is sent to an AI video generator in the cloud, which creates a short video of it. Whats important to Modem is the ritual, done without an app or phone, is performed with an object dedicated to youa sort of generated visual diary of dreams.The thing that happens in your head isn’t going to be magically recreated by this video generator, says project contributor Mark Hinch. But it will hopefully capture the essence of the perhaps bizarre, weird, fragmented ideas of what happened in your head in the story.The dreams themselves are rendered through an intentionally ethereal aesthetic, at a low fi 240-by-240-pixel resolution thats meant to mirror the way we remember a dream, but also sidestep too much literality when things naturally dont match up. For instance, it blurs faces so that you never see someone who doesnt match up with what you remember. And rather than saving every dream you ever have forever, the Dream Recorder has been designed to flush its memory much like you doholding onto dreams for a week at most before overwriting them with whatever you dream up next.[Photo: Courtesy of Dream Recorder]Instead of selling the device, Modem shares the code on Github, along with all the items you need to buy to build it, ranging from a Raspberry Pi processor to USB microphones and capacitive touch sensors, via Amazon links. The body can be printed via an online service like Shapeways, and it all connects together without soldering. (Dreams cost between about a penny and 14 cents apiece, depending on the AI service you connect to render them.)But the Dream Recorder is admittedly less interesting as another product with features to be scrutinized than it is as a greater idea, and model of experimentation thats been lacking in the race toward AGI or building the next unicorn. With so much of the AI conversation focused on companions, productivity tools, or generative whatever, its easy to block out the more transcendental possibilities like being able to literally speak to whales. Modem cut through the productization of AI with a new dose of wonder. The Dream Recorder is fascinating not just for what it literally does, but as a rare, tangible beacon for a future that feels just within our grasp. (Dream recording inherently seems feasible within our electrical brain patterns and new AI capabilitiesso much so that Samsung filed a patent around a UI to control your dreams.) And much like a good sci-fi novel, it offers us an anchor to discuss and debate what it all means until a world of inventors actually leads us there.We hope to inspire the new generation coming of age in the age of intelligence . . . showing them that there’s a more mindful alternative to the very distracted world, says Bas van de Poel, cofounder of Modem. Perhaps using the engines of wisdom and mindfulness, and combining them with the logic of computer science, will be sort of like the ultimate dream, he says.
There have been five 1 in 1,000-year floods” this summer alone in the continental U.S.
Heavy rains have poured over Texas, North Carolina, New Mexico, Illinois, and Florida over the past months causing streets to flood, homes to suffer irreparable damage, and people to lose their lives, loved ones, and pets.
The death toll alone in Texas is at 135 as of July 25, as search efforts begin to end with only three more persons still missingthe result of over three weeks of searching.
The 0.1% chance of these floods occurring makes their recent frequency alarming. This, coupled with other recent flash floods across major East Coast states like New York, Massachusetts, and New Jersey and projected flash floods in central and southwestern U.S., makes for increasingly unsettling future forecasts.
But are these weather patterns actually out of the normor are these floods becoming more common?
How rare are 1,000-year floods?
The phrase “1 in 1,000-year floods” comes from the fact that statistically, floods of that intensity and destruction are likely to happen once every 1,000 years (or a 0.1% likelihood). In 2024, there were 35 1,000-year floods across the U.S. and more than triple that number of 100-year floods, which have a statistical probability of happening 1% of the time.
As far as I’m aware, if we tracked 1 in 1,000-year flood events over time, you wouldnt necessarily see a discernible increase in the number of events per year, says Allie Mazurek, a climatologist at the Colorado Climate Center. However, on a more general scale, we are expecting to see more extreme precipitation events in a warmer climate.
An interactive map from the Colorado Climate Centerwhich is updated in near real-timetracks high precipitation events across the country. It combines past research and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Atlas 14, a precipitation frequency data interface, to track high-precipitation events from 2002 to today in every state but Washington and Oregon (their data has yet to be updated on NOAA’s precipitation server).
The data sets visually depict the number of 1,000-year heavy precipitation rates from 2002 to 2024. Each year follows similar patterns and frequency. But that doesnt mean rainfall and subsequent flooding isnt intensifying. Mazurek says there are two factors at play for these natural disasters: the frequency in which rain falls, and the intensityhow much it rains in a short amount of time.
According to independent climate research group Climate Central, 88% of 144 locations across all nine climate regions in the U.S. have experienced a 15% increase in hourly rainfall intensity since 1970. Nearly two-thirds of those locations experienced at least a 10% increase in the same period.
Mazurek says these trends come down to one primary effect of climate changehumidity.
Rising temperatures create wet air
Essentially, when you have warmer temperatures, that allows more water to exist in the vapor phase, and therefore, you get more water up in the atmosphere, Mazurek said. Then when you get a thunderstorm, there is more water available to it when it starts to precipitate and make rainfall. If youre adding more water to the atmosphere, you’ll get more rainfall as a result.
Climate Central says that for every single Fahrenheit degree of Earth warming, the air holds 4% more moisture. Give that the Earths temperature has risen by roughly 2 degrees Fahrenheit since the preindustrial era, there’s simply often more water available to create intense rainfall.
So while the statistical probability of these floods occurring won’t change, their severity could get worse
Mitigation and adaptation
Flash floods arent expected to subside anytime soon this summer, with Accuweather meteorologists warning that additional flooding events can be expected due to this summers continued trend of high precipitation predictions.
I think there’s definitely more work that all of us together could work on for extreme rainfall and flood events from meteorologists to emergency managers, Mazurek said. We all obviously have more work to do communicating those kinds of events and keeping people safe. I think that is still a very active area of research.
However, with recent Trump administration changes to climate policy, emergency weather cuts at NOAA, and the dismantling of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), these efforts may become more and more difficult, even as climate-driven natural disasters increase.
“We expect kind of both sides of the extremes to get more extreme, Mazurek said. Heavy precipitation, extreme rains, flooding events, as well as drought. They each work off their own feedback.”
Back in 2015, Microsoft claimed our attention spans had dropped to eight secondsshorter than that of a goldfish. No ones definitively proven it, but it feels about right in the age of TikTok. Ten years later, goodness knows how long were able to hold it.
Its one of the major social shifts of our lifetimes, and its one that a new generation of start-up brandsand their investorshave jumped on. These “dopamine” brands, such as Starface, Graza, and Poppi, provide younger generations with striking visual hits to draw them in with an instant high. Their packages, messages, and social content all pop, their drops sell out in minutes, and their fans queue virtually just to get their hands on them. Those limited drops, seasonal flavors, and unexpected collabs fuel hype and scarcity. These arent just products; theyre events.
But with every dopamine hit comes a comedown, and many challenger brands are now struggling with staying power. Meanwhile the legacy brands languish on the sidelines, wondering what to make of it all as a chunk of their audience is tempted away. Theres a lot to learn in creating fresh news for these classic heroes, but they shouldnt feel threatened by the dopamine gang; rather, they should see an opportunity in it. If youve got iconic assets and built emotional trust over decades, youre more than halfway there. The nudge is to deliberately disrupt yourself by bringing ideas in from the outside, while finding ways to retain what it is people love about you at the core.
Packaging is a powerful touchpoint to do it. Its your shop window, your sensorial hook, your cultural signal. When you get it right, it should create not just fleeting excitement, but a deep connection that creates a lasting memory. Here’s how to do dopamine design, without right.
Inject hype at the edges, dont break the system
Limited editions are an obvious, and often fruitful, place to start, but legacy brands can sometimes get overexcited here. Often there is a temptation to create disruption by sidelining the rule book and going crazy with the new news. When limited editions arent rooted in what people already love about the brand, they land as lazy, insincere. They often fall flat with consumers, who see straight through it. Smart design evolves from whats already there; celebrate the core brand essence by coming from a place of authenticity, then create the disruptive newness.
So, when Jaffa Cakes was developing a limited-edition flavor, they began by acknowledging the product truth: the joy is in the jammy center. To make it feel more special than the established orange, an unexpected idea came about in cola-bottle flavor. This delivered an exciting dose of “Im not sure thatll work” intrigue mixed with reassuring nostalgia for the consumer.
Crucially, we restrained ourselves with the packaging design in responding to this. We retained the existing layout and the brand’s visual consistency, while dramatizing the new story within it to create something new. Its a simple but effective technique, all too often brushed aside in favour of total “pack takeover” disruption.
Short-term impact, long-term value
Limited editions from brands work best when they riff on the thing people already love about them, whether it be format, flavor, origin story, or something else.
These kinds of designs dont just deliver a momentary dopamine hit. When a drop gets it right, it builds trust and respect with consumers. Moreover it builds a momentum that has a positive halo effect back into the main brand.
Look at Johnnie Walkers Squid Game Limited Editionanother entry from a brand that continues to cross-pollinate categories to deliver the unexpected. Here its bringing popular culture in to give its audience exactly what they never knew they needed. While the launch design felt dopamine, the core pack design confidently fused both brands’ assets together with mutual respect and consideration. It was a wisely thought through approach and showed us that the brand can deliver both quality whisky and moments of playful humor simultaneously. The total effect of such one-offs is that the entire brand benefits from them.
Collaboration should amplify, not dilute
The Heinz x Absolut collaboration was a good example of how good design can multiply brand value. Its success lay in both brands celebrating their distinctive assets in tandem in the launch collateral (Heinzs silhouette and red tones, Absoluts bottle shape and stripped-back typography).
[Photo: Absolut Vodka/Heinz]
The creative ideavodka pasta saucewas playful, but it was the campaign work and the packaging that sold the credibility, where the two brands came together in a way that felt creative and made sense for each partner. The most effective collaborations arent necessarily about giving each brand equal space, or one giving way for the other. Its putting egos aside to create something entirely new together, the genius child of both.
Legacy brands at the center of culture
Legacy brands dont need to reinvent themselves to stay relevant, but they do need to stay alert to whats happening around them. Packaging is a hugely impactful area to showcase this. It is the most visceral, sensorial, and tangible touchpoint a brand can have. A good idea at the heart can be taken to the next level when form, finish, and feel are also taken into account.Legacy brands should be more confident in the strength of their assets. Changing them creatively just a little can a have a powerful outcome. Building both brands assets through co-respect can help place a brand in the center of culture effectively enough for the audience to reappraise it on a deeper, more lasting level. It can reenergize products and brands, putting them in front of new audiences who will become the next generation of loyalists. A design that is oversaturated in dopamine can have the opposite effect, creating confusion around your brand’s identity, leaving your crowd alienated and cynical.
The key is to build from what people already know and love. Thats what gives brands the permission to try something new on their packaging, and the credibility to be taken seriously when they do. Once youve cracked the code in an authentic way and succeeded at it, the stage is set for a future of endless creativity that people will come back for time and again.
Its been more than six months since record-breaking wildfires destroyed thousands of homes in the Los Angeles area. So far, few homes have been rebuilt. On one barren block in Altadena filled with vacant lots, no new homes have started construction yet. But one of the first homes that will break ground on the street is using technology to help the rebuilding process move faster.
Later this summer, a mobile micro factory will roll up to the lot and begin using robots to build walls, roofs, and flooring panels while a construction crew lays the foundation. Other components, like bathroom pods with all of the fixtures preinstalled, will be built off-site and delivered for assembly.
Cosmic, the startup building the house, first launched building sustainable accessory dwelling units (ADUs) with a streamlined process designed to cut time and cost. Last year, the team started designing a larger, fire-resistant single-family home in Northern California. When the disaster hit L.A. in January, the company sped up its work to develop mini factories for the fire zone.
[Photo: Cosmic Buildings]
Modular construction isnt new. But Cosmics approach, with compact manufacturing units that travel to the building site, avoids the expense of developing larger factories. (Katerra, one high-profile startup, reportedly spent $150 million on its factory before going out of business.)
My core belief is that conventional prefab doesnt work, says Sasha Jokic, Cosmic’s founder. We saw the billions of dollars invested in the prefab industry . . . you need to keep the lights on, and its super hard to do it, given the costs of operating the factory. A typical factory is also constrained to a specific geography, since it isnt economical to deliver more than around 300 miles away.
Instead, Cosmic wants to bring modern manufacturing directly to each site. Its first micro-factory is now sitting on a lot in Pacific Palisades, where the company is working on permits for another house in that fire zone. The factory will travel back and forth between the Palisades and Altadena.
The construction system is around 10 times faster than traditional construction, Jokic says. It also uses around 60% less labor, which may help it avoid disruptions. The construction industry in Southern California already had a labor shortage; the current threat of immigration raids also means that some people now feel afraid to come to work.
[Photo: Cosmic Buildings]
The company also uses technology for the design process. For the house in Altadena, for example, it used software to design a house to the clients specifications in seven days. Really, the breakthrough technology is that its AI-driven, Jokic says.
The company, he says, can instantaneously create a code-compliant plan designed specifically for the site and the client’s needs. And because the software will only output designs that the company knows it can build, it’s easy to provide accurate timelines and pricing information.
For families affected by the fires, the company is offering design services for free. The cost of homes is roughly 30% less than traditional construction, Jokic says.
The clarity of the process helped convince the Altadena homeowners to move forward. The family, a couple with a young child, had lived in their previous housea 1923 craftsmanfor a decade. The old house needed repairs, the family had nearly completed a renovation when the fire happened.
After the fire, they wanted to rebuild differently. We talked to five other architects, and I just felt so overwhelmed by the idea of starting from scratch and going through the rebuilding process again, says homeowner Justin Lieb. The renovation was so overwhelming and exhausting.
They also liked the homes features, which go beyond the fire safety requirements in the building code, from fire-resistant walls and roofs to sprinklers. The all-electric house is also as energy efficient as possible, so it can make the most of the solar panels on the roof. Being as self-sufficient and ecologically conscious as possible was a big appeal to us, Lieb says. A gray water system helps recycle water. They also chose to install an EV charger, though they havent yet purchased an electric car.
[Photo: Cosmic Buildings]
Software also helped the permit application process go quickly, and the team had filed everything to the city within around 20 days. As we continue improving the system, really the plan is that this is going to be instantaneousbasically 24 hours turnaround for the concept design, and two days for the permitting, Jokic says.
The company handles the permitting process. For the Altadena house, it just got approval from the local planning department. Now, it needs approval from the citys building and safety division, which has committed to a 30-day review timeline. Then construction can begin.
The company is now working through the permitting process for four families in the fire zone. Ultimately, they have the capacity to build as many as 150 to 180 homes over the next 12 months, says Jokic. For every 10 homes they build, they have committed to build another for free for an underinsured family in the fire zone, in a project they call the 1:10 Initiative.
“Given that we can build much faster and lower cost and anyone else on the market, we definitely saw an opportunity for us to donate a portion of our revenue to build for people who [can’t afford it],” Jokic says.
Jokic, who grew up in war-torn Yugoslavia, says that the idea of providing affordable, quality housing has motivated his life’s work. “This is really a deeply personal experience,” he says. “And just being able to help people who are struggling to get their homes back, that’s what really matters at this point.”
