Daniel Shapero

Exciting news to share from the ELB Learning team! We’ve kicked off a five-year partnership with the Defense Acquisition University to help modernize and scale its learning ecosystem. 🎉 Our flagship eLearning authoring tool, Lectora™, will play a key role in powering world-class acquisition training, and our team will assist faculty in creating engaging and compliant digital training across DAU’s global network. We’ll also provide onboarding implementation and technical support, including LMS migration assistance, train-the-trainer programs, and expert services for course, game, and simulation design. I’m proud of the work our team is doing. Shout-out to our Government Services division, led by Peter Banfield and Ray Resendez IV, MBA, and our partners at DAU for believing in the transformation ahead.

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AT LEAST 5 HOURS of IN-PERSON GenAI training is what Boston Consulting Groups recommends for employees to drive digital and cultural transformation with AI We agree 100% and have been providing and supporting instructure lead GenAI employee training at may companies, including WEX, Gemline and others. This BCG article was rated "Essential" by our AI analysts on our daily AI news show (article link below) Companies continue to standardize on OpenAI ChatGPT Enterprise/Teams or Microsoft Copilot John Sviokla Michael Davis Max Auger Karen Beck Stroup Kate Reichenbach Jonathan Isaacson Adam Rappaport Shauna Conway Michael Hayes Naveed Asem Lenny Grossi Kent Fitzpatrick, AIFA®, GFS®, MSCTA Lucinda Linde Vinciane Beauchene Sylvain Duranton David Martin

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A few weeks back, I watched Maggie Hott, GTM leader at OpenAI, confidently navigate her first board meeting at Unify. Having worked with her through Emergence Capital's Operator in Residence (OIR) program, seeing her immediately contribute valuable insights made me think about how most board members receive virtually no training for this critical role. At Emergence, we've built our firm around developing board excellence. We grow all our partners from within and have established a culture of mentorship focused on board service. Junior investors aren't thrown into the deep end—we pair them with senior GPs to observe effective board dynamics firsthand. My initial experience was at DroneDeploy alongside my partner Kevin Spain, where I got great mentorship before taking on independent board responsibilities. We extend this methodology to our OIR program, where operators learn how to be effective board members. Based on my experience mentoring directors, here are the fundamental principles I share with first-timers for how board members can best support founders: 1. Reframe the purpose: Problem-solving, not reporting If your board meeting is primarily reporting, you're wasting your management team's time. Information sharing should happen asynchronously, with board members engaging with materials before the meeting. This enables the live session to leverage collective intelligence on critical challenges. This rarely happens because many directors overextend themselves across too many boards—another reason we maintain a disciplined investment pace. 2. Master the Socratic approach The most valuable contribution often comes through thoughtful questions rather than declarative statements. Your objective is to enhance the decision-making capability of management. I enter each meeting with 1-3 specific areas where I know I can add value, focusing questions on these topics. 3. Follow-through separates professionals from amateurs Diligently document your commitments, establish clear action items, and execute them. It's crazy how just doing this proactively makes a board member stand out. 4. Understand your unique contribution to the board ecosystem A high-functioning board resembles a great basketball team—you need complementary skills, not redundant ones. In every meeting, I stay conscious of my distinct value relative to others in the room, whether that's SaaS expertise, AI knowledge, or a particular relationship dynamic with the CEO. I calibrate my role based on needs—sometimes assertively addressing areas where others have less experience, other times asking probing questions where fellow members have deeper expertise. -- To my knowledge, Emergence is the only VC firm with a formalized program dedicated to board excellence. It's an investment that yields returns where they matter most—in bending the odds of success for our founders. Founders, I'm curious: What board member behaviors have you found most valuable?

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Sierra partnered with Curative to build their AI voice agent that's creating faster, better experiences for members and providers while freeing up their team to focus on what matters most: building deeper relationships

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Org charts are about to look completely different. Moderna is already merging HR + IT into a single "Chief People & Digital" role. Why? Because talent strategy is now inseparable from tech fluency. And that's just the beginning. Once AI is embedded into the operating model, you'll see roles like: → AI Monetization Strategist → Synthetic Data Architect → Model Governance Officer → AI Workforce Planner The old org chart was lines and boxes. The new one is interfaces and leverage. My advice? Start with overlap. Let early AI teams wear multiple hats. Specialize later - when load demands it, not ambition. What roles are you seeing emerge in your org? 👇  Find out more at https://vist.ly/4ie6u #AI #futureofwork #Oorgdesign #leadership #AItrategy

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We're living through a massive reset in the tech job market right now and it's not slowing down. Over the last few years, tech companies aggressively cut jobs after the pandemic hiring boom. Independent tracker Layoffs.fyi shows more than 150,000 tech roles were cut in 2024 across ~550 companies. So far in 2025, another 22,000+ layoffs have already happened and the trend is carrying into 2026 with nearly 30,000 job cuts announced by major employers like Amazon, Meta, Salesforce, and others in the first 40 days alone. This is not about a few companies tightening belts. It is a structural shift in how work is valued and organized. Some of the biggest voices in tech have been saying this for years. LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman pointed out that the traditional 9-to-5 job will become a relic of the past by the early 2030s as work becomes more project-based, AI accelerates automation, and companies move to flexible staffing models rather than large full-time employee bases. Here’s the reality: • Tech layoffs are happening at scale across industries. • Entry-level and mid-career roles are among the first impacted as automation and AI integrations speed up. • Traditional full-time employment, as many have known it, is changing fast. For anyone sitting on the sidelines waiting for the “next job” to land, this moment is worth rethinking. If the market is shifting from job security to opportunity creation, now is the time to start building instead of waiting. Susy Martins and I are hosting The Start-Up Room, a purpose-built seminar for founders and future founders who know this shift is not a threat but rather, it’s a launching pad. We're bringing together a team of SMEs to teach you how to start your own venture, be your own boss, and find your own freedom. If you've been thinking about turning your experience into a real business, not just a resume, come join us for a full day of support and learning on March 9, 2026 at Highline Beta headquarters. Seats are limited. Tickets to The Start-Up Room are here 👉 https://luma.com/ue76v0ld. Use the early bird discount code "INTHEROOM" until Feb 15th! Your next full-time opportunity might not come from a job opening. It might come from you creating the opportunity yourself.

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John Chambers’ ability to anticipate change and act with conviction continues to set the standard for visionary leadership. In his recent The Wall Street Journal interview with Marc Vartabedian, he shared a clear view of today’s venture landscape, one shaped by both disruption and opportunity. At Uniphore, we share John’s perspective that AI is the defining technology of our time, driving transformation across industries and fundamentally reshaping how businesses operate and succeed. Business AI sits at the top of the sphere of this transformative impact, shaping how we work, how societies function, how economies grow, and how businesses are built. To win in Business AI, it’s not just about predicting the future; it’s about having the conviction to move toward it with purpose. #BusinessAI https://shorturl.at/nDARz

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The contingent workforce industry is at an inflection point and the inflection is caused by rapid adoption of AI based Freelance Management systems transforming how companies think about both their contingent and total talent strategies. Staffing Industry Analysts just released their 2025 FMS Global Landscape Report, and the data tells a story about fundamental industry transformation, not just technology adoption. For decades, managing contractors meant navigating fragmented systems, compliance headaches, and limited visibility into spend and performance. Organizations paid the price in time, risk, and missed opportunities. Freelancers dealt with payment delays and administrative friction that got in the way of doing great work. Freelancer Management Systems are fundamentally changing this equation. The value creation is profound: Risk mitigation at scale: Companies are moving from reactive compliance management to proactive risk mitigation across multiple jurisdictions. The cost of getting this wrong has never been higher. Data becomes intelligence: Real-time visibility into contractor spend, performance, and workforce composition is enabling strategic decisions that were simply impossible before. CFOs and procurement teams finally have the data they need. Speed creates advantage: What used to take weeks (sourcing, onboarding, contracting, payments) now happens in days or hours. In fast-moving markets, this operational speed translates directly to competitive advantage. Integration multiplies value: When FMS platforms connect seamlessly with existing HR, finance, and procurement systems, organizations multiply the value of their entire tech stack rather than adding another disconnected tool. What the SIA research makes clear: the organizations winning with contingent talent aren’t simply using better software. They’re fundamentally rethinking their approach to workforce agility, unlocking talent pools they couldn’t access before, and building operational capabilities that become genuine competitive advantages. The spreadsheet era of contractor management isn’t just outdated. It’s leaving measurable value on the table: slower time to hire, elevated compliance risk, limited workforce intelligence, and constrained access to specialized talent. The question isn’t whether to adopt FMS technology. It’s how quickly your organization can capture the value it creates. In the link in the comments or just DM me to get the SIA’s YunoJuno showcase report to understand what leading organizations look for when evaluating an FMS and how YunoJuno supports modern contingent workforce strategies. ‍ #ContingentWorkforce #FreelanceManagement #FutureOfWork #Procurement YunoJuno

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Scaling a technology company has always been hard. What’s changed is the level of expectation around execution. In the 2026 State of Value Creation Benchmark, produced by York IE in partnership with the Magnuson Center for Entrepreneurship at Dartmouth, investors consistently point to faster decision-making, tighter GTM execution, and smarter use of AI as critical drivers of value today. For founders, this means less room for experimentation without outcomes and more pressure to build with discipline from earlier stages. The data isn’t meant to be prescriptive, but it is a useful reflection of how the market is thinking right now. Appreciative of all the survey respondents and the hard work and quality output from the teams who pulled it all together. If you’re navigating growth in your startup or business, it’s worth a read. ⬇️

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Amazon’s most innovative systems were all invented or refined during a remarkable 4-year window from 2001-2005. Here is what led to such a fruitful environment for process innovation. The processes invented during this time include Working Backwards, Single-Threaded Leaders, Two-Pizza Teams, Input Metrics, and 1-way/2-way Doors. They came about like this: First, Jeff Bezos fostered an environment where we could stand on the shoulders of those who came before us but were not beholden to existing methods. He was a relentless experimenter. This led to many innovative successes like the processes mentioned above, but it also naturally produced ideas that didn’t end up working. One example of this is the infamous "fitness function," an early attempt at a composite performance metric that seemed clever but ultimately didn’t work. However, these “failures” often pointed us in better directions. The fitness function taught us that it was necessary to analyze each metric on its own than seek to create a single, compound metric. This openness to experimentation and willingness to change course is what allowed the other systems to be developed based on observed results. Input metrics, for example, came from the realization that setting goals based on uncontrollable factors (like revenue or sales) distracted teams from investing in long-term improvements to the customer experience: more selection, lower prices, faster delivery. The Two-Pizza Team model and then Single-Threaded Leaders addressed a different kind of problem: how to maintain velocity and ownership at scale. As we grew, we saw that cross-team dependencies killed focus and speed. So, STLs, with teams dedicated to one mission, ensured steady progress towards important long-term goals. Most importantly in this inventive period, our Leadership Principles were not just words on a wall. They were reinforced through every hiring, promotion, and decision-making process. This is important because processes and culture cannot be built independently of one another. They must grow together and reinforce one another. If you want to learn about Amazon’s early culture of innovation, read the book “Working Backwards”: https://lnkd.in/gzJ4qb45

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