John Cook

We continue to see fintechs launch their own chains. First Circle with Arc. Now Tempo from Stripe. In today's webinar, folks asked, "Do we really need another payments chain?" The answer depends on where you are in your journey. At Dynamic, we’ve seen this play out across every type of builder (fintechs to consumer apps to onchain infra teams). The truth is: there is no single “right” chain. There are only tradeoffs. - L1s (like Stripe building its own): Maximum control, but higher setup fees. You own the infrastructure and the overhead. - L2s & rollups (like Robinhood's choice): More agile, but built on shared foundations. Optimized public chains (Solana, Stellar, Spark, etc.): Fast, cost-efficient, and ready to go. They're great for teams that want to launch quickly without reinventing the wheel. My recommendation: Start with what’s performant and proven. Chains like Solana Foundation, Stellar Development Foundation, and Lightspark get you to market fast. Once you’ve found product-market fit and scale, then revisit whether spinning up your own chain makes sense. – 🔁 Share this post if you found it helpful. ➕ Follow me (Itai Turbahn) for more posts on stablecoins and crypto.

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I spoke to Katherine Tangalakis-Lippert at Business Insider about why gig workers can't wait for payday. Our 2025 Gig Driver Report found 65% have borrowed money while waiting to be paid, and nearly as many people have delayed bills because of slow pay. 70% of drivers now want instant or daily pay. For platforms, this isn't a bonus feature anymore. It's core to driver retention and trust. Thank you, Katherine, for covering our report! https://lnkd.in/gNA6gxcj

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One of my favorite podcast conversations to date. Our VP of DevX and Self Service, Sanjay Sarathy, sat down with Neil C. Hughes on Tech Talks Daily recently to talk about what actually makes product-led growth work long-term. Key insight: Sustainable growth comes from doing the unglamorous work early --building trust, optimizing unit economics, saying no to vanity metrics. It's rare to hear this level of honest conversation about scaling PLG from bootstrapped to $150M+ ARR. Worth a listen: https://okt.to/3Rlsam

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Huge news: the same foundation that powers AI inside Kustomer can now extend to other help desks. Starting today with Zendesk, organizations can activate Kustomer’s enterprise-grade AI directly inside the platform they already use. Teams can deploy specialized AI agents for every CX use case, boost productivity across support operations, and deliver real-time insights for CX leaders. All without migrating systems. To make it even easier to check it out, we're offering a free 30 day trial for Zendesk customers to see how Kustomer operates inside their live environment:

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Excited to share part two of my conversation with Rachel Botsman, this time digging into how trust is going to shape 2026. During our conversation we covered: 📈 Purchase decisions happening inside LLMs 💬 Language becoming the new trust currency 🧭 AI reshaping who (or what) we take advice from If you’re a marketer thinking about where trust, influence, and decision-making are heading, give this one a watch! 

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Last week, I attended several Seattle Tech Week events and came away with a few strong takeaways: - Startups need to be intentional about where they build and who they build with. Talent is everywhere, but the best founders are thoughtful about assembling teams that move fast and stay aligned. - Speed isn’t just a product imperative. It needs to bleed into marketing, pricing, packaging, and every part of the go-to-market strategy. Test, iterate, repeat. - We’re seeing small, focused teams achieve incredible scale. A team of five can now reach $50M in ARR. Execution matters more than ever. - Leadership expectations have shifted. As one VC put it, the most successful founders today act like “charismatic cult leaders.” It’s not about ego—it’s about clarity of vision and the ability to command attention. And despite the noise, impact investing—especially funds focused on women and minority-led startups—is not only still here, it continues to outperform. There’s a lot to be excited about. Building is harder and more rewarding than ever. Working on a pricing or packaging refresh? Or building fast with a lean team? Reach out—happy to trade ideas.

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EXECUTION 9 Letters. Easy to spell. Easy to say. Not easy to Say and Do. The word "execution" originates from the Old French execucion (c. 1360) and earlier, the Latin ex(s)equi (“to follow out” or “to carry out”), meaning to perform or complete a task. (thanks Google for the origin) In the recent Tearsheet article (https://lnkd.in/gfzwHgxD), I made the following statement, “Early on, our teams had no shortage of talent or ambition but needed focus. The organization was juggling too many priorities at once, shifting direction whenever a new deal or idea surfaced. To help solve this, we put up guardrails around the way we work.  Today, every initiative is evaluated through three lenses: merchant demand, ROI, and contractual obligations. That simple discipline has changed everything. It brought clarity to what we build and why we build it and helped us focus our energy where it matters most – on driving performance, efficiency, and merchant satisfaction.” Not enough can be said about how critically important this has been in the last 18 months. Big companies generate a lot of noise. It’s an unfortunate reality. And a byproduct of this is that this noise distracts teams from following out on their execution strategy. It drives teams to react instead of staying on course with their plans and priorities. I think this is the biggest issue that disrupts execution for most teams within big companies. Why did I write all of this? Because there is no fixed formula or standard solution tied to execution. Each organization has a different structure, and each execution strategy requires its own approach to achieve the desired long-term success. And this approach above took time to come to fruition. If this was easy, there would not be approximately 3K titles related to product management available on Amazon. The reality is that sorting out the right execution approach and designing the right prioritization strategy takes time. And you need to be willing to make changes along the way to find the right formula. Execution in the product world is its own art form. Because it requires careful, purposeful actions to be taken to drive the desired outcomes. That’s the Do in the Say Do ratio. All the Say in the world won’t get you to the actual Do if you don’t have your approach sorted, strategy aligned and prioritization process in place. If you’re still here and reading this, then thanks for hanging in there. There’s been a lot said about execution these days and I just wanted to add my take to this overall conversation. Hope you and your team find the right execution strategy. Because once you find it, it is a wonderful thing. Cheers!

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Terrific new piece of research out today from Nich Tremper on my team at Gusto. It's looking at the real-world impact of small-businesses missing a payroll for their employees -- and how macroeconomic factors have boosted the share of small businesses missing payrolls in recent years. Nice write up from Emily Peck at Axios is here -- the full study is in the comments:👇 https://lnkd.in/gWu3899r

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It was an honor to be a panelist at last week's Women of Customer Success event in San Francisco, hosted by Ironclad (thank you!). My takeaways: 👩‍🔬 Tinker with AI; start small and learn as you go. 🗓️ Advocate for time to have your team tinker, even if it's just a half-day AI hackathon. 🚀 CS leaders at this event were hungry to learn and eager to dig into this space I am bullish of what the future of CS and AI hold. AI won't replace the human-first, customer experience work. It will enhance it.

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Executive at Stripe: There are 3 ways you hire and keep talent long-term. Most companies only focus on one. Clara Liang from Stripe shared this simple but powerful framework with me. She broke down talent retention into three holding powers: Intellectual holding power: Are they learning? Is the work engaging their minds? Emotional holding power: Are they connected? Do they feel part of the mission and culture? Financial holding power: Is the compensation compelling enough to stay? You won’t be strongest in all three. But you win when you connect your power across categories. I think about this all the time in recruiting, coaching, and leading. We are often competing with tech giants: - Can't match Google's salary? Win on learning opportunities and agency. - Can't offer Meta's resources? Win on emotional connection to team and customers. - Can't provide Apple's stability? Win with intellectual challenge and learning. I’ve seen managers scratch their heads when people leave companies that seem "perfect on paper." But it makes perfect sense. High salary + boring work + toxic culture = turnover. Lower pay + meaningful mission + growth opportunities = retention. Be intentional about your strengths and honest about your trade-offs. Most companies recruit like they're strong in all three areas. Then wonder why people leave for "lateral" moves. The best leaders audit their holding power regularly: - Which pillar are we strongest in right now? - Where are we weakest? - How do we compensate? Talent retention is about having the right combination for the person you're trying to keep. Which holding power does your organization lead with?

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🚀 My team just launched the next major update to Qwilr's Agreements feature. If you haven’t used Agreements before: it’s how Qwilr helps you send plain-text, print-friendly contracts alongside beautiful, interactive proposals. Think: Docusign but so much better. Now, we’ve added Initialing — so you can require that buyers sign or initial specific clauses in your contracts. That means: ‼️ Critical terms don’t get missed 🕵️‍♀️ Audit trails are crystal-clear 😵‍💫 No more switching between tools for your buyers, which creates confusion and loses deals. You can learn more over on the Qwilr website.

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