For the first time in nearly half a century, the city of Detroit has a major new addition to its skyline. Hudson’s is a $1.4 billion ground-up downtown development of two buildings covering more than 1.5 million square feet, including residential, office, hotel, retail and event space.
It’s a large-scale argument that for all of the city’s troublesfrom its precipitous population decline to its high poverty levels to its rock bottom 2013 municipal bankruptcythe city has brighter days ahead.
This assertion comes from Bedrock, the real estate arm of billionaire Dan Gilbert, who has almost single handedly breathed life into the city’s downtown core through a decade and a half of strategic building renovations, adaptations, and historic restorations that have brought both jobs and residents back. Today there are nearly 6,000 residents in the core of downtown Detroit, up from about 4,400 in early 2019. The Hudson’s project is by far the most sizable of these efforts.
The project’s 49-story hotel and condo tower, now the second tallest building in the city, features a stepped form and bright lighting along its five glassy rectangular sections. At its base is a pedestrianized mid-block alley that Bedrock is turning into a public civic space. And next door is a stout 12-story mixed use building with ground floor retail, an events and exhibitions center, a top floor restaurant, and seven floors of office space. As a sign of the project’s early success and impact downtown, local auto giant General Motors signed on to turn four of the office floors into its new global headquarters.
The project was designed by the architecture firm SHoP Architects. It’s been in the works since October 2013, just months after Detroit declared the largest municipal bankruptcy in U.S. history, but it is built on the site of another deep scar on the city.
[Photo: courtesy Bedrock]
A hole in the heart of the city
The project is named after J.L. Hudson’s, the famed hometown department store that grew to become a touchstone space for generations of Detroiters. Once the second largest department store in the world, Hudson’s filled an entire city block along Woodward Avenue, the city’s central spine, and rose 25 stories tall. It was known as much for hosting the city’s Thanksgiving parade as for selling school clothes and wedding dresses.
“As a kid growing up here, Hudson’s was magic,” Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan tells Fast Company. “You went down there at Christmas. You went and saw Santa Claus on the 11th floor. Everybody in southeastern Michigan has such powerful memories of it.”
The Hudson’s building (large structure on the left), ca. 1998. [Photo: Vergara, Camilo J./United States Library of Congress]
But after more than 100 years in business, the store’s fates followed those of the city’s and it closed in 1983. It was imploded in 1998 on live television. Newscasters covering the event from several blocks away were, like the rest of the city’s downtown, coated with the dust of Hudson’s former glory.
“It left a literal and figurative hole in the heart of the city,” says Jared Fleisher, president of Bedrock. “For Dan, the Hudson’s Detroit was both a symbolic and a substantive exercise. Symbolic in the sense of honoring that history and recreating something that would have the same kind of significance in the cultural and historical fabric of the city, but then substantive to actually drive economic progress in the city.”
[Photo: courtesy Bedrock]
Four years of design
Designing aproject to meet those goals took time. Bill Sharples, one of the founding principals of SHoP Architects, says his firm spent about three months developing an initial design concept and getting a model in front of Gilbert, back in early 2014. “About a month later we heard, well, the model got broken,” Sharples says. “He wasn’t excited about it. And from there, that’s where it got interesting.”
The project shape-shifted. Several times. There was a swooping and metallic version of the podium that got leaked to the press in 2015, then a more carved up approach, and gradually more rectilinear takes. There were four different versions of the tower part of the project, with each poking out from a big, bulky base building spreading across the entire site.
Sharples says his design team began to think about the project not as one big behemoth, but as a project trying to appease two wildly different scales. “We started to think about how does this building impact the skyline and how does this impact the urban fabric of Woodward,” he says. “That’s when we split it into two separate buildings.” The design gelled in the spring of 2017, and the project broke ground later that year.
After nearly eight years of constructionand one global pandemicthe two buildings are now substantially complete. The 12-story offices-and-more block building will have its first office tenants move in later this year and its retail and events spaces are already operating. The tower’s exterior is complete, and the interior is now being built out to house an Edition hotel on the lower part of the tower and Edition-branded condos on the top. Both are expected to open in 2027. The public alley space between the buildings will officially open in October.
[Photo: courtesy Bedrock]
A love letter to Detroit architecture
Walking along the front side of the Hudson’s office building earlier this month, Bedrock vice president of architecture and design James Witherspoon points to some of the facade treatments on the block building that, Bedrock hopes, will make it blend into its surroundings while also reminding people of the original Hudson’s building. “It was important that it was a building that felt of Detroit, and not something that just landed here,” Witherspoon says.
The building includes visual references to the department store’s terra cotta facade, but also to other significant buildings in the area, including the interiors of the Guardian Building, a national historic landmark, and the modernist office tower One Woodward, designed by Minoru Yamasaki. Walking into the block building, where workers are still putting finishing touches on the main lobby and the offices, some of these references can be seen obliquely through the windows and others pop out throughout the interior.
[Photo: courtesy Bedrock]
Inside the event space, past a small reception area and coat check, are three escalators framed by a black and gold tunnel meant to evoke the historic main stairs into the Hudson’s department store. They lead to what’s been dubbed the Department, two floors of flexible meeting and exhibition venue with room for up to 2,000 people. The main floor covers 33,000 square feet that can host conventions or be subdivided down for smaller events like weddings.
One corner features a covered outdoor patio that overlooks the new civic space running between this building and the tower part of the project, and nearly the entire frontage overlooking Woodward Avenue has a narrow terrace offering views up and down the corridor (and, not accidentally, front row seats for the Thanksgiving parade that still takes place on the street every year).
[Photo: courtesy Bedrock]
The floor above has another 19,000 square feet of meeting and event space, broken down into nine rooms sized for groups of up to 150 people. Each has a cleverly connected access point to a service space where an event’s drinks or food service can be brought directly from the back-of-house kitchen area.
[Photo: courtesy Bedrock]
The rest of the 12-story building is office space. Filling nearly the entire block, it is a deep building, which the architects addressed by creating a large central atrium inside topped by a massive oval skylight. On the fifth floor, this pours light into a large amenity space, with communal seating, a cafe, planters with mature trees. It’s also where tenants access the building’s other amenities, including a gym, a lounge, and an indoor pickleball court. This space also doubles as an event area, hosting all-hands meetings, for example. Oval-ish walkways wrap around the atrium on each floor leading to the top of the building, which will soon house a restaurant.
[Photo: courtesy Bedrock]
Moving past stacks of building materials and workers installing seats and planters on the amenity floor of the office section of the block building, Witherspoon notes that the project was already well underway when the pandemic changed the calculus around how much office space makes sense in a city. Because it has a relatively modest amount of office spaceseven floors, not 70Bedrock didn’t make any significant changes to the overall program. But the company did refocus on the amenity spaces that would serve office tenants, and lure big companies. “We imagined it to be a headquarters,” Witherspoon says.
[Photo: courtesy Bedrock]
GM’s new HQ
Others did, too. In April 2024, General Motors announced it would be moving its global headquarters into the Hudson’s office building, taking the top four office floors. There are already plans for GM to use part of the lower section of the building to create displays of its newest vehicles. Maybe not coincidentally, an oversized car elevator was designed into the project from its earliest days.
“There was always the idea that if you’re building an events space in Detroit, you’d better be able to accommodate cars,” says Witherspoon, smiling.
GM’s move is a resounding endorsement for Bedrock’s vision for this project, but it’s also a death knell for GM’s current headquarters, the beleaguered Renaissance Center office and hotel complex. Located a few not very easily accessible blocks away, the Renaissance Center was originally built in the 1970s by the Ford Motor Company and is now owned by General Motors, which has seen tenancy in its six towers evaporate in the years since the onset of the pandemic.
By abandoning its own building and joining what commercial real estate experts call a flight to quality, GM has essentially numbered the days for the Renaissance Center. It’s now working with Bedrock on a plan to partially demolish the complex.
Sharples says the Hudson’s project was designed to offer a new model, and a new center of gravity for the city. “[The Renaissance Center] was built as a fortress. You come in, do your business, and leave Detroit,” he says. “Here we were working with something that was completely the opposite. It was about reinvigorating the city center.”
That goal may not translate to an easy return on Bedrock’s $1.4 billion investment, nor on the $60 million tax abatement the city approved for the project in 2022.
Whether it’s a slow success or an expensive loss leader for Bedrock’s development aims remains to be seen. Witherspoon says that one of Gilbert’s guiding principles for the company is to be “for more than profit,” and the Hudson’s project fits that mold. “For Dan, a lot of the work Bedrock has done for the last 15 years is acting as a catalyst for economic activity in this part of town that had stalled out,” he says. “He’s been the biggest cheerleader, the biggest optimist for the opportunity here, and this building is representative of that.”
Duggan, who was first elected the city’s mayor in November 2013 when the project was just getting started, sees more of a spiritual impact for a city that’s had more than its share of heartbreak. “To see Dan bring it back the way he’s done it, to bring General Motors headquarters there, to see the second tallest building in Michigan going up on that site . . . it means a lot to me,” he says. “It means a lot to every longtime Detroiter.”
Novo Nordisk said on Thursday it would buy U.S.-based Akero Therapeutics for up to $5.2 billion to add its promising experimental liver disease drug, in the first major deal by the Danish drugmaker’s new CEO to boost growth.
The deal underscores new Novo Nordisk CEO Mike Doustdar’s efforts to revive sales growth and fend off intense competition from U.S. rival Eli Lilly. Doustdar, who took over the reins in July, last month also announced the company would cut 9,000 jobs.
Akero is testing its drug, efruxifermin, in a late-stage trial of patients with severe liver scarring, or cirrhosis, due to a type of fatty liver disease known as metabolic dysfunction-associated steatohepatitis (MASH).
Efruxifermin could be a potential breakthrough in treatment of fatty liver disease and become a “cornerstone” treatment either on its own or in combination with Wegovy, Doustdar said in a statement on Thursday.
Under the deal, Novo would pay Akero shareholders $54 per share upfront in cash, which represents a premium of about 16.2% to Akero’s last close of $46.49 on Wednesday.
The Danish drugmaker will also pay an additional $6 per share to Akero’s shareholders if efruxifermin secures a full U.S. approval for the condition by June 30, 2031, the companies said.
Shares of Akero jumped more than 19% in premarket trading, while Novo’s Denmark-listed shares were down nearly 2%.
Some Novo investors have recently told Reuters that they want to see the company invest heavily in research and development to build out its future drug pipeline and revive investor confidence with a growth story. Some have also said they would prefer the company diversify beyond weight loss and diabetes.
Doustdar has said the company will focus on developing the next generation of highly effective obesity and diabetes drugs that can also treat related cardiometabolic conditions such as MASH, rather than expand into other disease areas.
Anna Ringstrom, Mariam Sunny and Maggie Fick, Reuters
Most members of the Federal Reserve’s interest-rate setting committee supported further reductions to its key interest rate this year, according to minutes from last month’s meeting released Wednesday.A majority of Fed officials felt that the risk unemployment would rise had worsened since their previous meeting in July, while the risk of rising inflation “had either diminished or not increased,” the minutes said. As a result, the central bank decided at its Sept. 16-17 meeting to reduce its key rate by a quarter-point to about 4.1%, its first cut this year.Rate cuts by the Fed can gradually lower borrowing costs for things like mortgages, auto loans, and business loans, encouraging more spending and hiring.Still, the minutes underscored the deep division on the 19-person committee between those who feel that the Fed’s short-term rate is too high and weighing on the economy, and those who point to persistent inflation that remains above the central bank’s 2% target as evidence that the Fed needs to be cautious about reducing rates.Only one official formally dissented from the quarter-point cut: Stephen Miran, who was appointed by President Donald Trump and was approved by the Senate just hours before the meeting began. He supported a larger, half-point cut instead.But the minutes noted that “a few” policymakers said they could have supported keeping rates unchanged, or said that “there was merit” in such a step.The differences help explain Chair Jerome Powell’s statements during the news conference that followed the meeting: “There are no risk-free paths now. It’s not incredibly obvious what to do.”Miran said in remarks Tuesday that he thinks inflation will steadily decline back toward the Fed’s 2% target, despite Trump’s tariffs, and as a result he doesn’t think the Fed’s rate needs to be nearly as high as it is. Rental costs are steadily declining and will bring down inflation, he said, while tariff revenue will reduce the government’s budget deficit and reduce longer-term interest rates, which gives the Fed more room to cut.Yet many other Fed officials remain concerned about stubbornly high inflation, the minutes showed. Jeffrey Schmid, president of the Federal Reserve’s Kansas City branch, said in a speech Monday that “inflation is too high” and argued that the Fed should keep rates high enough to cool demand and prevent inflation from worsening.And Austan Goolsbee, president of the Fed’s Chicago branch, said in an interview Friday with The Associated Press that he supported a cautious approach toward more cuts, and wanted to see evidence that inflation would cool further.“I am a little uneasy with front loading rate cuts, presuming that those upticks in inflation will just go away,” he said.The minutes provide insight into how the Fed’s policymakers were thinking last month about inflation, interest rates, and hiring. Since then, however, the federal government shutdown has cut off the flow of economic data that the Fed relies on to inform its decisions. The September jobs report wasn’t issued as scheduled last Friday, and if the shutdown continues, it could also delay the release of the inflation report set for next Wednesday.
Christopher Rugaber, AP Economics Writer
For its first brand refresh in 13 years, Domino’s updated its color palette, packaging, and font to look more engaging. When it came to making new tagline, though, the Michigan-based pizza chain is trying something unique: they just added more Ms to their wordmark. Mmm.
Domino’s announced a rebrand Wednesday that includes brighter reds and blues and a new font called Domino’s Sans that was designed to “be thicker and doughier” and proves that using sans serifs doesn’t have to be bland. Team members will get new branded gear to wear in the kitchen and out delivering orders, and there’s a reimagined suite of new pizza boxes, including one black-and-metallic-gold box designed for premium menu items, like Domino’s Handmade Pans, to better upsell pricier pizzas.
[Image: Domino’s]
It’s a brand refresh optimized for craveability, like recent rebrands for Burger King and Papa Johns that used squishy type and color palettes chosen to convey freshness and ingredients. This is graphic design meant to look delicious and make you hungry.
For its new taglinewhich Domino’s is calling it its “cravemark”they tapped Shaboozey, who draws out the “m” sound when saying “dominos” in campaign ads (like “dommmino’s,” get it?). On screen, the musician’s jingle is visually reinforced with an animation that adds the extra Ms to the Domino’s wordmark before the letters snap into the Domino’s domino logo.
“Rather than launching a more traditional tagline, we’re baking craveability right into our name and every aspect of our brand as a reminder of this relentless focus,” Domino’s executive vice president Kate Trumbull said in a statement. “You literally can’t say ‘Domino’s’ without saying ‘mmm.'”
The cravemark is a wordmark, tagline, and jingle all rolled up into one, and judging by who the company got to sing it, Domino’s has big ambitions for its new brand asset. Shaboozey’s “A Bar Song (Tipsy)” tied the record for the longest-running No. 1 in Billboard Hot 100 chart history last November, and he was the only artist to be featured on Beyoncé’s Cowboy Carter twice. In a statement, he called pizza “that one food that brings everyone together” across generations and cultures. Domino’s is aiming for an asset with wide appeal and recognition.
Domino’s is the leading U.S. pizza chain by revenue, bringing in $4.78 billion annually, ahead of Papa John’s, Yum! Brands-owned Pizza Hut, and Little Caesars. Same as its competitors, though, Domino’s has also seen its year-over-year same-store sales plummet since the pandemic as fewer people seek out delivery options. Like Peloton or Zoom, delivery pizza brands are pandemic darlings that are readjusting to new norms. Pizza has been hit especially hard by inflation, with median restaurant meal prices rising 12% for pizza, more than any other food category, according to data from Datassential.
[Image: Domino’s]
Other pizza chains have responded to shifting quick-service restaurant trends with redesigns of their own, like Papa Johns, which introduced a food-inspired brand refresh last year, and Pizza Hut, which is experimenting with its own new store concepts and premium menu items at home and a new, fun, retro logo abroad. Trumbull, the Domino’s executive, denies that their brand refresh is due to the company struggling, but it does have something to do with repositioning the brand.
“Over the past decade, we became known as a technology company that happens to sell pizza,” she said. The pizza chain remembered for its pizza tracker and website would like to start being remembered for “making and delivering the most delicious products and experience,” as Trumbull put it. Though the brand refresh will show up in digital advertising and on Domino’s app and website, the impetus behind it is human.
With no end in sight to the political impasse in Washington that has shut down the government, the U.S. IPO market is expected to experience a significant slowdown just as it was beginning to show signs of life again.
Some companies are nevertheless forging ahead with their listings.
Phoenix Education Partners, parent company of the for-profit University of Phoenix, which announced its IPO plans one day before the shutdown began, said on Wednesday that it has priced its shares at $32. That’s the midpoint of its earlier targeted range of between $31 and $33 a share.
The company intends to list on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) under the “PXED” ticker symbol. Selling shareholders will offer roughly 4.3 million shares of its common stock, with Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, BMO Capital Markets, and Jefferies serving as lead book runners.
At its offering price, Phoenix Education has a valuation of roughly $1.14 billion, Bloomberg reported.
“An attractive and growing sub-segment”
University of Phoenix is almost 50 years old and has been accredited since 1978, according to a company prospectus filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). The school is geared toward online adult education, with most of its students already in the workforce and seeking to advance their careers in some way.
“Adult learners represent an attractive and growing sub-segment of the higher education market,” Phoenix Education writes in its prospectus. “However, they face unique challenges that are not addressed by traditional programs designed for 18- to 22-year-olds, including the time constraints and responsibilities of work, community and caring for dependents.”
The school says it had an average total enrollment of 82,700 degree-seeking students as of the first nine months of this fiscal year. Roughly 70% of its students are seeking bachelor’s degrees, with business and IT being its most popular areas of study, followed by healthcare and behavioral and social sciences.
Is University of Phoenix profitable?
Unlike some of the high-profile tech startups that have gone public this year, University of Phoenix is already profitable.
Last year, it generated net income of $115 million on revenue of $950 million, according to its SEC filings, up from net income of $52 million on revenue of $801 million in 2022.
What else is there to know?
Phoenix Education is backed by Apollo Global Management and investment firm Vistria Group, with the former being a majority shareholder. The company is expected to list its shares today (October 9, 2025) at some point after the opening bell.
The IRS will furlough nearly half of its workforce on Wednesday as part of the ongoing government shutdown, according to an updated contingency plan posted to its website. Most IRS operations are closed, the agency said in a separate letter to its workers.The news comes after President Donald Trump and Congress failed to strike an agreement to fund federal operations, and the government shutdown has entered its second week, with no discernible endgame in sight.The agency’s initial Lapsed Appropriations Contingency Plan, which provided for the first five business days of operations, stated that the department would remain open using Democrats’ Inflation Reduction Act funds.Now, only 39,870 employees, or 53.6%, will remain working as the shutdown continues. It is unclear which workers will remain on the job.Doreen Greenwald, president of the National Treasury Employees Union, said in a statement that taxpayers should expect increased wait times, backlogs and delays implementing tax law changes as the shutdown continues.“Taxpayers around the country will now have a much harder time getting the assistance they need, just as they get ready to file their extension returns due next week,” she said. “Every day these employees are locked out of work is another day of frustration for taxpayers and a growing backlog of work that sits and waits for the shutdown to end.”She urged the Trump administration and Congress to “reach an agreement that reopens government and restores the services that Americans need and deserve.”The notice to workers states that furloughed workers and those who remain on the job will receive back pay once the shutdown ends. This is notable since the Republican administration on Tuesday warned of no guaranteed back pay for federal workers affected by a government shutdown.Last week, Trump said roughly 750,000 federal workers nationwide were expected to be furloughed across agencies, with some potentially fired by his administration.Representatives from the IRS, the Treasury and the White House did not comment on the furlough plans.Earlier this year the IRS embarked on mass layoffs, spearheaded by the Department of Government Efficiency, affecting tens of thousands of workers. At the end of 2024, the agency employed roughly 100,000 workers and currently that hovers around 75,000.
Fatima Hussein, Associated Press
Creativity has always been governed by timenot just how long it takes to bring an idea to life, but how long a creator can stay in flow. Every designer knows the frustration of an idea hanging in digital limbo. But those pauses, once accepted as inevitable, are now starting to vanish.
Figma, the cloud-based interface design tool, and Google Cloud, the computing and storage platform, have announced the integration of Googles Gemini 2.5 Flash directly into Figmas design platform. The collaboration aims to let designers generate visuals and make edits almost instantly, eliminating the lag between an idea and its execution.
For users, that means faster collaboration, smoother iteration, and a more natural creative flow.The economic significance of latency in AI is far greater than just speedits about changing the commercial viability and product experience for every application built on a generative model, says Matt Renner, president of global revenue at Google Cloud. Lower latency, in turn, decreases computational and financial expenses, allowing the AI tools to become more scalable and efficient for high-volume tasks, he added. Gemini 2.5 Flash (also known as Nano Banana”) rose to prominence for its ability to merge multiple images, keep characters consistent across edits, and generate a wide range of styles, from lifelike portraits to classic art, in mere seconds.
Google claims that in early integrations of Gemini 2.5 Flash, Figma users saw a 50% reduction in latency for the platforms Make Image feature, unlocking faster image generation capabilities for its users.In Figma, every second AI can return to the user, whether its time saved renaming layers, editing images or even generating multiple images at the same time, frees them up to focus on the kind of higher-level problem solving and deep iteration thats at the root of all great design, says Abhishek Mathur, vice president of platform engineering at Figma. The partnership signals a deeper strategic shift for Google Cloud. Rather than competing for user attention, the company aims to embed its AI models, including Gemini 2.5 Flash, Gemini 2.0, and Imagen 4, directly into third-party creative ecosystems like Figma to make Gemini an unseen accelerant that enhances existing tools instead of forcing users to switch platforms.Our focus is on helping users go from idea to production, and we see AI as core to how this workflow will evolve moving forward, Mathur adds.
Googles ecosystem strategy to scale Gemini
Over the past year, Google has woven Gemini into a broad range of partner products, from workspace tools to data analytics suites, positioning the speed and security of its AI models and ease of integration as its defining edge. Salesforce has integrated Gemini into its Agentforce platform to power AI agents across Google Cloud and Salesforce environments. Oracle now supports Gemini models on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, enabling enterprises to build multimodal AI agents that can process text, images, motion, and audio data. Googles underlying bet is simple: If AI feels secure and frictionless, widespread adoption will feel inevitable.Released in June, Gemini 2.5 Flash is known for generating high-quality visuals quickly and affordably (one-third the price of Gemini Pro). The model can deliver its first reply in under half a second, making it ideal for fast-moving creative apps, chatbots, or customer support systems. Moreover, the latest Gemini 2.5 Flash updates have improved its accuracy in following instructions, made responses more concise, and boosted speed by up to 40%, making it one of the fastest, most efficient AI models available.Experts caution, however, that faster performance alone may not be enough for Figma to win over creative professionals.Drops in latency will certainly encourage tool usage and support the kind of cross-discipline collaboration Figma has been building toward for years, says AJ Joplin, senior analyst at Forrester, who focuses on experience design, design organizations, and design leadership. But taste still matters. The efficiencies gained from generative tools can quickly disappear if teams dont pair that time saved with the ability to critically assess what the AI produces.
The AI design race is heating up
The Google-Figma partnership comes amid an escalating AI-design race. Adobe has integrated AI models from Google Cloud, OpenAI, and others like fal.ai, Ideogram, Luma, Pika, and Runway to power its Firefly platform and Sensei AI features, including generative fill, AI video editing, 3D design, and smart stock tools. And Canva has become an AI-first platform.Announced at OpenAIs Developer Day on Oct. 6, Canva is now a pilot partner for ChatGPT app integration, allowing users to create and edit designs directly within ChatGPT. The move aims to bring visual design tools to the chatbots 800 million weekly users.If Gemini 2.5 Flash delivers on its promise, the future of design wont just be more intelligent; it will feel instantaneous. And in the new economy of creativity, that sense of speed may prove to be the ultimate edge.
We’ve been expecting the tsunami of AI-generated videos ever since we first got a taste of AI’s image-making abilities several years ago. The results until recently were underwhelming. But now our social feeds are awash in increasingly realistic AI-created video. OpenAI, Meta, and Google have entered the game.
At the end of September, Meta introduced Vibes, an AI-only video feed, in the newest version of its Meta AI app. It allows users to share videos created by the company’s generative tools in the Meta app, as well as on Facebook and Instagram. Five days later, OpenAI unveiled its Sora app, which, beyond creating videos from a prompt, is focused on allowing users to insert themselves, their friends, and even public figures who allow it into hyperrealistic scenarios.
More than any other challengereven Google’s Veo3, which the tech giant launched over the summer and quickly integrated into YouTube shortsSora is positioning itself as the TikTok of AI, leaning heavily into the ability for users to have a fully synthetic version of themselves to appear in their content. The app quickly shot to the top of Apple’s App Store, logging 164,000 downloads within 48 hours of launch.
Sora’s playbook might be new to the tech world, but it’s familiar to Demi Guo, the 26-year-old founder of the AI video company Pika, whose vision for the trajectory of social AI video predicted the current moment.
Launched in November 2023, Pika is known for its Pikaffects app, which offers users a library of viral AI video effects. They include the straightforwardly named “Squish It,” which turns the subject of a video or photo into a squishy toy manipulated by a pair of AI-generated hands, and “Cake-ify It,” which slices up a subject and gives it the innards of cake. The company is so committed to its vision of letting users insert themselves into shareable scenarios that it launched its own social video creation app, Pika: AI Video & Trend Maker, at the end of the summer.
“We really believe AI will be the next way for people to express themselves and will define the next social platform,” Guo said the day after Sora launched. “That’s the reason we launched our app two months ago.”
With a $470 million valuation, Pika is a smaller, but prophetic player in AI video. Guo’s next move could offer another glimpse at the future of the fast-moving industry.
Matan Cohen-Grumi remembers the first time he experienced the squish.
The founding creative director of the generative AI video platform Pika was playing around with a new suite of effects the company had just come up with. One tool took an image and made it look like two sets of fingers were literally squishing the subjectbe it a cat, a cup, or a persons headin a delightfully (and terrifyingly) realistic way, complete with scrunching sound effects.
There was something very surprising about it, says Cohen-Grumi, a former TV and commercial director who first discovered the magic of generative AI in 2023, when he used Midjourney to make a short film for his (now defunct) rock band. I remember saying to everyone, Ive been playing with AI for so long. Ive never laughed so hard. I hope this will translate.
It did. When Pika released its Pikaffects tools in October 2024, the internet was flooded with metamorphosing bicycles, pets, and body parts. Tattoo artist Christopher Mirandas video of what appeared to be a knife cutting into a mans tattooed head, revealing a yellow layer cake inside, received 1.9 million views on Instagram. Even brands got in on the fun: Fashion house Balenciaga posted a video squishing one of its 6XL sneakers, racking up nearly 20,000 likes on Instagram. Pika says the virality of the new tools translated into an 800% increase in users.
The success of Pikaffects was an aha moment for the company. Cofounded in April 2023 by Guo and Chenlin Meng, who dropped out of Stanfords artificial intelligence PhD program to start Pika, the company was originally focused on being a tool for professional-quality video. But now it saw an opportunity to become the go-to AI platform for the TikTok crowd focused on social-media-friendly templates for easily shareable short videos.
This approach allowed Pika to distinguish itself from the longer-form tools, aimed at more professional creators, from companies like Midjourney, Runway, and Luma. With its ready-made library of special effects and videos that average only about 7 seconds, Pika would go after Gen Z social media users looking to createor at least jointhe latest viral trend.
[Photo illustration: Michelle Watt. This image includes elements generated with GPT-4.]
Pika was early to chart a path for its video-generating tools on social media. But it’s no longer aloneand its rivals are substantially better resourced. Beyond billion-dollar coffers, companies like Google also have access to their own social media platforms that they can use to mainstream their AI tools.
Google did just that when it began integrating Veo 3 into YouTube Shorts in July, reaching the platforms 2 billion monthly users. Vibes users can share across Meta apps, and while Sora videos can be downloaded to share elsewhere, OpenAI is positioning the app as a platform that can stand alone.
How long Pika will be able to stand alone in an increasingly crowded corner of the AI industry is an open question. (There were rumors over the summer of a possible Facebook acquisitionwhich Vibes seems to have put to rest.) Pika’s nearly half-billion-dollar valuation is not on the scale of Runway, which is valued at $3 billion and is expected to generate $300 million in 2025, let alone OpenAI.
With monthly subscriptions that start at $8 and go up to $76, Guo will say only that revenue is in the eight figures. But the company has a respectable 16.4 million registered users, and average monthly active users across the web and mobile apps totaled 1.4 million in the first half of 2025. However, the company says fewer than a quarter million of them are paying subscribers. As it looks to grow, Pikas challenge will be continuing to spawn irresistible social-friendly effects that users cant find elsewhere.
Following the success of Pikaffects, the company has doubled down on creating templates geared to making short, meme-friendly videos that can be quickly shared on TikTok and Instagram without requiring any AI skills. Over the summer, Pika gave users a new thrill by offering the ability to Labubu-fy an image intothe adorable furry-eared beast that has been all the rage with Gen Alpha.
Ben Woods, a creator-economy analyst with MIDiA Research, says Pika’s approach is a smart response to the tyranny of creative possibilities that AI tools impose on users. Most AI video generators give us that blank box and say Create whatever you want. But some consumers come to that and dont know what to create, he says. Theres too much possibility. Pikas templates help winnow those possibilities.
Pikas social-first messaging isnt subtle. Last May it released a provocative brand film dubbed Pikapocalypse. It featured a young woman using the app to inflate her cat, turn a potted flower into a balloon, and transform a pile of clothes into butterfliesoblivious to an apocalyptic wasteland outside her window. Guo says the point of the video was to underscore how, with AI platforms, people create their own reality. It generated buzz in part for toying with the idea that this alternate reality can itself be a mindless, self-insulated hole.
The company garnered more attention in June, when Adobe integrated Pikas tools into its generative AI app Fireflytargeted at video professionals and social creatorsalong with other video models, including Veo 3, OpenAIs Sora, and Luma. Alexandru Costin, vice president of generative AI at Adobe, sees Pika as a dynamic means of creating social content. Pika offers a unique type of model with a unique personality, he says.
One issue that Pika will have to wrestle with is cost. The company’s free version of Pikaffects has been criticized for being laggyand because it allows users to make only a limited number of videos, users often find themselves needing to upgrade to a paid version, which starts at $10 per month. Meanwhile, Pika’s new Sora-like social app has a standard paid tier for $95.90 per year and an “artist” tier for $389 annually.
For younger kids and teens to be interested in Pika, it would almost have to be completely free to use because youre not going to see kids and teens paying those prices for videos, said Kai Turner, a former Netflix and Sony executive who focuses on generative AI video. Cost is, at least for now, not a factor with Sora and Vibes. Both are currently free, though ChatGPT Pro users have access to an experimental Sora 2 Pro model that isn’t in wide release.
Guo acknowledges this challenge, saying that Pika is brainstorming different monetization models, including offering certain premium features for a cost while greatly lowering the price for basic users. At the same time, the social video creation app shows that Guo is pushing ahead with a wider vision for Pika than just viral tools. That puts her in more direct competition with Sora and otherswhich might be a harder space in which to carve out a niche.
MIDiA’s Woods says Pika’s strength remains its ability to cull the endless possibilities of AI video into easy-to-use, viral-ready features. “OpenAI now is positioning itself to compete with TikTok and Youtube, as opposed to being an AI creator tool app, which is still what I see Pika as,” Woods says.
Guo notes that Sora’s launch brought a spike in downloads of Pika’s app, though she doesn’t specify how many. And despite her having predicted this moment for AI video, she still seems to be figuring out her next moves. (In a conversation the day after Sora’s launch, Guo noted that the company’s user base skews femalesomething she seems ready to lean into, though she didn’t detail how.)
One thing Guo is clear about: She doesn’t want her app associated with the AI slop that’s invading social platforms and blurring the lines between fact and fiction. “Our app is not just about random videos, slop videosit’s really about yourself, your identity,” she says, noting that Pika focuses on letting users center themselves in their own creations. It’s an idea that also animates the new Sora app and its cameo-based videos.
“I think there’s a chance that Open AI was potentially inspired by this idea to bring a user’s identity inside their app as well,” Guo says. “It’s very validating that a big company like OpenAI also realizes that. We’re really proud to be an underdog in the spaceand the first to inspire everyone.”
A version of this article appears in the Fall 2025 print edition of Fast Company.
The bookstore cafe at Literary Arts new headquarters in Portland, Oregon was a hive of activity on a recent weekday morning. A few 20-somethings gathered for coffee in a corner, while at a nearby table, New Yorker cartoonist Tom Toro discussed his new book, And to Think we Started as a Book Club. . ., with a journalist. Meanwhile, Olivia Jones-Hall, Literary Arts director of youth programs, chatted with some colleagues about upcoming events.
Just a few days earlier, President Trump had announced on social media that he was ordering his Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, to send the national guard into War ravaged Portland to bring the city to heela directive aimed at the citys largely peaceful anti-ICE protests and fueled by the presidents blatantly false assertion, which he expressed in September, that riots have engulfed Portland every night. (This assertion appeared to be based on a 5-year-old old clip on Fox News of the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests.) In reality, Portland is far from the burning hell hole of the Presidents imagination.
Here in the Central Eastside Industrial District, five minutes from downtown and about 15 minutes from the ICE facility, the focus is on books not troops. And the solution to shoring up the public safety and economy in some of the citys underinvested quarters is arts-driven community-building, care of Portlands 41-year-old nonprofit Literary Arts, which is known for organizing the annual Portland Book Festival each November.
[Photo: courtesy Literary Arts]
Indeed, since the organization announced, in 2022, its plan to move into a 14,000-square-foot former hardware store in the once-industrial Eastside neighborhood, the area around it has become a vibrant hub. Literary Arts new headquarters, which opened last December, include an independent bookstore and café, four classrooms, a podcasting studio, offices for the organizations 32 staffers, and an event venue that can seat 75 people. The blocks around it, meanwhile, house restaurants, bars, stores, and a soon-to-open apartment building.
Arts and cultural organizations have often been at the forefront of how we rebuild public space, says Literary Arts executive director, Andrew Proctor. So I think that one of the paths to recovery for the city is going to be through arts and culture.
[Photo: courtesy Literary Arts]
A literary giant
Literary Arts has had a big year. In addition to opening its headquarters, which it was able to purchase outright with a $3 million gift, the organization announced the successful completion of a fundraising campaign that raised more than $22.5 million in support of its community hub and the future Ursula K. Le Guin Writers Residency. (Located in the writers former house, the residency is slated to open in fall of 2027.)
It has also scored some major literary coups, securing visits from Timothy Snyder, Kamala Harris, and Stacey Abramsall of whom will be appearing at the citys 2,770-seat Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall in the coming weeks. And lest you think Literary Arts attracts only serious nonfiction writers and politicians, romantasy author Rebecca Yarros will be speaking to a sold-out auditorium during the book festival on November 8. (And Stacey Abrams wont be talking politicsshell be discussing her new thriller, Coded Justice.)
In this moment, we are stuck in a very short cycle of thinking and reading, and that cycle is being dictated to us by technology, says Proctor. How long can you wander the desert of the internet before you realize you’re starved and parched and not getting nourished by this stuff? Like never!
Proctor believes Literary Arts in-person events offer an alternative. These books, these experiences with books, are very nourishing. And when you pair that by being out in community, its even more rich, because now you’re reading the same things or youre at the festival standing in line talking to a stranger about something that you love and realizing that the world isn’t so strange and hostile.
From left: Andrew Proctor, Jill Sherman, Ali O’Neill during construction of the new headquarters. [Photo: courtesy Literary Arts]
Literary Arts, which also runs the Oregon Book Awards, the youth poetry slam competition Verselandia!, Writers in the Schools residencies (which pairs working writers with local high schools), and Portland Arts & Lectures event series, took ownership of the Portland Book Festival in 2015. This year, tickets have been selling at 10 times the speed they did last year, says Proctor. He thinks that the need for deeper experiencesand maybe a little escapismmay be driving this engagement.
The festival is an easy sell to authors and ublishers, says senior artistic director Amanda Bullock, because it tends to move books. That could be because the $18 ticket fee includes a $5 coupon towards any book sold at the festival. (Kids 17 and under get in for free.)
There will be more than 100 authors and interviewers at the festival this year, along with drop-in writing workshops and pop-up readings. Authors include big names like Abrams and Yarrows, but also plenty of new or up-and-coming authors. Roughly 40% of the presenters are from the Northwest.
In addition to the day-long series of readings and interviews downtown, there are dozens of other events that go on for a full week as venues around the city host literary or musical events.
[Photo: courtesy Literary Arts]
A Tale of Two Cities
Trumps disparagement of Portland comes at a moment when the city is turning a corner. During the pandemic, Portland saw crime rates rise, alongside increased homelessness and open drug use. But today, homicides are down 41% compared to this same time last year, fewer people seem to be openly using illicit drugs (a result, no doubt, of state lawmakers recriminalizing illicit drugs in 2024), and Mayor Keith Wilson has been opening homeless shelters at a fast clip. The city is also preparing to welcome the planned $25 million James Beard Public Market, Portlands answer to Seattles Pike Place Market, in downtown next summer.
Indeed, the Presidents recent characterization of Portlanders as living in hell was so at odds with how locals experience their home that it promoted a rush of social media posts showing images of children running joyfully around fountains, crowded dog parks, and drool-worthy plates of foodall tagged #warravagedportland and #warravagedpdx. One Instagram threads user posted: Danny here, reporting live from war-torn Portland. The smell of BBQ permeates. The puppies are viciously kind. People are doing yard work. This is not okay. Pray for us. #pdx.
Downtown Portland, October 06, 2025. [Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty Images]
The truth is, the anti-ICE demonstrations have continued to be largely peaceful (at least on the side of the protesters), despite Trump calling up the Oregon National Guard and, after a federal judge barred him from doing so, the California and Texas National Guards. (The judge has since barred any National Guard from any state from being sent to Oregon.) Meanwhile, downtown Portland and the Central Eastside, both of which wrestled with homeless encampments and crime during the pandemic and in the years immediately after, are on the upswing.
Artists and arts organizations have long played a role in reviving derelict neighborhoods, including New Yorks SoHo in the 1970s and Wynwood in Miami in the early aughts. Literary Arts, likewise, has played a key role in Portland.
The Portland Book Festival, which is based along the Park Blocks downtown, traditionally brings more than 6,000-plus book lovers to the citys core. Readings, interviews, and workshops are held in the Portland Art Museum, a handful of different theaters, and at downtown churches.
Literary Arts also runs Portland Arts & Lectures, one of the largest literary lecture series on the west coast. On the evenings that big name authors come to town, downtown restaurants are booked up weeks in advance. Arts & Lectures turns one of those [week] nights into a Saturday night, says chef Greg Higgins of Higgins, which is two blocks from the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall.
The organization raised a few eyebrows when it selected as its new home Central Eastside, which sits along the Willamette River and was the citys industrial and maritime hub in the late 1800s. The neighborhood, while gritty, managed to thrive even as trade dried up in the 20th century, and experienced something of a revival in the early aughts, as businesses moved into its once-industrial buildings. But it was hit particularly hard during the pandemic.
But over the past year, the areaparticularly the block on Grand Avenue where Literary Arts is basedhas been reinvigorated by multiple businesses and nonprofits. Across the street from Literary Arts is the Architectural Heritage Center, which has been infused with new energy and exhibits thanks to a dynamic new executive director; used bookshop Mother Foucaults, which hosts readings and events every weekend, moved into the adjacent space. Next to Literary Arts is vegan Japanese restaurant Obon Shokudo where celebrities like Anya Taylor-Joy have been spotted. On the corner is Lollipop Shoppe, a lively bar and music venue.
The building is open from 7 in the morning till 8 at night. Every day we’re serving coffee and food, and there are three events a week in the bookstore, Proctor says. Itd be hard to imagine us not having a pretty big impact on the neighborhood in a positive sense, just by sheer activity alone.
Journalist and urban advocate Randy Gragg, who runs civic design nonprofit City of Possibilitywhere he organizes talks, exhibits, and gatherings about Portland design, architectureand civic ambition, says hes seen Literary Arts make an impact on Portland.
They have really crystalized Portland as a literary center practically since their founding, he says. And [Proctor] has been a phenomenal accelerator from the day he arrived. Gragg says Proctors choice of the Central Eastside for the headquarters was inspired. I tink that was a somewhat counter-intuitive place and probably scary to a lot of his funders, but it would appear hes pulling it off.
Portland residents and readers can see the impact of Literary Arts. If only our President could, too.
Sending LinkedIn DMsthe digital version of cold-callingcan come across as pushy and is becoming a much-less-effective strategy for job seekers. Luckily, there is so much more that LinkedIn is capable of when it comes to facilitating job hunting. Here experts share their advice for engaging with companies, catching recruiters’ attention, and opening doors to new career opportunities, all without sending unsolicited messages.
Optimize Your Profile for Recruiter Visibility
We see many talented professionals who believe they need to constantly send direct messages to get noticed on LinkedIn, but we find the most effective approach is often more subtle. A fantastic strategy that yields incredible results without any direct outreach involves making your profile do the work for you.
It all starts with the “Open to Work” feature. The real magic happens when you activate it and select the option to be visible only to recruiters. This acts as a discreet signal, letting our team and other recruiters know you are receptive to new opportunities without broadcasting it to your entire network or current employer. The data backs this up. According to LinkedIn research, candidates who use this hidden setting receive 40% more messages from recruiters.
Hanna Koval, Global Talent Acquisition Specialist | Employment Specialist, Haldren
Build Relationships Through Company Engagement
One of the most effective ways to use LinkedIn without ever sending a DM? Flip the job search strategy on its head.
Most people wait for a job posting to appear, then throw their hat into the ring alongside hundreds of others. The problem? Nearly 40% of the time, that job is already filled, in the process of being filled, or it was never really “open” in the first place.
Instead of chasing job postings, start with a Target Company Strategy. Focus on organizations that truly align with you, their mission, vision, products, leadership, and growth potential. That’s where real opportunity lives.
Here’s a proven strategy:
Follow the company page and engage with their posts, articles, and videos. React, share, and, most importantly, leave thoughtful comments that add value.
Connect with employees in relevant departments, follow their content, and continue to show up in the conversation.
Over time, you’ll be noticed, not as “just another applicant,” but as someone already invested in the brand.
This is how you tap into the hidden job market. Opportunities often arise before the job is ever posted, and this strategy puts you in the right place at the right time.
Don’t just wait for jobs. Show up where the opportunities are being created.
Thomas Powner, Executive Career Management Coach, Recruiter, Resume Writer, Career Keynote Speaker, Career Thinker Inc.
Apply Within 24 Hours of Job Posting
Here’s the uncomfortable truth about today’s job market: if you’re not applying to LinkedIn jobs within 24 hours of posting, you will often be invisible to recruitersno matter how qualified you are. When a desirable position goes live, recruiters often receive 200+ applications within the first 24 hours. Several recruiters have confided to me that they stop reviewing applications once they have a qualified pool of applicants, and this often happens within 24 hours. Why sift through an additional 500 résumés when they already have 200 highly qualified candidates
To capitalize on this reality, create hyper-specific LinkedIn job alerts (like “Marketing Manager” AND “SaaS” AND “growth stage” instead of just job titles), enable mobile push notifications, and build a rapid application tool kit with customizable résumé versions and cover letter templates. This system will empower you to submit quality applications within a two-hour window of receiving alerts.
Adapting to the fundamental change in today’s hiring speed is crucial. Your experience will differentiate you in interviews, but you first need to get into that initial pool of candidates being considered. Perfect applications mean nothing if they’re never seen.
Amanda Fischer, CEO & Executive Career Coach, AMF Coaching & Consulting
Participate Actively in Industry Groups
A simple but often overlooked way to get more out of LinkedIn is by joining a few active groups in your industry and participating in the conversations. Groups are smaller, curated communities where the right people are already gathering. They are the best places to be to get noticed and hear about opportunities, without blasting cold messages to strangers.
The reason this works is because visibility builds over time. When you show up consistently, whether that’s commenting, sharing your perspective, or asking thoughtful questions, you stop being yet another job seeker. Instead of chasing or forcing connections, you become someone others recognize and want to connect with.
To make it practical, choose two or three groups that are clearly active (you’ll see fresh posts and real discussions), then spend 1015 minutes a few times a week adding value. Stick with it for a month, and you’ll likely see more profile views, new connections, and likely new job opportunities rolling in, all without direct messaging.
Ana Colak-Fustin, Founder, HR Consultant and Recruiter, ByRecruiters
Leverage Company Search for Strategic Applications
By far, one of the strongest strategies a person can use is conducting a company search to find jobs, instead of a regular search through job filters.
LinkedIn is a very robust platform that offers a great amount of information, and at times it may be difficult to know what to do with it. When you are searching for companies, first, you will get to see the businesses in your industry where you may have first-degree connections and fellow alumni.
If you are applying to work at a company that has had success in the past with employees from your school, this could work in your favor. After all, “Alumni 4 Life!” Moreover, if you’re applying to work at a company where you have first-degree connections, these individuals may be able to offer you advice prior to any interview, and furthermore serve as internal advocates during your hiring process.
Company searches also give job seekers insights into which job markets are very active in an industry and location. Finally, this type of search also allows the job seeker to pick the company they want to work for, instead of sorting throughthe usual “slot machine” of job search results, hoping that something was posted matching their qualifications.
Steven Lowell, Sr. Reverse Recruiter & Career Coach, Find My Profession
Create an Engaging Unemployment Diary
I’ve noticed many viral posts on LinkedIn shared by people who recently lost their jobs. Such posts often collect thousands of likes, comments, and reposts. The idea is to proactively write a heartfelt post about how you lost your job, what financial responsibilities you have, describe your qualifications, and sincerely ask your network to share your post with their connections. You’d be amazed at how responsive people are. Not only do they actively engage with the post, but they also tag recruiters, HR representatives, or entire companies that might be interested in a similar role.
But don’t stop there. Create an “Unemployed Diary” where you share your progress, wins, and setbacks. This way, you naturally create awareness of your situation on the most relevant platform for job seekers and build a new network of valuable connections.
Alina Moskalova, Partnerships and Email Outreach, LinkedHelper
Strategically Integrate Keywords Throughout Your Profile
Your LinkedIn profile must be keyword-optimized if you want to be found on the platform. Imagine you were a recruiter or headhunter looking to fill an open role. What keywords would you type in the search bar to find a candidate?
Now review your profile and ensure those terms are integrated throughout. This isn’t just about keyword stuffing. These words need to be strategically woven into your headline, summary, and experience section. You want prospective employers to find your profile, then be intrigued enough to contact you.
Dr. Kyle Elliott, Founder & Tech Career Coach, CaffeinatedKyle.com
Curate Content to Attract Decision-Makers
Though this strategy may take some time, one way job seekers can use LinkedIn effectively, without direct messaging, is by appealing to the hiring decision-maker or an influencer of the decision-maker (not to be confused with a social media influencer) through a curated content strategy. This would begin with the job seeker posting curated content regularly that is relevant to the hiring decision-maker/influencer of their prospective role.
So, what is curated content? In basic terms, curated content refers to external content, such as blogs, articles, and social media posts, that are reposted for a relevant audience. However, it’s not simply reposting this content for the sake of reposting. The job seeker has to provide a relevant perspective of their opinion or insights on the content they are posting. This strategy should begin before connecting with the decision-maker/influencer they’re targeting on LinkedIn. This would increase the level of engagement on the job seeker’s post, making it more likely to appear on the feed of the decision-maker/influencer once the LinkedIn connection is made.
Now, how does the job seeker find the right decision-maker/influencer to connect with? Well, without being in the company or having direct insight into the company’s structure, it will take some guessing and trial and error. However, by performing thorough research through their prospective company’s LinkedIn page, website, and social media pages, the job seeker stands a good chance of finding who they’re looking for or the influencer who can get them to the decision-maker.
From there, the job seeker should send a LinkedIn connection and monitor engagement on their curated content posts. Suppose the decision-maker/influencer engages with the job seeker’s curated content (like, comment, share, or even reaching out first). In that case, the opportunity arises to begin a casual conversation. If contact is made and the connection is properly nurtured, this could lead to a great relationship and eventually a job.
Terrence Hight, Jr., CEO, Hight Health
Expand Your Network with LinkedIn Open Networkers
Job seekers looking to utilize LinkedIn effectively should consider updating their description to include “LION,” which stands for LinkedIn Open Networker. Then, they should search for LION and start connecting with other LIONs. This approach is especially beneficial for LinkedIn users who don’t have many connections because LIONs generally have established lots of connections and will help bring a lower-connected profile closer to other professionals on the overall LinkedIn network.
After establishing connections with numerous LIONs, a user can then start to send connection requests to their target audience with closer connections to that audience, which will result in a higher likelihood of connections being accepted.
Having an active profile is also very important, which means posting unique articles/content that is valuable within the ideal/targeted niche. After connections are accepted by a user’s ideal audience, rather than using direct messages, it can be equally effective to engage on profiles, such as endorsing, commenting, liking, and sharing other users’ posts.
Adam Evans, Creative Director, Thought Media
Establish Credibility Through Insightful Comments
LinkedIn newsletters have great distribution and can be a low-friction way of further engaging your network. If you’re not using them to position yourself as a thought leader in your domain, that’s a missed opportunity, especially if you’re looking for work. Comment on current events, share your perspective on technologies and opportunities, and generally let your voice be heard.
Jonathan Dunnett, CEO, jonathandunnett.com
Engineer Your Profile for Target Roles
Your LinkedIn profile is one of the most important digital assets for your professional brand. The most powerful strategy is to start actively managing it to become optimally findable. Recruiters and opportunities will find a strong personal brand. You need to engineer your brand’s narrative so that LinkedIn’s algorithm understands exactly who you are, what your skill sets are, and why you are the best option.
Here’s the strategy: Define your target role and engineer your entire profile to rank for it. Your headline becomes your brand’s elevator pitch (e.g., “Senior Product Manager | Building User-Centric FinTech Solutions”). Your “About” section tells your personal brand story. And your “Experience” provides the quantifiable achievements that prove your brand’s promise.
By doing this, you’ll be found by relevant people looking to hire: it’s the difference etween being a candidate in a pile and being the expert solution they were searching for all along.
Jason Barnard, Serial Entrepreneur, Kalicube
Document and Share Your Professional Work
In a world where strategic thinking is expected from everyone, personal branding and the ability to promote oneself have become more crucial than ever. Yet, most people continue to neglect these aspects. Only about 1% of LinkedIn’s 260 million monthly users post content.
Being excellent at your job is no longer sufficient. People need to be seen doing great work. The proliferation of AI has made verifying the originality and ownership of work more challenging than ever. This is where social validation and networking become essential.
Individuals need to document and share their work online (via LinkedIn, building portfolios, leveraging thought leadership opportunities). It’s important to treat your professional persona like a productwhat’s your niche, what customers do you serve, and what impact do you make? Based on these reflections, build community and visibility around your professional work, rather than just sending résumés to HR via direct message. Those who don’t adapt risk falling behindnot because they lack talent, but because they’re not well-known.
Roei Samuel, CEO and Founder, Connectd
