Shama Hyder

Built + exited Zen Media. Henry Crown Fellow. Keynote speaker on customer experience, growth, and Applied AI. Bestselling author.

[Shama Hyder @Shama]

It's official. I am on @substack now. You can subscribe to it here https://t.co/NlJx48F7mN

[Shama Hyder @Shama]

If you didn’t want me at Series B, you don’t deserve me at IPO.

[Sam @futurenomics]

Anthropic’s last round was apparently a bloodbath behind the scenes. A GP at a prominent fund had dinner with Dario three times before their allocation was slashed to zero. At least four other tier-one funds got pulled at the last minute.

Their crime? Passing on the Series B, the hardest round Dario ever had to raise (led by Spark). In venture conviction is all that counts.

[Shama Hyder @Shama]

A CEO told me last week: "Our top person left. We feel completely blindsided."

I used to ask who poached them. Now I ask what they left to build.

AI changed the math. One person with strong judgment and the right tools can go from idea to working product. No team. No budget cycle. No permission.

Once someone realizes they can make more progress in a weekend than they made in the last quarter inside your company, there is only so long they will stay.

Where your best people go tells you what they know that you do not. Right now many of them know execution has become cheaper than permission.

Your best people may not be disengaged. They may be blocked. The question is what you do about it while they are still in your building.

[Frank Strong 🤘🏻✒️🗡 @Frank_Strong]

"One save now gives a LinkedIn post five times more reach than one like and is twice as meaningful as a comment" https://t.co/qVfaQKjx5i

via @Shama & @martechismktg

[Shama Hyder @Shama]

If you're early in your career: the people getting hired started two years before graduation. Your degree is the floor. What you build is the door.
#entrylevel #futureofwork

[Shama Hyder @Shama]

The Wall Street Journal says entry-level hiring is recovering. I pulled the data. It's not.

[Shama Hyder @Shama]

If you're leading a team: go upstream. Freshman internships. Sophomore partnerships. Your hiring starts years before the role exists.

[Shama Hyder @Shama]

I exited my agency last April.

Haven't hired a single person since.

Here's my current org chart. 👇

[Shama Hyder @Shama]

10 months ago, I predicted OpenAI would start buying media companies.

I wrote about in the “The Amazonification of Media.”

This week they did. 58K subscribers. Nine figures. Under their political strategy team.

TBPN is the opening move. It's not stopping at a podcast.

[Shama Hyder @Shama]

Loved this! And felt compelled to add the third - https://t.co/Rii1ZADK5r

[Michael Bloch @michaelxbloch]

https://t.co/Sbr574u8fu

[Shama Hyder @Shama]

https://t.co/dH6QxvkvHR

[Shama Hyder @Shama]

That is how you create momentum. Not by defending what is already working. By reading what your own customers are telling you and acting before the window closes. Save this for your next strategy meeting. #businessstrategy #pharma

[Shama Hyder @Shama]

Eli Lilly made $36 billion last year on weight loss drugs. They own 60% of that entire market. This morning they spent $6.3 billion on a sleep company. Here is why that matters for every strategist watching.

[Shama Hyder @Shama]

I use five interpretation questions to decide whether a signal is yours to act on. You need three yeses to move. Lilly hit three. Same patients. Competitor urgency. Built-in distribution advantage. So they moved. $6.3 billion.