Musical accompaniment for this week's newsletter.
A funny thing happened on my team's morning huddle call last week. Rather than reveling in the nuances of marketing and tech in the AI age, we talked about lawnmowers.
Self-propelled vs. push. Gas vs. electric. Honda engines vs. the rest. The old-school reel push mower that Tony swears by with his major Dad Energy and the irrational confidence of someone who knows he will get by just fine when the power grid inevitably fails.
Me personally? I have a tiny St. Louis backyard and a Ryobi battery-powered micro-mower I call my Fisher Price lawnmower. Swappable battery that works for the weed eater, the leaf blower, the whole lawncare ecosystem. It’s absolutely not impressive. It’s just enough to get the job done.
That’s where we landed: The right mower isn't the biggest one. It isn't the most powerful one. It's the one sized for the yard you actually have.
Mary Ellen put it best: “We don’t always need a Bush Hog. Depends on the yard you got.” She grew up in rural North Louisiana, where apparently the tall grass hid things you absolutely did not want to step on or run over in anything short of military grade.
These days, she lives in Baton Rouge with a small yard full of awkward spots and a little 4-in-1 electric mower that moonlights as an edger. It has also been 13,779 days since her last direct encounter with bull thistle, and she is not looking to reset that count.
As AI agents change the nature of work at a breakneck pace, this metaphor lands differently. Almost on cue, Simon Last, co-founder of Notion, told the Wall Street Journal this week that managing AI agents is like starting a lawnmower — crank it long enough, and it starts running on its own. Every time he sits at his desk, he said, he's just trying to pull the crank.
He’s not the only one. The New York Times ran a gorgeous, sprawling piece about the end of coding as we know it. Developers at Google, Anthropic, and other heavyhitters are barely writing code anymore. They’re orchestrating agents instead. One founder said his AI agents turned a full-day task into 30 minutes. Another said he hasn't written a single line of code in nine months.
The WSJ piece added the cultural layer: Silicon Valley is full of people sneaking glances at their open laptops at parties, babysitting their bots. "Token anxiety" is a thing now. The new status flex isn't your title. It's how many agents you can run at once without things catching fire.
Which brings me back to the mower.
The old reel push mower — the one favored by Tony that was designed by Krampus in the 1600s to punish naughty children — isn't bad because it’s underpowered. It’s only bad if it doesn't match the job. Do you need a reel? Or a Ryobi? Or a Bush Hog?
Those are the AI questions many enterprises are struggling with right now. Throwing horsepower at problems that need precision. Deploying massive tools for jobs that need something nimble, swappable, and right-sized. The developers in those articles who are actually winning? They're not running the biggest agent swarms. They're the ones who’ve matched the tool to the yard.
What else is going on this week?
Juicebox raises $80 million Series B. The AI recruiting platform tripled revenue in eight months and is now worth $850 million, betting that the fix to 250 applications per opening isn't better filters, it's ignoring inbound entirely. Founded by two guys who were 22 and 19 at launch, because nothing says "disrupting talent acquisition" like barely being old enough to rent a car. (FinSMEs)
Gumloop raises $50 million to democratize AI agent building. Founded mid-2023, the no-code platform lets non-engineers build AI workflows, and at least one enterprise customer organically adopted it over two competitors that sat untouched for six months. Customers include Shopify, Ramp, Gusto, and Instacart. (FinSMEs)
HireVue acquires Hireguide to fight the flood of AI-generated resumes. The rise of AI-generated applications has compounded applicant volumes, making it harder than ever to distinguish real capability from polished resumes—so now we're using AI to interview our way out of the AI resume problem. (HireVue)
HR Path buys fractional HR pioneer Inspire HR. The French HR Tech giant is acquiring the company that pioneered the fractional HR model back in 2007. The bet: that the future of HR transformation lives at the intersection of technology consulting and high-touch people advisory. (DHRMap)
Alan hits €5 billion on €100 million raise. The French health insurer hit €785 million in ARR last year, up 53% YoY, and now serves one million employees, freelancers, and retirees — solid traction for a company that was the first new independent insurance license in France since the 1980s. (TechCrunch)
Bonterra buys Deed to make corporate do-gooding less painful. The social impact software player already powers half the Fortune 100's grant programs is now adding Deed's slicker employee engagement platform to give companies a single view across volunteering, giving, and grantmaking. This comes six months after Bonterra acquired OneCause, so the rollup continues. (HRTech Cube)
NEOGOV acquired PowerDetails to unify on-duty and off-duty scheduling for government workers. Public sector workforce management has specific scheduling complexity that generic tools just can't crack. This bet says NEOGOV wants to own the full scheduling stack for the agencies it already serves, not just HR workflows. (DHRMap)
Qurrent raises $15 million for AI workers. Cervin Ventures led the Series A, backing a company that's executed over 6 million tasks in production — nearly tripling since November. (FinSMEs)
Yourco raises $6 million to turn SMS into frontline workforce intelligence. The Chicago-based company secured Series A funding from High Alpha to expand its text-based platform that doesn't require deskless workers to download an app or have company email. (Pulse2)
Accessibility platform founded by two wheelchair users lands €4.25 million. Dublin's Mobility Mojo replaces manual audits with a SaaS platform that helps organizations assess and manage building accessibility ahead of the upcoming EU Accessibility Act. (FinSMEs)
CrawlJobs closes first funding round at a $3 million valuation. The London-based platform that already operates in 20 languages uses AI to scrape job listings directly from company career pages, addressing a gap where many openings never reach traditional job boards. (HRTech Cube)
Talvy raises $2 million to fix hiring with TikTok for jobs. Link Ventures led the round for the Cambridge startup's video-first platform, which replaces static resumes with short-form video profiles. Top candidates get the full treatment: Times Square billboard included. (Press Release)
depidv raises $1 million to fight AI fraud with more AI. The Toronto startup's new suite detects deepfakes and forged documents in real time, with transaction risk scoring under 150 milliseconds. (DHRMap)
In the latest episode of Work Tech Weekly, I talk with Sri Chellappa, CEO and Co-founder of Engagedly, about why frontline employees have largely been left out of the HR tech stack and what it takes to build systems that actually work in those environments. LISTEN NOW
Atlassian follows Block's footsteps and cuts staff in the name of AI. The "in the name of AI" framing is doing a lot of heavy lifting here — it's the new "strategic restructuring," and it comes with a built-in cover story that's a lot more palatable to the board. (TechCrunch)
Lovable says it added $100 million in revenue last month alone, with just 146 employees. The efficiency-per-headcount math here is what keeps SaaS CFOs up at night — $2.77 million ARR per employee makes Lovable less a company and more a proof of concept for the post-headcount era. (TechCrunch)
AI isn't lightening workloads — it's making them more intense. The ActivTrak data covering 443 million hours of work is unambiguous: AI tools multiplied job density across every category, while deep-focus time dropped 9% and something called "AI brain fry" now has a BCG citation. (Wall Street Journal)
Adobe's 18-year CEO is stepping down amid mounting AI disruption pressure. The stock is down 23% this year, and the subtext is clear: investors aren't sure the next era of creative software has Adobe's name on it — or whether AI-native upstarts have already eaten the moat. The creative suite category is officially in transition. (Wall Street Journal)
Earnings: Oracle raises 2027 sales view as AI demand outpaces supply. Rumors of the SaaSpolcalypse are perhaps a tad premature. (Wall Street Journal)
Mike Wood: From SaaS to WorkOps — Notes from IAMPHENOM in Philadelphia. Conferences are increasingly where the naming rights get settled — and "WorkOps" as a category frame is either going to stick or become the next slide deck punchline. Worth watching to see if the market agrees. (LinkedIn)
Josh Bersin says the world of corporate training is lurching toward enablement. The shift from content-delivery L&D to "just-in-time, workflow-embedded" learning has been a long time coming — Bersin's read is that it's finally actually happening, driven by AI forcing a rethink of what training is even for. (Josh Bersin)
Zoom launched an AI office suite and confirmed photorealistic meeting avatars are arriving this month. A version of you — same face, same lip movements — can now attend meetings while you're doing literally anything else, which is either the future of hybrid work or the beginning of a very weird negotiation about who's actually accountable. Deepfake detection is shipping alongside the avatars, which says everything. (TechCrunch)
SAP officially launched its SmartRecruiters integration into SuccessFactors. This is the payoff from the September acquisition — Joule and Winston now talk to each other, recruiting data connects to the full employee lifecycle, and SAP is betting that a single intelligence layer across hire-to-retire is the moat that keeps enterprise HR customers locked in. (HR Brew)
Persona launched candidate identity verification built directly into hiring workflows. Gartner predicts one in four candidate profiles will be fake by 2028 — and that was before the North Korea IT worker stories mainstreamed the concept of "you might have hired a spy." ATS-native ID verification is quickly moving from a compliance checkbox to a survival requirement. (DHRMap)
Alight expanded its partner network, adding nudge and Benifex. Benefits platforms are in a quiet consolidation race to become the engagement layer employees actually touch — nudge brings behavioral science and Benifex adds global flex benefits reach, which makes Alight's ecosystem play a lot more interesting than a typical partner announcement. (HRTech Cube)
Monday.com launched AI agents to transform how work gets done. The project management space is now officially an AI battleground — Monday's move pushes it from "where you track work" to "where work gets done by agents," which puts it in direct competition with automation tools, not just project boards. (HRTech Cube)
Remofirst integrated BambooHR to streamline global workforce management. EOR players are in a build-or-partner sprint to create seamless HRIS pipelines, and this one threads two of the more popular tools in the sub-1,000-employee market — less friction for global-first teams that are already stitching together their stack. (HRTech Cube)
Trusaic and Gradar partnered to advance global pay transparency. The pay equity compliance market is getting denser by the quarter as EU Pay Transparency Directive deadlines loom — this pairing layers compensation analysis with job grading infrastructure, which is the combo most enterprises are desperately missing. (HRTech Cube)
Firstup unveiled new capabilities across its intelligent communication platform. The employee comms space is getting squeezed from above by Microsoft Viva and below by scrappy AI-native upstarts — Firstup's platform updates read as an attempt to stay relevant by going deeper on personalization and measurability before the category consolidates. (HRTech Cube)
HR must reinvent itself to stay relevant, a new report stresses. The irony of an HR function that has historically managed workforce transformation now needing to transform itself is apparently not lost on anyone — the report's core argument is that HR's value proposition has to shift from process custodian to strategic AI orchestrator, fast. (HR Dive)
Executive moves: Lina Tonk joins Smartling as Chief Marketing Officer. iHire appoints Launi Vawter as Chief of Staff. Employ appoints Eric Waldinger as Chief Revenue Officer. Hyke appoints Olga Troyano as Chief Operating Officer.
Fosway Group launches new 9-Grid for Learning Systems. David Wilson’s crew always does great work on these. (Fosway Group)
GEO is a racket. As the kids say today, this is an aggressive take. And, sure, there is a fair amount of snake oil out there. But maybe agencies are onto something. If clients need a branded dashboard and a scary new acronym to finally invest properly in earned media fundamentals, then GEO is just expensive therapy that gets results for the right reasons. (Person Familiar)
Journalist Julia Angwin is suing Grammarly for building an AI impersonator out of her expertise without her consent. The "sloppelgangers" story is a preview of coming attractions for every knowledge worker whose reputation can be scraped, packaged, and sold at $12/month. (The New York Times)
Why the global elite gave up on spelling and grammar. Nothing says contempt and scorn for your fellow humans quite like ignoring basic capitalization and punctuation. (Wall Street Journal)
The AI boom has exploded the San Francisco housing market. When AI investment floods a city, the housing market gets the memo before the workers do — and SF's latest price surge is less about tech bros returning than about who's writing the checks now. (Wall Street Journal)
