This is Scale & Strategy, the quick skim-able read that’s designed to make you the smartest person in the room when it comes to BizOps.
Here’re the quick highlights from the week:
AI marketing is great—until it’s not
OpenAI’s Sora gets a reality check after going viral
AI marketing is great—until it’s not
We’ve all seen what AI can do. It’s fast. It’s efficient. It makes your interns nervous.
But it still has limits—especially in B2B, where relationships and nuance decide who signs the contract.
Nikki Parsons recently broke down where human judgment still outperforms even the best automation.
Here’s the gist:
When to let the robots cook: AI crushes repetitive, structured work. Drafting cold emails, segmenting audiences, ranking leads—basically anything that looks like a spreadsheet in disguise.
Where it falls flat: Complex deals live in the gray areas—those long B2B cycles where a buyer goes dark for a month, or a new stakeholder jumps in and flips the priorities. No algorithm knows how to rebuild trust mid-deal or catch the subtle shift in tone when procurement joins the call.
Analytics can tell you who is clicking, but only a human can tell you who actually matters. AI tracks engagement; people read power dynamics.
Creativity’s another blind spot. AI-generated campaigns sound fine—too fine. Polished, safe, and completely forgettable. The best B2B marketing has a little weird in it. Something unexpected that cuts through the noise and makes someone say, “Who wrote this?”
So yeah, AI will keep getting better. But the real edge comes from pairing its speed with human instincts: relationship-building, adaptability, and creativity.
Because at the end of the day, robots can optimize your funnel—but only humans can close the deal.
The Rundown: Security teams are facing more buyer expectations, regulatory demands, and business risk — meaning compliance has to scale even faster. Join experts Ashish Rajan (CISO at Kaizenteq) and Faisal Khan (GRC Expert at Vanta) for a tactical conversation on maturing compliance, risk, and trust in the AI era.
In this live session, you’ll walk away with:
A roadmap for prioritizing your next program improvements
Top workflows for AI to help extend your impact
Techniques to prove value across product, sales, and your board
OpenAI’s Sora gets a reality check after going viral
After Sora’s wild, record-breaking launch, Sam Altman just dropped a blog post outlining the first major course correction. OpenAI’s adding revenue sharing, tighter control systems, and a rethink of how copyrighted and likeness-based content is handled.
The details:
Opt-in replaces opt-out. Rights holders will now have granular controls over how their characters or likenesses can be used—ditching the controversial “use it unless they complain” model.
Revenue-sharing incoming. OpenAI says user-generated content could drive shared value—creators get paid, and Sora gets stickier.
The update follows a flood of Sora clips featuring everyone from Pikachu to Michael Jackson, and yes, even Bob Ross calmly painting in 4K hyperrealism.
The app hit No. 1 on Apple’s App Store within 24 hours, leapfrogging both Gemini and ChatGPT—even though it’s still invite-only.
Why it matters: Sora 2’s launch was pure viral chaos—equal parts jaw-dropping and legally gray. OpenAI’s new guardrails are an attempt to professionalize the platform before regulators (or Disney’s lawyers) do it for them. Whether that’s enough to keep Sora creative and compliant is the billion-dollar question.
That’s it for today and as always It would mean the world to us if you help us grow and share this newsletter with other operators.
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This newsletter is a publication of Vector Research Partners (v4rp.com), a data and insights firm powering diligence and growth strategies for top operators and investors.
