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Markets may be lurching between extremes – from OpenAI’s half-trillion valuation pitch to mid-market founders betting on people and tech – but the through-line is clear: conviction matters more than ever. Whether it’s an entrepreneur choosing growth over cuts, a CEO stepping up as storyteller-in-chief or a brand turning TikTok into a £1.5mn sales engine, the winners are those who set the narrative, design the system and back it with action. This week’s edition looks at what that conviction means in practice.

Enjoy!

AI delivers returns, but trust is the sticking point

SAS and IDC’s recent Data and AI Impact Report shows that most companies adopting AI are already seeing value, but where that value comes from is telling. Leaders ranked cost-cutting as the least effective use, with the real gains coming in productivity, customer experience and business growth. The survey also highlights a trust paradox: executives say deterministic AI, with traceable data and fewer hallucinations, is inherently more reliable – yet they place more faith in generative AI. It’s clear to me that building governance and confidence around how these systems work will decide who turns early wins into durable advantage. Find out more here.

Entrepreneurs bet on growth, not cuts

HSBC’s latest Global Entrepreneurial Wealth Report finds founders unusually upbeat: nine in ten expect their wealth to rise and nearly all foresee business growth, despite tariffs and volatile markets. Rather than cutting costs, they are doubling down on people and technology – with investment in AI and headcount ranked as the top two expansion priorities. UK entrepreneurs emerge as the most optimistic of all, with three-quarters reporting strong confidence, underpinned by tech and infrastructure bets even as broader forecasts stay subdued. Read the report here.

Big gambles and busy bankers

Sam Altman is reportedly courting investors at a $500bn valuation for OpenAI, a figure that would place the company among the most valuable in the world despite years of expected losses ahead. The sheer scale of the number reflects not only AI’s gravitational pull on capital but also the willingness of backers to price in breakthroughs that haven’t yet materialised. At the same time, London is enjoying a welcome resurgence in tech M&A, with deal volume and advisory activity climbing after a sluggish 18 months. Bankers point to international buyers circling undervalued UK firms and a pipeline of cross-border tie-ups that could help restore the City’s competitive edge. Taken together, the two stories highlight the extremes of today’s market: stratospheric valuations at the frontier of AI, and a scramble in established centres to capture real, near-term deal flow.

When spreadsheet obsessives go pro

I’ve spent more time wrestling with Excel than I’d care to admit – formulas that refuse to add, pivot tables that misbehave – so reading that there’s a Microsoft Excel World Championship feels like reading about a sport I begrudgingly already compete in. As the 40th anniversary event returns to Las Vegas, obsessives from the UK to Taiwan will battle on sheets and formulas. It’s goofy, it’s niche and it’s utterly compelling: a reminder that passion can turn anything – even cell formatting – into high drama. There’s an amusing account of it here.

Networking without the ‘ick’

Career coach Jenny Holliday argues that we’ve overcomplicated networking by turning it into a corporate ritual, when in practice it’s just relationship-building. Her quick-read Substack piece highlights three takeaways: drop the jargon (stop calling it networking and start seeing it as conversations), look beyond formal events (connections often spark in small, unexpected settings) and remember that generosity compounds (recommending others can grow your own opportunities). The point is less about collecting contacts and more about building a community that works both ways.

AI prompt of the week: using the Jobs-to-be-Done framework

Harvard professor Clayton Christensen's famous Jobs-to-be-Done framework revealed a crucial insight: customers don't buy products – they "hire" them to make progress in their lives. Most founders focus on features and demographics, missing the deeper functional, emotional and social jobs their product fulfils.

Using Clayton Christensen's Jobs-to-be-Done framework, help me understand what customers truly 'hire' my product for. My product: [description], target customers: [profile]. Break down the functional job (task to complete), emotional job (how they want to feel), and social job (how they want to be perceived). What competing solutions are customers currently 'firing' to hire mine? What dimensions am I missing that could transform my positioning?

What a £1.5m TikTok live teaches about systems, not spontaneity

When UK beauty brand P.Louise raked in £1.5mn during a single TikTok Shop live event this summer, many praised the content and charisma – but the real secret lived in the backend. Their CRM, paid media, SEO and data teams had been aligning for weeks, stitching together behavioural signals, prequalified “hand-raisers” and momentum models to catch the surge. Rather than improvising, success came from designing a machine before pressing Go. The takeaway isn’t that you need slick content – it’s that content without architecture can’t scale. Get the fascinating (and very useful) story here.

Why the CEO now has to be storyteller-in-chief

In turbulent times, says a new McKinsey report, stakeholders look to the top not just for strategy but for meaning. The study says that CEOs must double as chief storytellers – shaping culture, embodying purpose and speaking up in critical moments. Their narrative becomes a gravitational force that aligns employees, builds trust with investors and makes sense of volatility. Personally, I thought this is something that good CEOs should always do, but McKinsey’s argument is that the pressure has scaled. In an age of fractured trust and AI-fuelled noise, silence from the top risks leaving a vacuum others will fill. Read the report here.

How to structure a winning pitch deck

From intro to investment ask, a strong pitch follows a clear story arc: set up the problem, size the opportunity, show your solution, highlight your team and financials, then finish with what you need. Investors see countless decks – the ones that cut through are simple, sequenced and sharp.

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Drop me a line

That’s the round-up for this week. If you’ve got an angle I’ve missed or a story that deserves a fresh take, send it my way – I’m always keen to see what’s landing with you. Until next Sunday, keep building, questioning and testing what really works.

Cheers!
Adam

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