Fehzan Ali

Wary of Data Brokers? California Site Offers One-Stop Opt Out for 500+ Services - PCMag Michael Kan Here is a bonus for all California residents! Delete your personal information from all data brokers. More states need to do this! The Delete Request and Opt-out Platform (DROP) will force registered data brokers to delete your personal data upon request. It's currently facing some tech snafus, though. Reclaiming your digital privacy is getting easier in California. The state has launched a free tool that simplifies the opt-out process, and requires over 500 registered data brokers to wipe your personal records from their databases. The Delete Request and Opt-out Platform (DROP), which launched on Thursday, "is the first of its kind," says the California Privacy Protect Agency. "It allows consumers to request the deletion of their data from over 500 data brokers—all in one request." The tool tackles the legal data broker business, where companies collect publicly available information about people (though sometimes it's more sensitive), and sell it to third parties, including people-finding sites and background check services. The data brokers usually offer an opt-out for consumers. The problem is that to thoroughly protect your privacy, you’ll need to manually contact dozens or even hundreds of data brokers and complete their opt-out forms, a huge hassle for users.  In 2023, California passed the Delete Act, which required the state to create an easy-to-use tool by Jan. 1, 2026, to streamline the deletion process “through a single verifiable consumer request.” #privacy #databrokers #cybersecurity #California #DeleteYourInfo

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Every online Sephora order comes with 2 free samples Your choice from about 40 options Cost per sample: $0.80 Orders per year: ~50 million Total cost: $40 million But here's what that $40 million buys: 1. Higher cart values (people add $12 more on average to qualify for free shipping + samples) 2. Lower return rates (the surprise of getting to choose samples makes the whole order feel more valuable) 3. Product discovery (23% of customers buy the full size of a sample within 60 days) That third one is where the money is Sephora isn't giving you samples to be nice. They're paying $0.80 to test-drive a $45 product. But the genius is in how they choose which samples to offer: They're not the best-sellers...They're the highest-margin items with the worst discovery rates Example: A $58 serum that nobody searches for but has 94% repurchase rate once someone tries it Give away 100,000 samples at $0.80 = $80,000 cost 23,000 people buy full size at $58 = $1.3 million revenue Minus the sample cost = $1.22 million profit on something nobody was buying anyway The key: Don't sample your hero product Sample the thing people would never discover on their own Your post-purchase box shouldn't just be packaging It should be the first act of the next sale

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I’ve spent the last few weeks interviewing Fractional CTOs (turnaround specialists, PE advisors, startup operators, enterprise vets). The surprise wasn’t what they know. It was what keeps costing them deals. Most Fractional CTOs aren’t competing on capability. They’re competing on clarity. In almost every conversation, the same friction showed up: 🔴 Pipeline is fragile (mostly referrals + “someone I worked with before”). 🔴 Deals stall when the CEO can’t see the cost of doing nothing. 🔴 The client says “we just need you to fix this one thing”… while the real risk is buried underneath (spend, vendors, security, delivery, scalability, onboarding, all of it). 🔴 And a scary number of businesses literally don’t know what software they’re running or what they’re spending. One CTO said it perfectly: “Sales, marketing, finance all have dashboards. Tech doesn’t. I would’ve loved to have had that.” So here’s the bet we’re making with StackUp: If a Fractional CTO can walk into week one and say: “Here’s what’s missing, here’s the financial impact, and here’s the priority order” …they control the conversation. Faster decisions. Less fee compression. More strategic work. Less firefighting. If you’re a Fractional CTO: what’s the hardest part of winning the work -getting the intro, or making the value obvious once you’re in the room? (And if you want to see the patterns we’re seeing across 50+ conversations, DM me.) #FractionalCTO #StackUp #CTO #TechnologyLeadership

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Most startups sell into verticals. We’re taking over one. Ohanafy is rebuilding the operating system for a $7.6B industry, starting with beverage alcohol, a $1.2b wedge. Legacy players are drowning in disconnected systems: Sales. Ops. Finance. All running on tech that doesn’t talk to itself. The Frankenstein software approach means everything breaks and lags. •⁠ ⁠Fragile integrations •⁠ ⁠Delayed reporting •⁠ ⁠Missed decisions Ohanafy didn’t ask: “What’s the next feature?” But: “What would it take to replace the whole stack?” So they built it: → Native on Salesforce → Multiple tools consolidated into 1 → Customers save 20+ hours/week → Field teams onboard in days, not months → Sales, ops, and finance run from the same screen This isn’t just a product. It’s a platform play. We’re now raising a $3M bridge round to scale faster into enterprise, double down on AI, and shorten our time-to-profitability. If you want to back a vertical category winner, this is the full-scale land grab to look at. DM me to look at the full deck!

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Proud to support Esusu as it enters its next phase of growth with a new $50M Series C fundraise! Wemimo Abbey, Samir Goel and team continue to lead the industry in credit building and economic mobility for millions of renters nationwide. Esusu (Founder Institute San Francisco portfolio company) is setting a new standard for combining economic and societal impact. By helping renters get credit (literally) for paying their rent on time, they are increasing financial access and empowering more people to become homeowners - in fact, they have already empowered over $30BN in new mortgages from renters across their system. I'm especially excited about how they plan to leverage their massive dataset to create even more impact. By making rental payment data a more prominent feature in mortgage underwriting, Esusu will be able to increase the number of people that can buy homes and build generational wealth. This is a truly inspiring company 🙌 Read more here: https://lnkd.in/guUKsGtY

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I’m thrilled to officially announce our $3M seed investment in Propel People, a company we built inside the 1848 Ventures studio to tackle one of the biggest challenges facing the #construction industry today: the skilled #labor shortage. For small and medium-sized contractors, hiring isn't just a challenge. It's the number one threat to their growth, profitability, and safety. With 94% of contractors struggling to find qualified workers, it’s clear that traditional hiring methods aren't built for the trades. That’s why we built Propel People. It’s a mobile-first, AI-powered hiring platform designed for how construction actually works: in the field. By leveraging smart candidate ranking, instant #SMS-based screening, and a fully #bilingual interface, Propel helps contractors build great crews faster and more efficiently. I’m also thrilled to formally announce that industry veteran Dexter Bachelder is at the helm as CEO. Having worked with Dexter and the team over the last few months, we've already seen the impact of his leadership. His 25 years of experience scaling construction tech companies will be instrumental as Propel People enters this initial stage of growth. This investment reinforces our core thesis at 1848 Ventures: building AI-native companies that solve fundamental pain points for the #SMBs that form the backbone of our economy. A huge congratulations to Dexter and the entire Propel People team on this milestone. We are incredibly proud to partner with you to support the people who build our world. Read the full announcement below. #constructiontech #venturecapital #seedfunding #ai #skilledtrades #smb

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7% of Firms Now Control 77% of all RIA Assets 🤯 If you're 1 of the 3,000 heading to Miami for Future Proof next week, here's some talking points for what the data is telling us about the RIA space. The era of the PE backed Aggregator (2024–2025) is officially being replaced by the era of the Mega-RIA (2026). We’ve seen 185 deals involving $1B+ firms already this cycle, which is a 26% jump from last year. While pure aggregators are dealing with challenging firm integrations, "Mega-RIAs" like CAPTRUST, Wealth Enhancement and Mercer Advisors are lapping the field, seeing AUM growth as high as 27%–57% by building unified "Client Acquisition Engines." The data shows advisors aren't just "breaking away" anymore. They are executing Equity Swaps. They are trading local cash flow for platform equity in national giants, betting that 10% of a $100B powerhouse is worth far more than 100% of a $1B boutique. To all my advisors who have made the move to a "mega" opposed to an independent model, does the data back up this hypothesis? If you’re on the sand in South Beach next week, don't just talk about "payouts." Talk about Brand Architecture. 🌴 See you in Miami 😎

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