Happy Friday! Welcome back to The Hypha Wire.

I saw my favorite band last night. I’ve seen them many times over the years, but I still look forward to every show. During one song, I found myself absentmindedly thinking about the band, everyone around me, my friends—all there for the same reason: the community.

The community surrounding this band runs deep. There are people I see at shows that I only know from past shows. Strangers have become friends along the way. It’s part of what makes the experience so special. While you’re ultimately there to see the band, you’re also there to see each other.

Community matters more than ever, especially today. Remote culture has made it harder to connect in person, but it’s also made it easier to find your people digitally. (Digital communities have existed essentially as long as the internet, but the push to remote work increased digital literacy and comfort in ways we’re still discovering.)

From a professional perspective, there are many places to build community. Your workplace is an easy starting point, though not everyone has that option. Beyond that, there are industry-specific public Slack channels worth joining—HubSpot has several of its own, including communities focused on developers, marketers, and agency partners.

Reddit is another solid option. While mostly anonymous, smaller niche subreddits develop their own ecosystems where you start recognizing the same names and voices. If Reddit isn’t your style, LinkedIn groups offer a more professional alternative. You can search for them the same way you’d search for anything else on the platform.

Then there are formal professional organizations. These often come with membership costs and varying levels of engagement, but you’ll find people working toward similar goals or tackling similar challenges—which can be invaluable when you’re stuck on a problem.

Of course, this is all surface-level guidance. I considered making specific recommendations, but my micro-interests probably won’t line up perfectly with yours! What I will say is this: get online and start searching. Having a place to work through problems, brainstorm ideas, or simply vent can make the day-to-day feel a lot more meaningful.

-Sage Levene, VP of Marketing, Hypha HubSpot Development

Open Mic

When HubSpot’s ‘I Do Not Consent’ Doesn’t Work

By Iman Khondker, Technical Project Manager, Hypha HubSpot Development

How often do you create a form in HubSpot only to be faced with privacy and consent options that are arbitrarily thrown at you at the end of the form? Consent for communications? Legitimate interest? Subscription types? While these all seem important, it’s often very difficult not only to tell them apart, but also to know which one to select.

Here’s where things get tricky: HubSpot offers several built-in options in its settings where it breaks down “Privacy and Consent,” including such options as “I consent to receive marketing communications” or “I do not consent.”

Many marketers assume that once they collect that “I do not consent” submission that HubSpot automatically unsubscribes them, opts them out, puts them on an exclusion list, or sets them as non-marketing contacts, but they are in for a harsh reality. The truth is…none of this happens.

This choice exists on the form itself, but it doesn’t map to anything useful. I like to think of these checkboxes as either read-only or cosmetic.

This leaves us in a difficult place where we could accidentally still email these contacts and upset them, or worse, someone could complete a form requesting more information and then say they don’t consent to being contacted. Then things get very confusing.

I’ve put together a piece detailing the basics of compliance. Read the full article to learn:

• How the U.S. CAN-SPAM law actually works (and when checkboxes are required)
• Practical workarounds for HubSpot’s consent gap
• When SMS requires explicit consent (spoiler: always)
• How to build custom consent properties that actually work

Marketing email suspension audits are one of the most frustrating and costly things your company can go through—trust me, I’ve conducted many as an ex-HubSpot employee. In the expanded piece, I cover exactly what you need to know to stay compliant and keep your deliverability intact.

Second Hand News

The Verge: Breaking up (Google) is hard to do ➜

Google’s defense against breaking up its ad tech monopoly boiled down to warnings that it’s technically complex and could hurt publishers. The judge now has to decide whether promised behavioral changes will actually stop Google from finding new ways to dominate, or if the company needs a real structural split.

The Washington Post: How TikTok keeps its users scrolling for hours a day ➜

An interesting piece from WaPo that studied 1,100 user’s watch habits on TikTok over five months. The results aren’t shocking—these apps are designed to keep you addicted—but it is slightly startling to watch the user behaviors increase as the months trended on.

Hypha Highlights

Most HubSpot sites “work.” They capture leads, integrate with your CRM, and support content publishing. But working isn’t the same as driving growth. The real gap lies between a functional website and a transformational one.

If your site loads slowly, converts at only 2–3%, or struggles to turn traffic into pipeline, you’re leaving revenue on the table.

Great HubSpot CMS sites fix these problems. They load in under 2.5 seconds, achieve conversion rates well above the industry average of 2–3% (with 4–5% considered excellent for most verticals), and personalize every visitor journey through data-driven automation.

The difference comes down to HubSpot CMS development. With the right partner, your website becomes a revenue engine that scales with your business.

Read: HubSpot CMS: From Good to Great—Transforming Your Site for Growth ➜

HubSpot Hacks

Here’s a new one from the HubSpot Blog: Here’s exactly how the HubSpot blog team uses AI

“With so many changes and unknowns, it’s been overwhelming even for the seasoned marketers and writers here at HubSpot. But the more we learn, the more we realize AI doesn’t have to be the enemy of content writers.

“When used as a thoughtful addition to a human-led content creation process, AI can be a powerful tool that helps us all work faster and smarter – without sacrificing our human touch.

“Here on the HubSpot blog team, we’ve been experimenting with AI for a while now, and, like everyone, we’re still figuring it out.

“But we’ve also uncovered some exciting use cases that have streamlined some of our more time-intensive workflows, improved our output, and given us time back for deeper topic research.

“We’re not about gatekeeping, so let’s talk through how we’ve brought AI into our writing process.”

AI in Action

News, updates and tools from the AI industry.

OpenAI held its DevDay 2025 event announcing several developer-focused updates including the Apps SDK that allows developers to build full applications within ChatGPT using Anthropic’s Model Context Protocol, plus AgentKit for building agentic workflows and making Codex generally available. The company also launched GPT-5 Pro and Sora 2 in its API, while demonstrating live demos of apps like Canva, Zillow, and Coursera working directly within the ChatGPT interface through natural language commands.

Keeping with OpenAI, its video-generating app Sora reached over 1 million downloads across platforms in under five days, surpassing ChatGPT’s launch pace despite being invite-only. The app saw 627,000 iOS downloads in its first week, compared to ChatGPT’s 606,000, hitting No. 1 on the U.S. App Store by Oct. 3.

Look who it is again. OpenAI and Nvidia are fueling concerns about circular AI deals after striking interconnected partnerships worth over $1 trillion, including Nvidia’s $100 billion investment in OpenAI’s data centers that will be filled with Nvidia chips, and a similar arrangement with AMD. These circular relationships, where companies invest in each other while buying each other’s services, are raising concerns about an AI bubble, with Morningstar analyst Brian Colello noting that “if things go bad, circular relationships might be at play.”

Adobe predicts holiday shoppers will spend a record $253.4 billion this year, with AI assistants playing a key role in guiding purchases. The analysis shows AI traffic to retail sites is expected to surge 520% year-over-year, peaking in the 10 days before Thanksgiving, with over one-third of consumers using AI-powered services for research, product recommendations, and gift inspiration.

U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders released a report predicting AI could eliminate nearly 100 million U.S. jobs over the next decade and proposed a “robot tax” on large corporations that adopt AI to replace workers. The report, which used ChatGPT to identify vulnerable jobs including 89% of fast food workers and 62% of retail salespeople, also recommends moving toward a 32-hour workweek and passing pro-union legislation to address AI-driven workforce disruption.

Cover to Cover

Out in the Union: A Labor History of Queer America by Miriam Frank

It’s LGBTQ+ History Month! Here’s a selection that honors and ties into the workplace.

“Out in the Union tells the continuous story of queer American workers from the mid-1960s through 2013. Miriam Frank shrewdly chronicles the evolution of labor politics with queer activism and identity formation, showing how unions began affirming the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender workers in the 1970s and 1980s. She documents coming out on the job and in the union as well as issues of discrimination and harassment, and the creation of alliances between unions and LGBT communities.”

How can we help you?

Case Study: Content Creation

Thanks for reading! See you next week! -Team Hypha