First and foremost, congratulations to Taylor Swift for buying her albums back. The Swiftie in me is obligated to pay fealty atop of this email. Also, welcome back to The Hypha Wire!

Taylor’s announcement that she’s recaptured her first six albums from a private equity firm had me thinking about the personal content creation (great segue, i know).

Later in this edition of the Wire, I share an article about the new creator metrics recently announced by LinkedIn, which, for all intents and purposes, clarifies how the social media company is positioning itself as a creator-led platform. Of course, it will still play a role in the sales, networking and job space, but it’s clearly prioritizing the content that appears on its feeds.

Now, many people complain that there’s a lot of garbage on LinkedIn, which we can’t deny (LinkedIn, of course, isn’t the only platform sending junk our way). Where others see a mindfield of low-quality content, we see an opportunity for others to stand out from the clutter. 

You truly can become a thought leader online with quality content aimed at the right audience. The most popular and/or my favorite of these creators all have an important thing in common: a personal voice.

AI has made voice very slippery; you can fall victim to the standard AI tone, or you can attempt to emulate someone else’s with AI. While it may get harder in the coming years to distinguish fake from real, we’re still in the realm right now where someone’s true personal voice shines through.

Creating your own content is the best way to let your voice shine. People who are following you want to hear from you. What new tools are you testing? What cool thing did you build? Did you write a really great blog for your company, or have an insightful Slack conversation with a colleague?

Your professional (personal) voice doesn’t need to be as polished as a resume. It can be authentically you—your struggles, achievements, discoveries and beyond. It’s important to remember that, even as tech homogenizes. 

So be like Taylor. Write content in your voice. Have your quill, fountain and glitter gel sides. People want to hear from you. 

-Sage Levene, VP of Marketing, Hypha HubSpot Development

Open Mic

Moving Past the AI Hype: What Actually Works

By Phil Stott, Head of Client Success, Hypha HubSpot Development

Since January, we’ve been running an internal project known as the “AI Vanguard”—a small team dedicated to figuring out how to leverage the rapidly changing landscape of AI tools and capabilities.

The experience has taught us a lot about the strengths and limitations of generative AI. It has also raised important questions about where we might be headed in the future.

First, there is no doubt from anyone on the vanguard team that AI is set to massively disrupt industries and jobs in the coming years. But having developed a number of different applications and custom AI agents, it’s becoming increasingly clear that one of the earliest use cases—content development—is rapidly becoming the least interesting thing AI can do.

After all, it’s simply regurgitating information found elsewhere. It can’t produce original content or ideas, and continues to fall short in any number of ways related to content quality, accuracy, and hallucinations.

Much more interesting is what you can do with AI to improve specific business outcomes. For example, our team recently built a tool to screen out low-quality form submissions by evaluating email addresses. While HubSpot has long had the ability to exclude submissions from non-corporate email accounts, the logic it uses is very simplistic: it basically amounts to checking if an address contains a specific string of characters such as “yahoo.com” or “gmail.com.” But what it couldn’t catch were submissions like “notmyrealname@email.com”—leading to wasted effort by sales reps who have to manually review these submissions.

By employing AI, our team took a “fuzzy match” approach to this problem: Rather than screening out specific domains, we can simply ask an LLM to evaluate the likelihood that the email address represents a real lead, and even assign a confidence level to its evaluation. With this extra step, we can streamline the evaluation process, freeing up valuable time that sales reps can put to much more productive use.

A few other use cases we’ve tackled include:

• Augmenting company and contact records with data from AI-powered searches
  
  
• De-duplicating company records using intelligent matching
  
  
• Associating companies and deals with similar names or addresses (for example, when there are multiple dental practices at the same address, we can employ fuzzy matching to identify which specific practice a given deal should be associated with)

The Bigger Picture

What we’re seeing is that AI’s real value lies not in replacing human creativity, but in handling the tedious, repetitive tasks that slow down business processes. These aren’t the flashy use cases that make headlines, but they’re the ones that deliver measurable ROI.

The tools we’ve built have saved dozens of hours per month for us and our clients in data cleanup and lead qualification—time that can now be spent on strategy, analysis, and work that adds value. More importantly, they’ve improved the accuracy and consistency of our processes in ways that would be difficult to achieve manually.

Looking Ahead

As we continue expanding our AI capabilities, we’re focused on identifying more of these “quiet productivity gains”—areas where AI can eliminate friction and improve outcomes without trying to replace human judgment entirely. The future of AI in business isn’t about dramatic transformation overnight; it’s about continuous improvement in how we work.

We’ll continue sharing insights from our AI Vanguard project as we learn more about what works, what doesn’t, and where the most valuable opportunities lie for businesses like ours—and yours.

Second Hand News

Digiday: LinkedIn courts creators — and advertisers — with new performance metrics ➜

LinkedIn is doubling down in its role in the creator ecosystem. It’s officially no longer just a networking platform.

Wired: Bluesky Is Plotting a Total Takeover of the Social Internet ➜

This was a really great read and gave me an even deeper understanding of Bluesky’s potential. It’s likely not the best place for brands just yet, but I can see a future where they find their footing; albeit sharing actual thoughtful and helpful (see: inbound) content for their followers.

“Indeed, [CEO Jay] Graber, a former software engineer, seems most energized when she’s talking about the unique infrastructure for her kingless world. Undergirding Bluesky as well as several smaller apps is the Atmosphere, or AT Protocol, which is a rule book that servers use to communicate. The open source protocol allows sovereign digital spaces to integrate with one another as needed. Two apps with complementary ideas about moderation or ads can work in tandem—or not. It’s up to them.

“Graber sees Atmosphere as nothing less than the democratized future of the social internet, and she emphasizes to me that developers are actively building new projects with it. In her dreams, these projects are as big, if not bigger, than Bluesky.”

Hypha Highlights

It’s a simple truth: The quality of any system’s output is directly determined by the quality of its input. For AI, this isn’t just a best practice—it’s the fundamental determinant of success or failure.

Many organizations are excited about AI’s potential but uncertain about where to start. If you’re feeling that way, you’re in good company.

The key insight that can save you time and frustration? Starting with clean, reliable data isn’t just helpful—it’s what separates AI success stories from expensive disappointments.

When AI systems work with incomplete or inconsistent data, they can produce confusing results that make decision-making harder rather than easier.

The good news? These issues are manageable with the right approach and the right tools.

For HubSpot users eager to leverage AI capabilities, understanding and addressing data quality is essential. We explore why clean data is non-negotiable for building scalable AI systems and how HubSpot’s tools, combined with expert guidance, can truly prepare your organization for AI success.

Read: Garbage In, Garbage Out: Why Clean Data Helps Build Scalable AI Systems in HubSpot ➜

HubSpot Hacks

We have a new edition of our HubSpot Feature Highlight series. Up today: Property Color Options

Add Color to Your CRM with Property Display Options

HubSpot has introduced the ability to apply color to enumeration (dropdown, checkbox, radio select) property values—helping you and your team scan CRM records more efficiently and make faster decisions.

• At-a-glance insights: Color-coded tags or dots make it easier to identify record types, deal risk, or custom statuses directly from index pages or record views.

• Better prioritization: Use visual cues to distinguish between deal types, probabilities, or customer segments, so your team knows what needs attention first.

• Simple configuration: To enable color display, simply edit the field settings on any single- or multi-select property and choose a visual display mode.

With just a glance, your team can identify deal types, service categories, and probability levels—thanks to the new color display feature.

Check out the piece for more info and a quick video demo!

HubSpot Feature Highlight: Visually Represent CRM Data with Property Color Options ➜

AI in Action

News, updates and tools from the AI industry.

Let’s check in with AI players from across the ecosystem.

DeepSeek, the Chinese startup that made waves in the global tech industry with its R1 model earlier this year, has quietly released an update to its artificial intelligence system. The upgrade, while details remain sparse, continues the company’s aggressive push to establish itself as a competitive force in the evolving AI landscape.

Opera is expanding its browser lineup with Neon, an AI-powered browser that promises to automate web tasks, generate content, and even work offline while users are away. The new “agentic browser” aims to change internet interaction by using AI to research, create, and complete tasks across various domains like coding, game design, and report writing.

Perplexity, the “answer engine” that has become a go-to resource for millions of users, is launching Perplexity Labs, an AI tool designed to transform ideas into fully realized projects. Available to Pro subscribers, Labs can generate reports, spreadsheets, dashboards, and simple web apps, promising to accomplish in 10 minutes “what would traditionally take days of work.”

Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings has joined Anthropic’s board of directors through its unique Long-Term Benefit Trust, an independent governance body designed to be “financially disinterested” and focused on developing AI technology for humanity’s long-term benefit. By allowing this trust to appoint board members who prioritize ethical considerations over immediate financial gains, Anthropic is signaling an approach to AI development that values its societal impact.

Cover to Cover

How to Save the Amazon: A journalist’s fatal quest for answers

Not a business book per se, but those in the content industry may have experience or interest in the journalism field, and this looks like it’ll be a fascinating read that touches on both the quest of journalists and the ever important issue of environmentalism and climate change.

“Journalist Dom Phillips traveled deep into the Amazon rainforest searching for solutions to the problem of deforestation, a threat to the local ecosystem, native tribes, and the global climate. When he was murdered in the Javari Valley by a group of environmental criminals, a cohort of journalists and activists took up his work to finish his book and share his important message.”

How can we help you?

Specialty: HubSpot

Is your HubSpot portal holding you back?

Our free audit is the first step to transforming your CRM into a high-performing, growth-driving tool. Hypha’s team of certified HubSpot experts will work with you in a live, one-on-one consultation to uncover inefficiencies, clean up clutter, and identify untapped opportunities.

Don’t let inefficiencies slow you down. Let Hypha’s experts show you how to unlock the full potential of your HubSpot portal ➜

Thanks for reading. Catch you next week! -Team Hypha