Hi, I’m Craig Bailey and this is my personal blog where I write about technology, business systems, HubSpot and general life experiences. You can read my posts here.

(If you are looking for the Content is King post by Bill Gates it is here)

I’m involved with three agencies in Sydney:

  • The first is XEN Systems. We help government departments and mid-large B2B technology companies with their sales and marketing strategy, including implementation and training in HubSpot 
  • The second is XEN Create. We provide premium graphic design services to companies, with a focus on using the latest AI tools, including Midjourney
  • The third is XEN Solar, where we help high quality solar companies (dealers, installers) with their sales and marketing processes.

I also co-host HubShots, the podcast and YouTube show focussed on getting the most out of HubSpot. We are the creators of the HubShots Framework.

Craig Bailey presenting

Latest stories

Apple iPhone Micro QR Codes

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Apple prints two tiny QR codes on every iPhone screen. The news about this is focussed on it being part of a crackdown on dodgy fault complaints, but that’s not what interests me here… I just like to imagine what it was like to be on the team tasked with this piece of the iPhone manufacturing process. It’s amazingly complex, and had to overcome issues with it potentially...

BeReal and Threads

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Remember when BeReal had people excited? No, me either. But last year, there was interest in its reported 20 million daily active users were growing. (I’ll avoid discussion of how unreliable the numbers are, let’s use them as a comparison point.) A year later, it’s possibly a little higher at 25 million, or perhaps not, depending on who you read. Note: that number is global. US...

Meta AI quietly grows, while Jasper declines

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Wow. Meta just keeps rolling out the releases this year. This week Llama 2 expands with Llama 2 Long and rubs shoulders with ChatGPT 3.5 Turbo (not 4.0 to be clear) and Claude 2 in terms of context windows. Meanwhile, Jasper feels the heat and lowers its projections and internal valuation (to $1.2B). This, hot on the heels of OpenAI announcing a staggering internal valuation (of $90B) the other...

What do HubSpot customers really care about?

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Hint: It’s probably not product announcements from INBOUND. For listeners to our podcast, and HubSpot partners like us, HubSpot’s annual INBOUND conference is a highlight of the year. But for the majority of HubSpot customers that we work with, most didn’t even know it was on. To them HubSpot is just one app amongst many – a single pond in a raging river of applications – that their...

OpenAI valuing itself around $90B

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Via a report in the Wall Street Journal, OpenAI is looking to allow staff to sell shares at prices that value the company in the $80-90B mark. Note: there’s no intention for the company to go public. To put that in perspective, in Australia, there are only two companies who have a higher market cap. Put another way, OpenAI is valuing itself more than almost every company in Australia...

Amazon invests in Anthropic

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Perhaps not surprising that Amazon has invested heavily in Anthropic (makers of Claude).

Meanwhile ChatGPT releases another big update, rolling out voice and image capabilities.

What a year it has been so far, and it still feels like we’re just beginning.

Kevin Systrom comments about Threads

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From an interview with Kevin Systrom, when asked about Threads, he mentions he can see both a bear case and a bull case: The bear case: It’s more or less what exists elsewhere, and there’s not much differentiated value. While you can get lots of attention very quickly for competing with Elon Musk, that attention turns into real judgment when it either provides value or doesn’t...

Apple FineWoven Cases

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Haven’t had a chance to see the new FineWoven cases in person yet, but what a terrible launch they’ve had – with a continuous stream of very bad reviews. Third party leather case vendors must be ecstatic. What a bumper year they’re about to have. UPDATE: Got a chance to see them in the Apple Store yesterday. My impressions: didn’t give me joy, but wasn’t as bad...

People I read and follow

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So much content to choose from… here’s a few I read everything from:

Newsletters I read (and pay for):

Stratechery (paying customer since July 2014)

Benedict Evans (paying customer for years)

Blogs I read:

Daring Fireball (John Gruber)

David C Baker

No Mercy No Malice (Scott Galloway)

People I follow:

Dare Obasanjo

Benedict Evans

Alex Hormozi

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