From Ari’s Desk
Thoughts on leadership, hiring, founders, and growth.
AI in Business: Turning Hype Into Real Value | Oct 2026
AI is everywhere, but access alone doesn't create a competitive advantage. Ari Aronson speaks with Tim Dolan, founder of Kickframe, about four ways businesses can turn AI into real growth, from rethinking workflows and building team capabilities to embracing agility and preserving the human judgment that drives better decisions.
Is the CMO Still Expendable? | Sept 2026
Why are we still talking about CMOs as expendable at exactly the moment marketing is becoming more important to the business? Today's CMO is being asked to understand all of that plus digital, performance, customer experience, e-commerce, data, technology, AI, attribution, conversion and increasingly, the P&L. That's not a shrinking role. That's an expanding one. And perhaps that's part of the problem.
Marketing is Back | Aug 2026
I've been noticing something in a lot of my conversations with founders lately. Marketing is making a comeback. Not brand marketing. Not performance marketing. Marketing. For a while, marketing became synonymous with brand. Then performance took over and suddenly everything was CAC, ROAS, conversion and attribution. I think the pendulum is swinging back.