Do this: Pull your unpaid invoices into one list: customer, amount, due date. Paste it into a free chatbot and get a three-step reminder ladder, each one firmer than the last, each carrying the exact amount owed.
PASTE THIS
Here are my unpaid invoices: [PASTE customer, amount, due date]. For each one write three emails under 90 words. One, the day after due: assume an oversight, state the amount and the date it was due, ask for a payment date. Two, seven days later: name the days late, restate the amount, ask for a date or a reason. Three, fourteen days: state that work or supply pauses until it is paid, and give the payment link. No threats, no apologies. Then total what I am owed.
You'll get: Three dated emails per invoice, and the total sitting in your receivables tonight.
The letter you send if customer data leaks
Most small firms find a breach and go quiet for a week. Their customers hear it from the bank instead. Write this now, have someone senior approve it, and keep it where you will find it at 11pm.
Subject: A security incident that may affect your account
We found unauthorised access to our [system] on [date]. It may have exposed [be exact: names, emails, card details]. We have [closed that entry point / reset every password] and reported it to [regulator].
Two things to do now: change your password on our site, and check your card statement for charges you do not recognise. If you spot one, call your bank first, then reply here.
We will write again by [date] with what we learn. The person answering questions is [name], [phone].
Fill the brackets, do not improvise, and keep a copy of exactly what you sent.
Two years of shopping-agent pitches, and America's biggest delivery app has taken a few hundred agent orders. The gap between a demo and a P&L is where budgets go to die. Hold the spend until a competitor shows you an invoice, not a keynote.
DoorDash says it has received only 'several hundred' orders placed by AI shopping agents, TechCrunch reports. Not thousands. That number landed in a week when the AI trade sold off hard and the biggest names in tech posted some of their worst sessions in years, per CNBC.
So what: hold the agent budget this quarter. Do not rebuild your storefront or buy an agent-ready product feed until a competitor names revenue from one. Put that money behind the channel that already pays you, before Q1 planning locks it in.
Your checkout can be rewritten from the outside
A UK reseller of Shelly smart-home devices told customers their payment details were stolen after malware was found on its website; one customer reported fraudulent card charges hours before the warning went out, per The Register. The trick is code injected into a checkout page, harvesting as the customer types. Axios reports the people defending against this are burning out on the volume. So what: this week, ask your payment processor in writing whether your checkout is scanned for injected scripts, and how often.
The cheap models got good enough to argue about
Chinese open-weight AI models are considerably cheaper than their US proprietary counterparts, and enterprises are using them to control cost, AI Business reports. So what: this week, take the one AI job you pay most for, run it on a free open-weight model, and put both outputs side by side before you renew anything.
A deadline you have not read yet
Ofcom has set out the age-check methods it expects sites and apps to use ahead of the UK's ban on social media for under-16s, the BBC reports. A tick box that says the user is over 16 stops counting. So what: if your site, app or forum reaches UK users, ask your developer this week which age-assurance route fits and what it costs, before a deadline picks for you.
This week's question: a vendor wants $400 a month for an AI agent that answers our customer email. How do we test it before we sign? Give it last month's fifty real emails with the names stripped out, and tell it nothing about your business. Score three things: did it answer the question actually asked, did it promise something you cannot deliver, and did it hand off to a human when it should have. An agent that invents a delivery date costs more than the salary it replaced. Then sign nothing without a 30-day exit and a written cap on messages per month.
What stops you buying another AI tool this quarter?
A. The price
B. Distrust of the output
C. Staff will not use it
D. Nothing, buying now
Reply with one letter — results next issue.
North Korean hackers drained about $6.3 billion from Binance across ten blockchains. Roughly how long did the drain take?
Answer tomorrow — and no, we are not printing it here.
YESTERDAY'S ANSWER
Microsoft is selling US bonds for the first time since 2017 to pay for AI. How much is it trying to raise?
At least $25 billion. It is Microsoft's first US investment-grade bond sale in more than nine years; the 2017 sale raised $17 billion (Bloomberg).
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