Community | University 

Jan 26, 2026

Hello, GrowthHackers

Welcome to your daily unfair advantage.

Every morning, we cut through the noise to bring you sharp insights, fast news, and fresh sparks to light up your brain and fuel your hustle. From scrappy hacks to big tech moves, AI shifts to culture flips this is your intel to stay ahead, move fast, and break boring.

Think of it as your growth-fueled espresso shot.
Short. Smart. Addictive.

Let’s dive in.👇

Quick Hits

1. Meta Bans Teen Access To AI Bot Characters
   (This is what growing pains look like in real time)

2. ChatGPT is pulling answers from Elon Musk’s Grokipedia
   (So now my answers come with extra confidence)

3. Pinterest Adds Media Planner To Help Manage Campaigns
   (The soft-spoken growth tool nobody saw coming)

The Growth joke of the day

Why did the social media manager bring snacks to work?
Because the algorithm said, “Post consistently or starve.”

What's New in Growth Hacking/Growth Marketing?

Strategies

• 10 Remarketing Lists To Boost PPC Performance
  Remarketing lists continue to be one of the more dependable tools inside PPC accounts, especially for search campaigns. They give advertisers clearer control over who sees ads, how bids are adjusted, and how messaging aligns with prior brand interaction.

• What Is Human-First Marketing?
  Τhe core of effective marketing is, really, storytelling, empathetic messaging which understands the reality of the situation that your target consumer is facing.

• Humans& thinks coordination is the next frontier for AI, and they’re building a model to prove it
  AI chatbots are getting better at answering questions, summarizing documents, and solving mathematical equations, but they still largely behave like helpful assistants for one user at a time.

• Synthesia hits $4B valuation, lets employees cash out 
  British startup Synthesia, whose AI platform helps companies create interactive training videos, has raised a $200 million Series E round of funding that brings its valuation to $4 billion up from $2.1 billion just a year ago.

• PPC Pulse: Google’s Podcast Launch, Demand Gen, ChatGPT Ads
  ChatGPT will test ads for U.S. users while Google launches Ads Decoded podcast and expands Demand Gen features for better campaign performance.

  ___________________________________________________________

People

• This founder cracked firefighting, now he’s creating an AI gold mine 

  Sunny Sethi, founder of HEN Technologies, doesn’t sound like someone who’s disrupted an industry that has remained largely unchanged since the 1960s. His company builds fire nozzles specifically, nozzles that it says put out fires up to three times faster than earlier products while conserving two-thirds of the water.

The Podcast Where Growth 
Actually Happens

At GrowthHackers, we believe the best insights come from the community itself.

That’s why for our next podcast episode,
"From Ideas to Impact: Building a Community Platform," 
we’re handing the mic to you. 🫵

Jack, the founder of ARK STEM, will be joining our next episode to discuss the journey of building platforms that matter.

What have you always wanted to ask a founder about community growth?
We’ll select the best ones to feature in the interview!

What's New in Artificial Intelligence (AI) 

• Google says it’s fixed Gmail issues with spam and misclassification
  If your Gmail account didn’t seem to be working properly Saturday, you were not alone. But Google says the issue has been be resolved.

• Former Googlers seek to captivate kids with an AI-powered learning app
  A lot of those experiences are limited to text or voice, and kids might not find that captivating. Three former Google employees want to get over that hurdle with their generative AI-powered interactive app, Sparkli.

• A new test for AI labs: Are you even trying to make money?
  There’s a clear chance that at least some of these new labs will become OpenAI-sized behemoths, but there’s also room for them to putter around doing interesting research without worrying too much about commercialization.

Find out why 100K+ engineers read The Code twice a week

Staying behind on tech trends can be a career killer.

But let’s face it, no one has hours to spare every week trying to stay updated.

That’s why over 100,000 engineers at companies like Google, Meta, and Apple read The Code twice a week.

Here’s why it works:

• No fluff, just signal – Learn the most important tech news delivered in just two short emails.

• Supercharge your skills – Get access to top research papers and resources that give you an edge in the industry.

• See the future first – Discover what’s next before it hits the mainstream, so you can lead, not follow.

Join 100,000+ engineers who read The Code to stay ahead of the curve.