You found it. The product took off. Ads are cheap, conversion is good, orders come in while you sleep. For about four months, running an online store feels like the easiest thing in the world. Then something shifts. Ad costs creep up. Three competitors appear selling the identical thing for less. The platform’s algorithm stops favouring your creative. The trend graph, which you never looked at, has quietly rolled over. Revenue halves. You don’t know why, and nothing you try brings it back. Here’s the thing I want you to sit with: that wasn’t a failure. That was the normal lifecycle of a trend, and you experienced it as a personal collapse because you had nothing underneath it. The fix isn’t finding a better trend. It’s building the layer trends sit on top of. Full Article: https://prockstem.substack.com/p/trends-die-your-store-shouldnt

This is the UW-Green Bay Chief Data and AI Officer listing you sent on November 10, now with the application instructions filled in. Here's a fresh version, and note the deadline is this Sunday. The University of Wisconsin-Green Bay is building a new division that pulls analytics, data, and AI together, and needs a Chief Data and AI Officer to lead it. Compensation starts at $125,000, the home campus is Green Bay, and a hybrid schedule is possible with approval. The university has already put money into AWS, databases, ETL software, AI tools, and AI servers, so the mandate is to turn that investment into results. You'd lead a team of four while setting the vision, governance, and operating model for data and AI across the institution, delivering analytics and AI against finance, HR, operational, and academic data, and identifying and scaling the use cases that make the university run better. Governance is a major piece, making sure people trust the data and the models behind decisions, as is building data and AI fluency across the whole campus. The posting describes the job as connector, translator, and storyteller, with close working relationships with the Provost, CFO, CIO, and academic deans. Success in the first year or two means a trusted data foundation that improves decisions and removes manual work. The requirements are a master's degree in a relevant field at the time of application and seven years in analytics, business intelligence, data science, or a related area. You need SQL and Python proficiency and enough technical depth to build and improve real products alongside your team, plus working knowledge of modern cloud data platforms and BI tools, with AWS and Tableau named directly. Hands-on experience applying AI or machine learning inside an organization is required, along with an understanding of AI ethics, compliance, and governance frameworks. Two or more years supervising people or projects, higher education experience, and fluency with large language models are preferred. No visa sponsorship is offered, so you must already have US work authorization. Benefits are strong, including Wisconsin Retirement System participation with immediate employer contributions, health plans with deductibles as low as $250 for an individual, a 403(b), nine legal holidays, paid parental leave, and 13 to 27 vacation days.