Belle Lin

I spoke with a startup called Forethought that realized it needed to pivot and so went through a round of layoffs and is now tracking revenue per headcount.

And so you don't need to necessarily be lean from the get-go, from what I've heard from these startups.

You can also take on the lean persona.

One investor that I spoke to said that it can really...

hamper growth from the start and investors do also like seeing growth efficiency is important but growth is also essential and so in areas like sales enterprise sales specifically so selling to large companies that's a place where you still need people to cater to

the whims and demands of large enterprise clients.

And so that isn't changing anytime soon.

And then another startup I talked to said that they realized their people were under-resourced.

They were at capacity and so they needed to hire more.

So that's certainly a downside is your people are working the 996 hustle culture and maybe they're not too happy because of it.

Welcome to Tech News Briefing.

It's Tuesday, February 3rd.

I'm Belle Lin for The Wall Street Journal.

Your deskmate, your boss, the colleague from across the office could all be the internal source passing off information to hackers who want to steal data from your company.

We look at why so-called insider threats are on the rise and how now hackers are directly recruiting some corporate employees.

Then, Brian Armstrong, the soft-spoken head of crypto exchange Coinbase, is clashing with JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon and other bank leaders over the future of finance.

We look at how Armstrong has cultivated his persona to further Coinbase's agenda, why bank CEOs are fighting to keep their turf, and how the Trump administration could change the whole trajectory of both.

But first, roughly 32% of all data loss incidents at organizations worldwide over the past year involved a malicious insider.

That's up from 20% in 2024, according to the cybersecurity firm Proofpoint.

And these malicious insiders are your everyday employees.