I’ve got two different stories for you this week!

The first is the latest interview for “The International Inbox,” our series of conversations with newsletter operators based outside the United States. This week, Claire Zulkey talked with Amanda Cua, a 21-year-old from Manila who built BackScoop, Southeast Asia’s go-to tech newsletter.

The other is an update on a story we first published back in December: “Open Rates Aren’t Reliable Anymore. Can You Still Trust Your Click Rates?”

In December, I wasn’t able to get one of the big email security companies to comment for the piece. But in January, Barracuda, which is one of the biggest players in the space, replied to my interview request. They made their chief technology officer, Fleming Shi, available for an interview. We met over Zoom in late January for an on-the-record interview.

The conversation with Shi was illuminating — he explained how cybercriminals are using AI to attack inboxes, and how Barracuda uses their own AI tools as a protective countermeasure.

In March, a few weeks after our conversation, Shi left the company for a new role outside the email space. (He’d been with Barracuda just shy of 20 years, including five as CTO.)

I’ve published our conversation in an updated version of the story, and noted his new job within the piece.

—Dan (say 👋 via email or LinkedIn)

Amanda Cua was only 19 when she launched her newsletter, BackScoop. Inspired by Morning Brew and Axios, Cua wanted to make a newsletter that covered tech and business in Southeast Asia. The topic area made sense: Cua’s based in Manila, the capital of the Philippines, itself a growing tech hub.

Cua was a first-time founder herself, starting her newsletter the way so many operators do: By reaching out to family and friends to ask them to sign up. But she’s taken BackScoop to impressive places in the two years since launch. BackScoop now has more than 10,000 active subscribers. She’s hired a small team to support the newsletter, turned BackScoop into her full-time job, and launched a podcast. She’s made quite a name for herself, too: Esquire Philippines named her to their 2024 Trailblazers List.

We caught up with Amanda to learn about the grassroots way she grew her audience, learning as a young founder, how to know when to hire, and what’s unique about running a newsletter from and about Southeast Asia.  Here’s her story →

One ESP says 63% of all clicks they see in emails come from bots. What does that mean for your email strategy? And can you actually trust the click data you see in your email service provider’s reports? 

We talked to the former chief technology officer at Barracuda, one of the world’s biggest digital security companies, to understand how AI’s changed the nature of email security and why bots might be clicking on links in your newsletters. Read our report →

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