November 26, 2025

Episode 36 | Adobe Bought SEMRush for $1.9B. Pray for the UI.

56 minutes

Adobe just dropped $1.9B to acquire SEMRush, and we're already bracing for impact. In Episode 36, we speculate what a big acquisition means if history has told us anything.

We cover it all:

First, we need your feedback to make this show even more notorious

Do LinkedIn’s demographic settings impact your impressions?

Cloudflare’s 4th outage of the year that took down 25% of the internet

Cursor’s 12X jump and the real drama behind it (with OpenAI)

Why ChatGPT keeps saying yes to everything and how to make it stop

The candidate who did 11 technical interviews and still got rejected

The new hiring practice turning applicants into unpaid contractors

If you care about B2B marketing, SEO, LinkedIn culture, and everything happening in tech right now, this one’s loaded.

Timestamps:

00:00 Teaser – Adobe Buys SEMRush for $1.9B + Show Intro + Sponsor

08:18 Adobe Buys SEMRush — Will Adobe Ruin It?

14:25 LinkedIn Demographics Test — Do Impressions Change?

23:09 Cloudflare Outage #4 — 25% of the Internet Down

26:38 Cursor 12× Jump — And OpenAI's Failed Acquisition

30:04 Why ChatGPT Says “Yes” to Everything (Fixing the Problem)

35:19 11 Technical Interviews…Rejected Anyway

38:48 The Hiring Trend Turning Applicants Into Free Labor

55:02 Closing Remarks

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Connect with the hosts:

Tim Davidson – linkedin.com/in/tadavidson41

Tas Bober – linkedin.com/in/tasbober

Subscribe for more no-BS breakdowns of the internet’s wildest B2B moments.

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Today's episode is brought to you by Exit Five. Thanks to Dave and the Exit Five team for being OG supporters of Notorious B2B.

Tim and Tas have both been members since the beginning and get a ton of value from being part of this community.

Join the top community of B2B marketers now at ExitFive.com and get access to one of the 30+ in-person events Exit Five is hosting in 2026.

Also, we heard Dave is super jacked, a millionaire, a great father, a speed reader, he’s run 300 marathons, and donates over $1M a year to very important charities.

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Also, special thanks to our friends at Vector — the only ad platform brave enough to say what we’re all thinking: native targeting is a scam.

Vector lets you build audiences by name. Not “job title at tech company.” Actual people who clicked your ad, visited your site, or creeped on your pricing page. (Also, the branding has cute ghosties. What more do you want?)

Check them out at vector.co and stop paying to show ads to your uncle’s dentist’s cousin.

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