How can security leaders in smaller organizations stay informed about emerging threats if they don’t have access to formal threat intelligence feeds?

Most strategic threat intelligence relevant to planning is published for free by most threat intelligence shops, you don't need feeds for this. You might want to ask someone to compile you relevant things once a quartner/annually.

One way is to subscribe to some of newsfeed such as:
https://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/
https://www.cisa.gov/news-events/cybersecurity-advisories

Microsoft has good blog site as well at https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/security/blog/ which has a section on Threat Intelligence and Security Insider.

Attend Black Hat conference if possible. Hope this helps.

There is an easy way to answer this question: Subscribe to CISA's threat advisory service (for free). Their threat analysis is world class and yet, remarkably easy to interpret. Link here: https://www.cisa.gov/news-events/cybersecurity-advisories?f%5B0%5D=advisory_type%3A94

When you run a startup, creativity is essential. AI is great for that. With the right prompt, it’s amazing how it can process information and deliver exactly what you need.

Having worked in startups myself, I know the biggest challenge is a lack of bandwidth and the sheer number of distractions. Threat intelligence often becomes a “nice to have,” and I didn’t get to it as often as I would have liked. This is a perfect use case for a digital assistant that understands your environment, scans the news, and tells you only what you need to worry about. AI tools like Copilot are impressive, but finding real-world use cases that add value and make life easier can be challenging. A tool that provides a one-page overview every morning of just the things I care about, tailored to my environment, tools, and compliance obligations—would be extremely valuable. For example, if I need to know about changing laws in a country where I plan to do business, that kind of research assistant could really prove its worth.