Since Allan Cooper presented the Persona methodology to the software development world, companies have adopted the technique, to a fault. While personas are supposed to be "made up" they are not supposed to be pulled out of thin air and we were surprised to learn that many practitioners these days do just that. Background research into the users and product domain needs to be done to gain an understanding of the persona's technical expertise and motivating factors. Why do over 50% of companies cut costs by not taking the time to do this initial critical research? Wouldn't it just be better not to have personas? Last year Perforce hired Cooper for a new project and we only gave them 1 week to do initial research even though they had asked for more. They were still able to do the research and gave us personas before design started. We'll show entertaining Persona case studies where quick guerrilla research following initial Persona hypothesis has yielded vital changes to assumptions.