After an incredibly long month of events, travel, sales calls, and interviews for my book, I can deduce that into three key conclusions as we head into May:
- Diversification is absolutely top of mind for over 90% of all executives
- The economy is still going through massive shake ups and it’s been going on too long
- As a result, businesses have gotten resilient and fed up with change and fear
Diversification is a top priority for executives
Diversification is philosophically one of the core areas I prioritize individually in life that I happen to be very loud in life.
There are several other topics I keep on repeat, such as asynchronous communication (enough with the endless meetings), the hustle culture (enough with the lazy slobs), continuous learning (meaningful mental time/capacity spend), or security (for individual safety and backup recoveries).
Similarly to all the other topics, diversification is an obvious goal for many – because it appears logical, provides a safety net, reduces the bus factor – but rarely an actual priority. Whenever the economy is growing and companies are doing well, the path to least resistence is just doing whatever works until it does.
With everything that happened on the global macro front in the past few years, between bankruptcies, layoffs, mergers, people going out of business, AI taking jobs – diversification is taken mroe seriously than ever.
Dozens of conversations I had personally – both on-site across New York, during the Futures Thinking event after my talk, on partnership calls in-between – have been explicitly focused on exploring new growth and revenue generation channels as the old playbooks are no longer working.
Channel efficiency is either down (lower conversion rates, more expensive ad costs) or almost non-existent (SDR teams failing to close, SEO algorithm tanking businesses, LinkedIn reach 80% down).
No wonder why budgets keep moving into new chapters and business segments.
You don’t need a failing business to see that old playbooks are broken: most conversations I had were with cashflow positive, profitable companies, that have stalled or shrunk a bit, but not going under. So we’re talking about healthy businesses, many of them around for a decade or more, and providing valuable solutions. I’m stressing on this as a differentiating factor from overly funded startups in crypto or AI that got lucky in the process.
The economic roller coaster is still riding
This goes to show that the economy is still broken into pieces, with ups and down and lack of reliability (or seasonality).
Seasonality has been a crucial factor for successful growth for virtually any business over the past 25 years (or more). Why?
This provides a full annual blueprint over the course of 12 months including buying behavior, slow and high seasons, when to supplement resources, when to hire and train new team members, seasonal events and campaigns.
Ever since the pandemic, seasonality has been nearly non-existent. We’ve seen strong shopping seasons in Q1, slow Q4s, busy Augusts. This makes any form of forecasting challenging at best – and affecting hiring sprees or budget planning, along with marketing spend and allottment toward other initiatives.
Businesses don’t rely on magic pills anymore
For that reason – and a myriad of added factors – most businesses I work with are becoming more resilient and less dependent on seasonal forecasts or predictions. When nothing works as expected and executives have spent the past year or two trying to hit the right timing, it’s clear that we’re nowhere near seasonality again.
Elections are right around the corner. The Fed keeps pushing rate decreases every couple of months. Stocks go up and down in different verticals, with Tesla having massive drops then 15% peaks.
How can you navigate this successfully in the long term?
By brute forcing processes that work – continuously.
With an extra focus on experimentation and diversification.
That’s how.
What do you see in your circle?
Yours,
Mario
My Take
Ideal Buyer & Seller – With platforms like Flippa growing and evolving as more and more people are opening to the idea of buying and selling digital businesses, listen to me and Dom explore the ideal buyer and seller for different price ranges of digital properties.
Optimizing B2B for Sales – B2B startups are not optimized for sales. I’m not referring to landing pages, funnels, or the onboarding process. Most offers simply suck. I’ve been guilty myself more times than I care to admit. Swallowed in a rapid growth funnel of a steady pipeline and strong partnerships or referral deals that keep pumping warm leads and converting into recurring customers.
Newsletter Recommendations
Stacked Marketer – One of my go-to newsletters and a business that we’ve worked with a while ago on the DevriX front. It is loved by marketers who get hands-on with campaigns, who need to stay up-to-date with frequently changing platforms., who need to get an edge, and who need to achieve outsized results with limited resources, aka performance-focused marketers.
Boldpush – А special newsletter for those interested in marketing intelligence and strategy to the most ambitious brands. Props to Julius Solaris for creating one of my top newsletter reads for GTM strategies and actionable content.
Business Strategy
Microsoft invests biggest ever amount in Indonesia AI – Gary Illyes from Google spoke at the SERP Conf on Friday and he said what he said numerous times before, that Google values links a lot less today than it did in the past. He added that Google Search “needs very few links to rank pages”. Gary reportedly said, “We need very few links to rank pages… Over the years we’ve made links less important.
Eurozone Exits Recession In Q1 – The euro area economy expanded in the first quarter after two consecutive declines as all big four economies exhibited better performance, boosting hopes of a sustained recovery this year.
Netflix ad-supported tier – Netflix’s ad-supported tier could have as many as 22 million US subscribers, according to a survey from HarrisX on consumer streaming habits. According to the survey, the “Basic with ads” tier is the second most popular subscription plan behind the ad-free “Standard” plan.
ChatGPT’s AI “memory” feature – OpenAI announced the Memory feature that allows ChatGPT to store queries, prompts, and other customizations more permanently in February. At the time, it was only available to a “small portion” of users, but now it’s available for ChatGPT Plus paying subscribers outside of Europe or Korea.
Musk and China – Elon Musk’s visit to China has reportedly reaped immediate rewards with a deal for Tesla to use mapping data provided by web search company Baidu, a big step in introducing driver assistance technology in the world’s largest car market.
Global News
The key corporate earnings are due after the close, when Amazon.com, Advanced Micro Devices and the up-753% over 52 weeks Super Micro Computer report results.
- S&P 500: $5,035(-1.58%)
“The issue of inflation remains unsettled,” says Ken Johnson of Florida State University. “This is putting upward pressure on mortgage rates through the yield on 10-year Treasurys.”
The Fed indicated it’d cut rates in 2024, but policymakers held off at its latest meeting, citing the need for more promising economic data. The Fed has been working to bring inflation back to its 2 percent target since 2022.
The Fed meets next on May 1 — the start of one of the busiest homebuying months.
- 30-year mortgage rate: 7.35%(+0.05)
- 15-year mortgage rate: 6.83%(+0.07)
Since the start of the year, central bankers’ hopes to take pressure off the economy with lower borrowing costs have gotten dimmer and dimmer. Inflation is heating back up, and economists fear the stickiest drivers of rising prices are getting harder to scrub away. The unwelcome surprises now have forecasters eyeing fewer cuts, closer to the end of the year — which would put the Fed squarely in the middle of a heated election season, and possibly inflame a kind of political firestorm central bankers try to avoid.
Here are some of the most prominent headlines this week:
- The University of Southern California cancels its main graduation commencement ceremony, citing new safety measures involving those who come to campus.
- US Supreme Court won’t halt Texas age verification for online adult content
- Donald Trump fined $9,000 for violating gag order imposed to stop him attacking jurors or potential witnesses in hush-money trial
Investing Updates
- Swisspod – raising €1,6M to develop the hyperloop, a high-speed transport system.
- Hunch – raising €1,25M to increase sales through automated marketing & AI. Backed by Catalyst Romania, Euroventures.
Note: Got a round going that you want to feature – your own business or a portfolio company? Get in touch.
Now let’s have a look at the latest top Flippa offers
Marketing Service & Software for Ecom Owners – This service-based business helps ecommerce businesses increase their client retention and conversion rates.
- Monthly profit: $15.6K
- CAC to LTV ratio: 1 to 16
- Clients: 300+
Fitness Classes SaaS – This SaaS business features a paid membership for weekly virtual fitness classes.
- Monthly profit: $7.5K
- Active subscribers: 793
- Business age: 6 years
Waterbed Ecommerce Store – This business sells a wide selection of waterbeds and accessories.
- Monthly profit: $7.4K
- Domain authority score: 16
- Business age: 13 years old
Need my Help?
I’m involved with a number of initiatives – here’s what I can do to help you:
Scalable and secure WordPress? DevriX provides WordPress retainers to SMEs, publishers, eCommerce, SaaS, and more. Our plans start from $1,200/mo to $40K/mo for anything from support through engineering, CRO, performance, security, to fractional CXO services and managing the data stacks of large corps.
Want to scale and optimize your business? Growth Shuttle offers personalized advisory plans starting at $600/hr. Tap into my personal pool of business know-how and my data warehouse of industry data.
Want access to my blueprints/books and a weekly Slack planning session? Join my Community and grab my Entrepreneurship book.
Looking to start a US company? Check out doola and their “Business in a Box” model. Suitable for both foreigners and US citizens and both for residents and non-residents.
Have you tried buying and selling digital property? Have a look at Flippa’s marketplace. They offer a vast variety of online businesses for any buyer’s interests. Or if you’re ready for an exit, Flippa provides you with the necessary tools to list your business and close the deal.
Looking for investment opportunities? Check out SeedBlink and use Nimity to manage it.
Eager to incorporate my recommended solutions? Track my angel investments. Sharing, applying for open roles, or writing reviews helps a ton. And anything else I try to publish on my blog and my courses here!