July has just started – and this officially marks the start of the SECOND half of 2024.
Decent timing to review what went wrong earlier this year and any predictions for the rest of 2024 as well.
If you want to share your take, hit “Reply” and let me know what you see in the macro so far.
2024 Q1 and Q2 breakdown:
- Q1 started as bad as it takes, packed with layoffs, firing CEOs, unemployment, and high interest rates
- Traditionally a slow business season after Q4, but far worse than usual
- Inflationary pullback on all fronts, including cost cuts, decreasing pricing plans and packages, and reducing R&D budgets
- Overwhelming fear across the board
- Some movement in Q2 with some additional opportunities lining up
- Business development channels failed in Q1, slow rebuild in Q2 as the economy recovers. Automated tools and branding/personal outreach worked better
- Communities, brand ambassador deals, partnerships won the first half of the year
2024 Q3 and Q4 forecasts:
- Q4 is traditionally busy, though last Black Friday was disappointing. With consumer savings depleted in the past 18 months, drastic peaks are not expected, although the economy will start to recover starting in October
- Q3 last year was busy. Busy summer after a slow Q1, and we see the same signs this year, too. Decision makers and executives planning less time off, or being swamped with work in July, signing new projects and doing procurement.
- The heavy events season isn’t over yet or deals are just getting signed after strategic meetings in May and June
- Paid ads starting to covert better – even in the summer slowdown. While I suspect that late Aug/early Sep will be slower (at least a month of a broader business shutdown), the next 5-6 weeks are likely still busy
- The elections and the global wars are the biggest question mark. Things can worsen up or bring some stability on the table – that’s the pendulum that’s so hard to forecast
- AI releases are aiming to automate more and more activities throughout the rest of 2024. That adoption of cheaper automation is picking up
Traditional old-school gurus like Seth Godin aren’t sleeping on innovations, either. A podcast interview I checked on earlier with Seth:
”I think that AI is the biggest invention in our world, since the invention of electricity. And a bigger change than the Internet.”
While the current impact is still to be assessed, the fact is, a number of businesses are fine with 70% of the quality of hiring teams or agencies just to keep the lights on on certain initiatives. They get support to carry over to ~85%, and only hire and outsource high-ticket work for the upper 10-15% of the market work.
This limits a ton of work and opportunities previously done by humans – the bottom 50% is almost entirely automated at this point in white collar.
Some of the abuse levels I see here are in customer support and sales outreach. The wave of automated emails I get is even shadowing many of my manual and human-written emails as partners and clients are getting swamped with spam. And AI chatbots are hardly delivering any value acting as support agents, which is critical during outages or other actions where human contact is paramount.
Calibration cannot happen yet since we haven’t reached the ceiling. One has to hit the top until a bubble bursts (just like “work from home” during the pandemic maxed out), but as we’re still waiting for GPT-5, video and 3D generation models, better coding automation or calculus, and other activities in the works, we’re far from that ceiling.
We sure live in interesting times – I’m glad the team here is involved with a bunch of R&D projects for clients, automating processes, integrating AI for internal teams, diving into lead identity tracking, and providing more opportunities for staying afloat and disrupting the space!
Yours,
Mario
My Take
Partner-led Growth – Traditional lead generation methods are dead. In 2024, it’s all about strategic partnerships and authentic content that adds value. How do we approach partnerships and execute them this year?
Pagely & DevriX – Thanks Pagely for featuring DevriX in your latest business showcase this week! We’ve been through Black Friday campaigns and Christmas traffic spikes together, several migrations, multiple DDoS hack attempts, and even scaling a publisher up to 976 million monthly views.
The LinkedIn Experiment – Here’s why I cut down on 80% of my time on LinkedIn. LinkedIn turned into a playbook of copy-paste viral hooks that bubble up and get endless engagement. It’s a self-policed mechanism; if users weren’t jumping into conversations bumping up view count every single time, that wouldn’t happen. LinkedIn sees that works, and allows that. If there’s one thing wrong with democracy, it’s sending these signals and ruining the system.
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
Nvidia’s antritrust charges – Nvidia is set to be charged by the French antitrust regulator for allegedly anti-competitive practices, people with direct knowledge of the matter said, making it the first enforcer to act against the computer chip maker. The French so-called statement of objections or charge sheet would follow dawn raids in the graphics cards sector in September last year, which sources said targeted Nvidia. The raids were the result of a broader inquiry into cloud computing.
Google’s Privacy sandbox – The IAB Tech Lab’s Privacy Sandbox Task Force issued its final report of the Fit Gap Analysis, and its conclusions were no more reassuring for the digital media industry or Google than when it released its report in February. The task force assembled to analyze the implementation still believe that “Privacy Sandbox will restrict the digital media industry’s ability to deliver relevant, effective advertising, placing smaller media companies and brands at significant risk. The lack of functionality will throttle their ability to compete, ultimately impacting the industry’s growth.”
The next-gen X Ads Analytics – Sid Rao released a first look of X’s new Ads Analytics UX & UI. The release date is yet to be confirmed.
Social Media moderation cases back to lower courts – The Supreme Court on Monday sent a pair of challenges to laws in Texas and Florida that would regulate how large social media companies control content posted on their sites back to the lower courts for another look. In a decision by Justice Elena Kagan, the court explained that both lower courts had focused too narrowly on how the laws applied to the challengers themselves, large social media companies including Facebook and YouTube, even though the cases challenged the constitutionality of the laws more broadly.
Meta hit with an EU lawsuit – The EU has formally charged Meta with violations of its Digital Markets Act (DMA), marking its second such charge in as many weeks. The European Commission writes in a preliminary ruling that the “pay or consent” advertising model that launched last year for Facebook and Instagram users runs afoul of Article 5(2) of the DMA by not giving users a third option that uses less data for ad targeting but is still free to use.
Global News
Wall Street stocks have outperformed lately when former President Donald Trump looks to be gaining momentum, whereas Europe stocks have been getting a bump with momentum for incumbent President Biden.
The American Association of Individual Investors’ sentiment survey also is nearing levels that often lead to flat markets in the three months ahead.
- S&P 500: $5,509(+0.61%)
Inflation has cooled somewhat, but homebuyers are still feeling the pinch of high prices and rates. At the close of the Fed meeting on June 12, policymakers again held off on changing interest rates. The next Fed meeting concludes July 31.
- 30-year mortgage rate: 7.07%(+0.07)
- 15-year mortgage rate: 6.59%(+0.13)
Fed Chair Jerome Powell expressed satisfaction with the progress on inflation but said he wants to see more before being confident enough to start cutting interest rates.
- “We want to be more confident that inflation is moving sustainably down toward 2% before we start the process of reducing or loosening policy,” he said.
- While Powell said he sees progress on inflation, he’s wary of moving too soon and threatening the downward path of price increases.
Here are some of the most prominent headlines this week:
- Prosecutors don’t oppose pushing back former President Trump’s July 11 sentencing due to the Supreme Court immunity ruling, likely delaying it until after the RNC.
- Supreme Court rules Trump has some immunity in his federal election interference case, further delaying prosecution.
- French voters propelled the far-right National Rally to a strong lead in first-round legislative elections Sunday and plunged the country into political uncertainty, according to polling projections.
Investing Updates
- ADASTEC – extends its Series A round to scale its B2B/B2G solution of autonomous electric buses on a global scale.
- MyTeam – raising up to €2M to help sports clubs to become profitable.
- Klarsicht – raising €590,000 to scale its digital marketplace connecting opticians, manufacturers, and customers. Backed by ProSieben/Sat1 Group and GMPVC, offering €20.8M in marketing volume for equity after the round.
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
Recipes and Parenting Blog – This blog features recipes, parenting tips, and travel guides and is monetized via sponsored content, affiliate sales, and display ads.
- Monthly profit: $93,453
- Monthly page views: 2,007,796
- Business age: 11 years
Classroom Timetable SaaS – This SaaS platform offers scheduling features for teachers and students.
- Monthly revenue: $12,506
- Churn rate: <1%
- Business age: 4 years
Video Editing Subscription Service – This service-based business offers short-form video editing for social media.
- Monthly profit: $3,628
- Average order value: $879
- Business age: 2 years
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