| January is halfway through – but such an eventful start of the year has to be commemorated one way or another. First things first: layoffs. Last year started on the wrong foot, as a continuation of hard layoffs in November and December, and a series of waves in January. Q4 was a lot calmer – even though companies like Spotify and Flipkart slashed over a thousand employees each. But starting this year, all the giants – Meta, Google, and Amazon – introduced layoffs across Instagram, Google Assistant, Twitch, Amazon Prime and more, along with Unity, Duolingo, and a handful of other businesses. Not a great start of the year after a promising Q4 and a positive outlook of this new year. On the other hand, rates appear to be normalizing, CPI and PPI are not excessively high. Employment rate has been overreported last year – as much as twice in some months like June. Time for rates to start dipping so the rest of the economy can finally move back to revenue generation (it’s been a while). There are lots of conspiracy theories around AI killing jobs. While most of these reports are exaggerated, they aren’t necessarily off. In fact, I blogged about the premise of AI killing jobs and why we shouldn’t rush into conclusions just yet. I still support that theory for the most part… But there are caveats. The overhiring in big tech are leading to optimizations – and chat However, the International Monetary Fund officially came up with a report blaming AI for upcoming job losses and inequality, among other things. Considering the heavier adoption of AI at work, it’s possible that companies have been staffing up with people following simple processes all day long – ones that could be automated easily. As a last thought, I’ve paused our Sparkloop newsletter ad engine for a second month in a row as we’re analyzing our stats and engagement. While the summer has brought in a few thousand quality subscribers, the quality degraded after – with some bot accounts and inactive users skewing engagement in the wrong direction. Playing the system is not great – even as Sparkloop introduced additional filtering engines, certain newsletters kept feeding fake users as they get funded on a subscriber basis. And now we’re purging some of these accounts as we go to retain the quality readers (like you) and provide better quality with better feedback from this community. If you have better experience with Facebook or X ads (or any other recommendation platform) for this newsletter, let me know. In the meantime – here’s to a stronger 2024 ahead. Yours, Mario |
My Take
Are Fed Metrics Accurate – The entire turbulent macroeconomic shift is dictated by levers pulled by analysts and financial experts in regulated institutions like the Fed. The Fed monitors inflation, CPI, PPI, unemployment rates – the general spending and job market numbers. But are the metrics accurate? Turns out, no.
Automation and Layoffs – Nearly 6,000 layoffs were confirmed in the first 2 weeks of January alone. AI is the one to blame – but the root of all staffing evil lies in automation. Here’s what the BPM market looks like.
Producing Long-form Content – Long-form content is hard to crank. It takes significantly longer to gather everything together. The regularity of pushing content live will be affected. Let’s talk about the perks of long-form content vs short-form content.
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.
The Average Joe – Market trends & insights that are simple, concise, and impactful. This newsletter stands out to me due to the 200,000+ audience that go through market trends and ideas together.
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.
Morning Brew – Аn absolute classic, the Morning Brew delivers top news from a business-minded angle, and deliver it in a short, easy-to-read, actionable, and entertaining way.
Business Strategy
Goldman Sachs Earnings – Goldman Sachs’ fourth-quarter earnings excelled, driven by asset and wealth management growth, with a 51% profit rise to $2 billion, surpassing expectations despite declines in traditional banking sectors and costs from a regional banking crisis fee.
Copilot, Ready to Launch – Microsoft is launching a paid Pro plan for Copilot, integrating advanced AI features into Microsoft 365 apps and offering customization options like Copilot GPT Builder. This plan aims to convert Copilot from a cost center to a revenue generator by attracting a broader base of paying customers and enhancing existing Microsoft services with AI capabilities.
Hertz Joins the EV Market – Hertz announced last week that it would be selling roughly a third of its fleet of electric vehicles, or roughly 20,000 cars that are predominately Teslas. That signaled a further reversal away from the car-rental company’s previously stated goal of converting at least 25% of its entire fleet of cars to EVs by the end of 2024.
JPMorgan Most Profitable Year – JPMorgan Chase finished out its most profitable year ever with $9.3 billion in fourth-quarter income. Here’s some interesting stats.
Credit Card Delinquency Rise – All stages of credit card delinquency – 30, 60 and 90 days past due – rose during the third quarter of 2023, surpassing pre-pandemic levels for the first time. Delinquency rates are now approaching the highest level since 2012, the findings indicate.
Global News
Markets managed to absorb a somewhat hotter-than-expected U.S. consumer inflation reading for December without much drama. Now more attention can turn to the corporate earnings season, which slips into gear on Friday, led by financials. If company results and forecasts are reasonably well-received by investors then the S&P 500 soon may reach a new closing record.
- S&P 500: $4,765 (-0.38%)
Mortgage rates could gradually come down this year, according to Greg McBride, CFA, Bankrate chief financial analyst. Rates began retreating in the back half of 2023 as inflation continued to cool and the Federal Reserve halted rate increases. The central bank now expects to cut rates in 2024 — a reversal that would touch all corners of the economy, including on the 10-year Treasury, the main driver of fixed mortgage rates.
- 30-year mortgage rate: 6.94%(-0.10)
- 15-year mortgage rate: 6.32%(+0.09)
The U.S. is “within striking distance” of the Federal Reserve’s 2% inflation goal, but the central bank should not rush to cut its benchmark interest rate until it is clear lower inflation will be sustained according to Fed Governor Waller.
This week’s the US has managed to surprise the world with unexpected prediction results and Taiwan elects a new president.
- Donald Trump wins the Iowa caucuses.
- Doug Burgum drops out of presidential race and endorses Trump.
- Voters in Taiwan elected Vice President Lai Ching-te as their next president, defying warnings from Beijing not to support a candidate it has called a separatist and “troublemaker.”
Investing Updates
- inHeart – raising €6.9M to provide cardiologists with a digital twin of the heart. Revenue of €1.2M in FY2023.
- Alcatraz AI – expanding its biometric authentication technology, raising a Series A extension now at $6.9M after securing new deals with top Fortune500 companies, airports & stadiums.
- Capital Cell– a digital investment platform specializing in healthcare and biotechnology.
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:
Educational Resource for Teachers and Parents – Dynamic content site dedicated to providing quality educational resources for teachers and homeschool parents, it gained popularity due to its comprehensive coverage of various educational topics.
- Monthly Profit: $4K
- Monthly Page Views: 99K
- Domain Authority: 27
Smartwatch Ecommerce Business – Fast-growing UK smartwatch business with 150% YoY growth (2021-2022).
- Monthly Profit: $23.2K
- AOV: $60
- Age: 3 years
Affiliate Marketing SaaS – This SaaS business is a disruptive affiliate marketing network offering cutting-edge technology solutions to optimize financial operations through AI and machine learning.
- Monthly Profit: $20K
- Annual Revenue: $866K
- Age: 2 years
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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.
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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.
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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!