Howdy!
The Growth Blueprint has been going on for 5 years now (turning 5 in 3 weeks from now, but who’s counting 😄)
After 20+ years in tech, I’ve launched hundreds of projects, growing organic and social accounts, running ads, organizing events and training courses, building SaaS apps and subscription systems, and so much more.
And email was one of the mediums I postponed forever – and one I deeply regret until now. First-party data is more important than ever – even as Google just pulled back from killing 3rd party cookies.
Considering I virtually live in my inbox, it was quite irrational, yet I felt the growth rate of email would be slow with a level of effort not sustainable until the first 500-1000 subscribers. I wasn’t sure what to cover either – being a multidisciplined former engineer, serial entrepreneur, passionate growth hacker, and an investor, my various interests were not necessarily coherent enough for a targeted audience.
Then again, as an open source contributor, I know firsthand that owning your data is paramount (and trusting 3rd parties can be a recipe for disaster). We saw a major shift in algorithms (social, SEO), paid platforms bumping their fees big time (Webflow and Bubble, and partially Shopify), and ad algorithms being volatile or becoming more expensive as it goes.
So – I launched my newsletter and it took a couple of years to get to 2,000 subscribers. We reached ~10K thanks to SparkLoop. I was pretty happy with the early results, but subscriber quality went down early on and that resulted in a massive email purge from fake emails and bots. There are probably ways to mitigate and optimize that, but while the early sprint was solid, I canceled after the fourth month.
In the meantime, I launched Business at Scale in beehiiv on top of an existing list I acquired from Flippa (after sitting on a passive newsletter for 9 months). I was familiar with the beehiiv experience through a couple of agency clients, loved the editorial experience (unlike MailChimp), and respected the grind going on by beehiiv’s executive team.
And I joined the Series A round as an angel – so moving over was only natural.
Growth Blueprint has been a weekly macro newsletter featuring public data recaps (stock and market news + other business trends) plus my own retrospective as a business advisor, agency owner (DevriX), angel investor, and a serial entrepreneur (running different properties serving several cohorts). The former newsletter experience prevented me to incorporate more insights, visuals, video embeds, and other components that would add value – and this will hopefully get this solved.
With an upcoming light blog redesign in the works, I plan to funnel more visitors into subscribers, book readers, and community members in my Slack groups.
If that’s something that sounds boring and irrelevant, you can find the unsub button below (no hard feelings – being transparent toward the vision).
Otherwise, here’s what I’m focused on until the end of the summer:
👉 Closing new marketing retainers and WordPress scalability plans at DevriX
👉 Onboarding two new advisory clients for my Business Advisory program
👉 Growing our communities (three in the works, I’ll share more as we hit some milestones that would unlock more opportunities)
👉 Building more video content for my
👉 Aggregating and expanding the content archive for my blog
👉 Growing distribution for my book, MBA Disrupted (trying to get into airports and university libraries)
👉 Improving and scaling my newsletters
I’d love to have you along for the ride. Head into the rest of the newsletter for additional macro insights – and here’s to a super awesome rest of 2024!
Yours,
Mario
My Take
✍️Google’s New SEO Update – Google applied major algo updates to rectify its mistakes from the HCU SEO update in September. And we’re seeing better results than Q1 and ranks climbing up even for sites that were impacted. So, is SEO still alive?
✍️Advantages of Agencies vs In-House Teams – If agencies and consultants weren’t worth it, the model wouldn’t exist in the first place. DevriX turned 14 last month, and we’ve helped over a hundred SMEs launch, scale, optimize, and automate platforms and systems in different stages of their growth cycles. Working with the right agency or consultant can easily revamp your entire roadmap in the next 6 months.
✍️Advantages of Agencies vs In-House Teams – If agencies and consultants weren’t worth it, the model wouldn’t exist in the first place. DevriX turned 14 last month, and we’ve helped over a hundred SMEs launch, scale, optimize, and automate platforms and systems in different stages of their growth cycles. Working with the right agency or consultant can easily revamp your entire roadmap in the next 6 months.
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
📃 Tesla continues to struggle – Tesla’s second-quarter net income fell 45% compared with a year ago as the company’s global electric vehicle sales tumbled despite price cuts and low-interest financing. The Austin, Texas, company said Tuesday that it made $1.48 billion from April through June, less than the $2.7 billion it made in the same period of 2023. It was Tesla’s second-straight quarterly net income decline.
📃 Wiz walks away from $23 billion Google acquisition – Wiz has walked away from a deal with Google that would have valued the company at $23 billion. CEO Assaf Rappaport told employees the company would pursue an IPO as originally planned.
📃 Nvidia’s new AI chip for China – Nvidia, the world’s largest company by value, is reportedly developing a new artificial intelligence (AI) chip based on its flagship product B200 for the China market. The mass production of the new chip, which may be called B20, will commence later this year while shipments will start in the second quarter of next year
📃 Google’s advice on getting product rich results – Google’s John Mueller discusses four essential things that are useful in getting more product rich results. In an SEO Office Hours podcast, Google’s John Mueller answered the question of how to get more product rich results to show in the search results. John listed four things that are important in order to get rich results for product listings.
📃 Delta struggling after tech outage – Delta Air Lines struggled for a fourth straight day to recover from a worldwide technology outage caused by a faulty software update, stranding tens of thousands of passengers and drawing unwanted attention from the federal government. The airline’s chief executive said it would take “another couple days” before “the worst is clearly behind us.” Delta’s chief information officer said Monday that the airline was still trying to fix a vital crew-scheduling program.
Global News
📈 The stock market rallied on the first trading day of the Kamala Harris-for-president campaign, though things are looking less rosy on day two.
But as much as the market tries to trade the November election, there’s the more looming issue of the economy, with the market assigning a nearly 95% chance of an interest rate cut from the Federal Reserve in September.
- S&P 500: $5,246(-0.16%)
📈 Mortgage interest rates fell on all loan terms from a week ago, according to Bankrate data. Rates for 30-year fixed, 15-year fixed, 5/1 ARMs and jumbo loans all moved lower.
- 30-year mortgage rate: 6.87%(-0.05)
- 15-year mortgage rate: 6.33%(-0.12)
📈 The Federal Reserve will cut interest rates just twice this year, in September and December, as resilient U.S. consumer demand warrants a cautious approach despite easing inflation, according to a growing majority of economists in a Reuters poll.
Declining price pressures over the past few months and recent signs of labor market weakness gave several members of the policy-setting Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) “greater confidence” that inflation will return to the U.S. central bank’s 2% goal without a significant economic slowdown.
📰 Here are some of the most prominent headlines this week:
- President Biden will address the nation from the White House on Wednesday night at 8 p.m ET regarding his decision to exit the presidential race, a source says.
- President Biden will address the nation from the White House on Wednesday night at 8 p.m ET regarding his decision to exit the presidential race, a source says.
- A majority of pledged Democratic convention delegates have endorsed VP Kamala Harris for the 2024 Democratic presidential nomination.
Investment News
- Ambr– extends its pre-seed round with €100,000 to accelerate the onboarding of its global customers. Co-invest next to Fuel Ventures, APX VC, Loyal VC, and Plug & Play.
- CO2Later – raising €600,000 to empower businesses to make impactful sustainability decisions. It has an experienced founding team coming from the UiPath mafia and successfully exited Kubeark, the largest pre-seed round in Romania.
- Maskots – raising €200,000 to expand its pet care app, helping pet owners keep their animals happy and healthy.
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
Political Figures Ecommerce – This ecommerce store sells various ecommerce products featuring political figures, including t-shirts, mugs, and collectables.
- Monthly profit: $234,718
- MRR: $3,028
- Business age: 5 years
Portfolio of Fitness Instagram Channels – This Instagram-based business includes a portfolio of 8 fitness channels and is monetized through affiliate sales, subscriptions, and sponsorships.
- Monthly profit: $5,223
- Active followers: 4,500,000
- Business age: 6 years
Web Development Service – This service-based business provides web development services, with the seller offering to stay on as 50% owner.
- Monthly profit: $3,166
- Profit margin: 96%
- Business age: 11 years
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 interest. 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!
