ARR growth, community feedback, M&A trends, directories launch

I’ve been swamped over the past 30 days and haven’t kept an eye on the list - despite the few bursts of BFCM campaigns, we’re still going strong:

(you can see the dip of like 3 net people leaving due to campaigns in Nov)

Let’s dive in.

Deal closing isn’t over

Election years often look weird for financial forecasts, but the macro hit from late 2022 plus AI plus wars, the Olympics, and heated elections on social didn’t help the slightest.

And December is usually a slow month wrapping up the year and heading into a slow January - not this year.

To summarize an earlier LinkedIn post this week:

Closed a couple of new agency contracts since Monday + a handful of busy meetings scoping out Q1 goals. The ecosystem is buzzing - and I see this across the board.

Bracing for a stronger January as well.

Strategic Circle - community loop 30 days in

I launched the startup mentorship program for Black Friday with 21 sign-ups - and just had my first churn yesterday.

No bad blood whatsoever - it wasn’t the right fit for the founder (and I’m charging half my hourly rate for an entire month of ad-hoc syncs and strategy tips on Slack).

But transparency is important and I shared this on social. Churn is real and happens all the time - it’s been a turbulent year and revealing gaps is leading by example.

Much to my surprise, existing strategic growth circle members popped in and made my evening:

I spent 4 hours fielding questions on Monday as I take this mission seriously. Helping founders succeed is why I started the program in the first place, the reason I’ve spent over 6,000 hours training courses over the past 2 decades, and why I authored MBA Disrupted.

Major props to Milan and Asaf for their honest and positive feedback!

I’ve said that time and again:

I feel the same amount of gratitude selling a $5.99 book, a $149/mo or 297/mo startup program, a $1,800/mo advisory for SMEs, or a $50K agency contract. I aim for a 10X+ ROI in every single case - and anyone voting with their wallet matters in my book.

M&A trends for 2025

My friends at Flippa released their annual trends report for the coming year. Read the full release here.

You’ll also find industry summaries from M&A leaders and entrepreneurs like Codie Sanchez, Tim Schumacher, Mike Finger, Ali Aydar, and yours truly:

I work with the broader ecosystem of angel investors, M&A advisors, VCs, PE firms in supporting great startups, establishing professional processes, running due diligence on the technical end, preparing startups for exits, and restructuring businesses post-acquisition.

I’m quite confident that 2025 is going to be a strong year - as long as the macro and political ecosystem improves a bit.

Directories picking up

As part of my B2B ecosystem initiative, I’ve been building SaaS apps, revamping some content publishing sites, and launching new directories.

Every new launch takes a while to pick up. It’s expected and nothing to shy away from. The long-term game starts slow before the cumulative returns start to show up.

I launched the first directories in late September and October, and I’m giving it 9-12 months before we see any meaningful progress. SEO takes time and building the social accounts + content + email list will need a little longer. But the entire network is self-supporting itself as sites link to one another and email blasts include different properties.

Then again, we’re already seeing the first signs of traction for some of the new directories created in Q4:

This traction will only go up for the next year - and we’re seeing the first organic submissions and LinkedIn contacts discussing the network.

One of the bigger initiatives I’m passionate about in 2025. Stay tuned.

Yours,

Mario

✍️ Founder mode is back. Executives running successful companies who took a few years sitting on boards or not in the weeds are back. I’m meeting original founders for $50M+ businesses I’ve been working with coming back over the past year and getting busy with restructuring and reinventing the wheel. More to come.

✍️ Is bad publicity a thing? I treat my inbox like a CRM - with 20 years of data since my Gmail was registered in 2004. And outreach campaigns like this are why some relationship will never flourish even if the individuals step into a different line of business later. Be careful what campaigns you run.

✍️ The AI hype is lagging: Most LLMs have hit a plateau and results are not only failing to improve, but even going down. I hit some massive bugs with ChatGPT getting stuck or reiterating the same answer multiple times (or providing poor results). The new Gemini was hyped to kill SEO, but it’s a long way from there.

✍️ The future is Done-With You. Agencies will be in demand for the next 3 years at least as companies will be careful with overhiring while innovation will go up. Compensating know-how and experience demands external consulting. Enter DWY.

🔖 Making sense of cross-channel ROI — Find out how to measure cross-channel ROI effectively and uncover which marketing efforts are driving real business results.

🔖 Predictive metrics for email success — Use predictive email metrics to look ahead, refine campaigns proactively, and ensure your email strategy delivers measurable returns.

🔖 Choosing between CPC and CPA bidding — Understand the differences between CPC and CPA bidding to make smarter decisions about where to invest your advertising budget.

🔖 Resolving Agile team conflicts — Learn practical approaches to improve agile team dynamics by transforming conflicts into opportunities for growth and collaboration.

🔖 Tracking the Metrics That Matter — Explore essential campaign performance metrics to focus on what’s working, eliminate what’s not, and improve your future marketing outcomes.

📃 SoftBank pledges $100B for U.S. businesses. SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son announced plans for a $100 billion investment to create 100,000 new jobs in the United States.

📃 Consumer prices rise 2.7% over the year. The Consumer Price Index increased 2.7% from November 2023 to November 2024, with shelter prices up 4.7% and food prices rising 2.4%. Energy prices, however, fell by 3.2%.

📃 Chinese AI models surpass U.S. rivals in some areas. Chinese companies are producing popular open-source AI-models that are gaining global traction and outperforming U.S. alternatives in competitive benchmarks.

📃 European tech funding tops €1.2B in a week. Over 80 tech funding deals across Europe raised more than €1.2 billion, with healthtech leading at €481.2 million, followed by cloud and fintech sectors.

📃 Palantir, MicroStrategy join Nasdaq 100. Palantir, MicroStrategy, and Axon are set to join the Nasdaq 100, while Moderna, Super Micro, and Illumina are exiting the index.

Let’s see the latest offers from Flippa. Don’t forget to sign up for their newsletter for daily/weekly/monthly offers such as these.

Real Estate Marketplace - This marketplace enabling buyers to find land, ranches, and farms for sale has driven a TTM revenue of $307K.

• Monthly profit: $13,482

• MRR: $4,086

• Business age: 8 years

Daycare Management SaaS - This SaaS business which simplifies daycare management by enhancing communication and streamlining admin tasks, maintains a low 0.5% churn rate.

• Monthly profit: $2,420

• Profit margin: 95%

• Business age: 10 years

Tactical & Outdoor Accessories Ecom - This YouTube channel which features videos on space and science includes 90.4K subscribers and 720+ videos.

• Monthly profit: $10,124

• Average order value: $118

• Business age: 5 years

Need My Help?

Keeping myself busy - here are the main projects I focus on:

🌐 Scaling WordPress past 100M views? DevriX provides martech retainers to SMEs, publishers, eCommerce, SaaS, and more. Our plans start from $1,200/mo to $40K/mo and we manage high-traffic platforms, B2B SaaS apps, partnership management solutions, supporting $10M - $250M businesses with scalability, custom funnels, CRO, big data augmentation, AI-driven processes, HubSpot workflows, programmatic SEO - and everything a modern business requires in digital in 2025.

🚀  Work 1:1 with me? At Growth Shuttle, I run two popular plans: Async Advisory for $3M - $30M founders and executive teams and the smaller Strategic Growth Circle for $100K - $500K entrepreneurs, agency founders, scale ups.

📈 International founder looking into US LLCs? Check out doola and their “Business in a Box” model. Suitable for both foreigners and US citizens and both for residents and non-residents.

📊 Into digital M&A? I work closely with 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 the tools to list your business and close the deal.

💼 Looking for investment opportunities? Check out SeedBlink and use Equity to manage your ESOP tables in-house.