Global whirlwind restarted + early start for B2Bs

I’ve been covering the weekly business bulletin for over 5 years now and core business cycles keep repeating themselves.

For example, here’s a March 2021 edition:

This flashback is stressing on the “error ratio” of making decisions. We keep iterating as a society, as business leaders, as investors. The goal is to get more answers correct than wrong - and not get 100% straight.

Ultimately, the efficiency of iterating fast can justify some mistakes along the way. But if we keep betting on the wrong horses all the time, we fail to learn from our mistakes and rectify them in the right direction.

I really love the move from MailChimp to beehiiv as it’s now possible to share these flashbacks from the newsletter archives. It’s public and out there in the open. If anyone wants to run a background check on what I’ve done and said before, it’s public.

That’s a great mix of:

1. First-party data for connecting with actual humans

2. Great open and delivery rates vs. the social noise

3. Still the historical element of retaining knowledge (like blogs or individual social accounts)

Email is king - the highest ROI channel out there. This is why I sat down with Alex Ivanov of Hypergen to uncover cold email playbooks, deliverability, dedicated IPs, Clay playbooks, and a lot more in the latest “B2B Growth Hacking Playbook” podcast episode:

Definitely recommended on email best practices - bookmark it for the weekend if you’re still catching up on emails.

Otherwise, you may end up like Salesforce sending something like this:

So, what do we see this week?

This is the fastest-pacing January for the past 5 years (conservatively, 15+ years).

Most business categories aim for a strong Q4 - both B2B and B2C. The Black Friday/Christmas sales seasons, making the most out of annual budgets, hitting annual quota, wrapping up or closing deals to get ready for the new year.

(Exceptions exist in each industry - ski resorts, insurance, healthcare, but this is the overarching premise.)

But this month, we see some monumental changes in the global ecosystem.

• Trump being back in power. This was finally established after a busy Q3/early Q4 last year, but the closer he approached the inauguration date on Monday, the tension pressed the buttons on different initiatives, industries, and even countries.

• Israel finally made peace (at least temporarily) with Gaza. Hostages are getting swapped. After 15 months, the end may be near for the foreseeable future. No matter where you side, I always favor peace and predictability.

• TikTok got a temporary ban. I saw their CEO was present during Trump’s inauguration, so the odds are, some deal is bound to happen eventually. But it still shows that some threats are real and may very well kick in. The previous administration was strong with public suggestions, but enforcing them was dubious in some cases.

This subset, and many more - such as the DOGE department starting, a number of procedural changes around DEI, global funding, taxes and fees, inevitably leads to businesses waking up early in January and not taking a prolonged holiday or just a slow Jan/Feb to reflect on the past year and how to navigate the new one.

We see more executives back in office early on.

More strategy meetings are happening early.

And global CEOs and founders are pulling their weight again.

• We saw Sergey and Lary back in Google in February 2023 after the AI hype.

• Gates went on showing up in different conversations around Microsoft and AI.

• Musk took over X as yet another massive and growing project (ex-Twitter), with radical changes in performance and productivity with founder-led ownership.

• Bezos just returned to Amazon’s AI division in December!

• Marc Benioff is everywhere, featuring the Agentforce transition of the Salesforce core model.

Gone are the days of founders sitting in their ivory towers, delegating leadership to operators, and counting on repetitive processes and just running the old playbook over and over and over and over again.

Another wake up call from 15 months ago from my archives:

Effective decision-making lies in forecasting future trends. I write this bulletin (with 8,300 subscribers on beehiiv and another 4,900 on LinkedIn) to showcase these trends and set the baseline for founders and executive teams.

The signals we’ve been seeing keep popping up.

Founders are back where they’re supposed to be.

Leadership is not a role you can retire from and let the board and an external CEO run everything else. It’s one thing running fractional meetings (possible and still week to week updates and calibration) and another to retire for several years and then get back in the game (Google, Amazon).

But ultimately, everyone is now pulling their weight and actively rebuilding businesses and teams for the new normal.

Mario

✍️ The White House website illegal in Europe? I’ve been discussing data privacy and data protection policies on LinkedIn lately, but this commentary hit hard. Someone even said it violates CCPA.

✍️ Reading is believing - I’ve intentionally decreased my social footprint over the past 12 months with “write-only” mode and limited read access. I publish, respond to comments, and do some light reading, but definitely keeping this under control. That said, I still read books - and more importantly, magazines too. They provide different insights for a reason.

✍️ “Entrepreneur’s Day” - March 10 in Sofia - If you want to meet in person, I’ll be discussing entrepreneurship best practices and my story for the Sofia community. Meetup RSVP here.

🔖 Sharpen Your Campaign Metrics — Gain a competitive edge by mastering the calculation of your email marketing Cost Per Lead (CPL). Get into strategies that reduce costs, improve ROI, and ensure your marketing dollars drive measurable growth.

🔖 Boost Engagement Through Personalization — Break through the noise with 10 actionable tactics for creating tailored, high-impact B2B email campaigns. Drive meaningful connections and boost conversions by speaking directly to your audience’s needs.

🔖 Refine Every Step of the Funnel — Cross-device testing tools are no longer optional—they’re critical. Discover how ensuring seamless performance across platforms can improve your customer journey and eliminate leaks in your conversion funnel.

🔖 Simplify Sales and Marketing Alignment — Integration is the key to efficiency. Explore the top tools for syncing your CRM and marketing automation platforms to build a unified, data-driven approach that fuels growth and simplifies workflows.

🔖 Stay Ahead of Financial Risks — The future of risk management lies in AI. Discover the latest tools transforming compliance and efficiency in finance, empowering your organization to mitigate risks and stay one step ahead.

📃 Social platforms adapt to video trends. Bluesky and X have introduced dedicated video feeds to capitalize on TikTok’s recent uncertainties. These features enable users to explore trending vertical videos and build customized feeds based on specific hashtags, offering a fresh approach to content discovery.

📃 Major AI investment in the U.S. — President Trump is set to unveil "Stargate," a $100 billion joint venture with Oracle, OpenAI, and Softbank aimed at advancing AI infrastructure. Initial projects include a Texas-based data center to accelerate AI growth nationwide.

📃 AI features under fire. A recent survey shows that 73% of iPhone users found Apple’s new AI tools "not very valuable," citing a lack of innovation. The findings reflect broader concerns about AI fatigue and environmental impacts tied to underwhelming tech updates.

📃 Investment banking back on top. Wall Street’s top banks reported record-breaking revenue this quarter, driven by surging trading activity and a rebound in M&A deals. With a robust pipeline of IPOs and acquisitions, the sector is poised for a lucrative year. Read more.

📃 Balancing global trade. At Davos, China’s Vice Premier emphasized the need for "win-win" solutions to trade tensions, advocating for balanced trade and rejecting protectionism. The message highlights China’s intent to expand imports while easing global economic strains.

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.

AI-Powered Video Editing App - This app enabling users to edit photos and videos maintains a 4.6-star rating across 4.4K+ reviews and has generated a TTM revenue of $508.5K.

• Monthly profit: $16,277

• Average monthly downloads: 66,584

• Business age: 2 years

3-Product Business Building Portfolio - This business features a portfolio of three products which include an ad marketplace, analytics SaaS, and a digital course.

• Monthly profit: $11,024

• Average order value: $151

• Business age: 2 years

Pickleball Paddle Ecommerce - This ecommerce business featuring a brand of pickleball paddles, gear, and apparel has generated a TTM revenue of $217.3K.

• Monthly profit: $10,725

• Average order value: $123

• Business age: 4 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.