Economy on pause, CEOs whispering, and SaaS infrastructure

You’re reading the Growth Shuttle Insider, gathering 19,500+ B2B executives, investors, and professionals making smart strategic decisions based on a blend of macro and real-world business data.

Reading Business Insider on Monday, I discovered another buzzword that will likely gain popularity soon, namely “the P-word”.

Tim Paradis is analyzing the global market turbulence we all see, summarizing the big “Pause” button that executives have pressed before Easter, waiting for some predictability before making expensive and time-consuming decisions.

Planning in quarters vs. decades

The Eastern Bloc is often dubbed to think in years if not decades, while the public market in North America and Europe is heavily scrutinized every quarter.

Harold Ford, previously a Tennessee congressman, raised similar observations in 2017, during the first Trump presidency:

If you dive into Reddit or X, you’ll get the sense of fake news and propaganda. If you listen to investors and PE professionals on the All-In Podcast or Capital Allocators - or follow reputable hedge fund managers like Ray Dalio - you’ll find that the AI dominance in China is premeditated and years in the making, Russia’s plans have been shaped for decades. Most of the future investments are already mapped out down to the 2040s or later.

Compare that with the average tenure of today’s CMO, unable to balance out a complete GTM rebuild with quota in 3 months’ time.

This is also valid for buyer perceptions, by the way:

With executives under threat of replacement from boards, and political leaders changing every 4 years, short-term thinking is necessary for short-term survival. But most long-term goals require a decade-long investment, and this is an unpopular move that often kills careers midway.

What are CEOs reporting?

The irony here is that the best decision is making no decisions at all. The outcome however is slowing the economy down, with contracts on pause, hiring new staff on pause, new R&D, real estate deals, global investments on hold as well.

Executives today are blocked on most fronts because tariffs, global relationships, stock market volatility, massive players blocked or disrupted leads to uncertainty.

• Would you invest in TikTok as a growth channel if you don’t know whether it’s bound to be paused or sold in a month?

• Meta and Google are both going through antitrust trials. If Instagram or YouTube get detached from ownership, where would you focus your efforts on?

• China tariffs are harming low-cost shopping, impacting the e-commerce sector. However, Amazon is also impacted, as most of its production is tied to China.

• Is building an OpenAI model the right way to go today? Or will Manus or another Chinese LLM, such as Mistral in Europe, pick up quickly?

• If manufacturing needs to happen elsewhere, which country will be blessed long-term and has the capacity, facilities, know-how to accommodate production?

• Are electric vehicles going to be the right logistics investment today or is petrol back on track with oil companies getting an edge?

Thousands of outstanding blockers to form a proper Q2 or Q3 campaign today, let alone a decent action plan until the rest of the year.

This is why we opened CEO Hangout for executive discussions

One trend that has spiked up lately is “CEO networking” - which is on the rise over the past couple of months:

If you are a founder/executive/investor facing the same obstacles as all of us, join us in the free Slack community. I suspect this turbulence will last through 2025 and a strong peer group sharing insights outside of the social and viral echo chamber will deliver stronger results this year.

The future of solopreneurship is muddy

For tiny businesses, the future is uncertain at best.

I wrote a separate post on AI and empowering freelancers/consultants since LLMs are a strong tool in the arsenal of senior experts who can automate the manual and mundane research or copy-paste work. Corporations have traditionally hired tens of thousands of people for these assistant-level tasks, including junior roles in marketing copy-pasting statuses on social or proofreading drafts, juniors in software engineering copying the code of one ERP form into 80 different screens, and other non-inventive roles adding up.

But "the dark side of going solo” - which was the byline of my first book, “126 Steps to Becoming a Successful Entrepreneur,” is that tens of millions of entrepreneurs have entered a crowded space over the past decade which is now in a down market.

One of these areas (the better path in hindsight) is productizing services: building a digital product, SaaS, or a subscription-based solution that requires a strong, underlying layer of payment management, tax handling, IP protection for software licenses, and hundreds of other essential details to work properly.

This week, I’ve interviewed Vova Feldman of Freemius who has been scaling this layer on top of WordPress for over a decade and scaled to the broader SaaS ecosystem over the past two years:

From an implementation/compliance standpoint, the VAST majority of my revenue - over 80%, some months close to 90% - is coming from service work: DevriX, Growth Shuttle, Robust Branding partner deals, performance-based commissions, facilitating M&A transactions. The rest is dividends, sponsored deals, community subscriptions, some book sales or software/theme sales.

Compliance was a significant factor in this. Over the first decade of launching my businesses, handling bookkeeping, proper tax management, issuing invoices correctly was an epic blocker in making a business model sustainable. I had some productized services ready by 2012 - 2014, ready to go at $5 - $10 apiece, but the entire accounting layer was adding over $20 in overhead per piece: issuing the right financial document, handling invoices, accounting fees, refund/chargeback requests. The business model was never made sustainable.

Nowadays, Stripe has gained a ton of popularity - and compliance for SMBs in the US is easier until a certain threshold - but scaling up or starting in Europe or another “compliant jurisdiction” is virtually impossible without a tool like Freemius.

Vova and I unpack that experience together, touch on the service layer, vibe coding, and other areas that are making news today.

And in hindsight, microSaaS and other indie solutions picked up since solutions like Freemius made it to market. Product launches are now easier, cheaper, and faster - and when compliance is taken care of, the full funnel is working.

There’s not enough work for all the freelancers anymore

And as the SaaS market is getting saturated, we’re yet to see how the service market will get affected. I met over a hundred outsourced teams and agencies closing shop over the past 2 years with the B2B down market. We get CVs from former freelancers and consultants dealing with a dry pipeline. And as budgets are shrinking, larger teams are “cutting the fat” in the process.

The US alone reports 76.4 million freelancers in 2024. This is 36% of the workforce.

It’s no surprise that shrinking demand and budgets is having a massive effect on smaller service providers and freelancers. Competition is fierce. New product development has slowed down or is now limited in scope. Automated tools + AI are speeding up delivery times for certain initiatives, reducing budget sizes as well.

We are definitely seeing shifts in the smaller service/freelancer space - and the top 10% will absolutely stay ahead and remain in high demand, most likely the top half will be able to serve the remaining market. But whether corporations and startups will need to offload continuously to keep 36% of the workforce fully booked? This is less likely with AI cutting down delivery times today.

Mario

🤖 Social networks are losing the “network” effect. I’ve been pulling back from social for 2 years now, and getting amused by the growing viral spread of media promoting clickbait and pushing for a single point of interests. If you wonder why Reddit is growing up so fast, it’s the FORUMS EFFECT. We use Slack groups, Circle, Skool for the same thing, but it’s clear that mass social is lagging behind hard.

⌨️ “CEO networking” is trending up. A quick story of acquiring CEOHangout in 2019 and finally realizing the value of the network after the pandemic years and Zoom fatigue 6 years later (and how you can join the network).

✍️ What businesses will be relevant 5-7 years from now? A detailed thread of resilient categories I would invest in starting today, knowing they will be in demand in the early 2030s still.

📰 14 B2B areas you probably missed. The tech/B2B SaaS realm is so overrepresented on social that younger founders and marketers often forget that B2B is a much, much larger market. Here are 14 B2B categories you probably don’t even think about (but may be your clients).

🤖 Can enterprise media bypass an AI check? Surprisingly, no - which I found out diving into top enterprise networks. You’ll see most of the buzzword you expect from ChatGPT across homepages, webinar sign up pages, whitepapers and reports - a lot of disruption, leveraging, robust businesses, fostering communications, and other sentence structures and recaps that LLMs produce by default as tell-tell signs for AI.

🔖 Drive conversions with predictive email marketing — Real-time product suggestions based on customer behavior have helped increase email click-through rates by nearly 25%. Learn how more relevant messaging can improve ROI with AI in email marketing.

🔖 Streamline conversion tracking — Eliminate gaps in your sales funnel with this straightforward, no-code guide to setting up e-commerce event tracking using Google Tag Manager. Track key actions like add-to-cart and purchase events to better understand customer behavior and improve performance.

🔖 Boost ROI with smarter segmentation — Improve your PPC performance by matching ad creatives with the specific traits of your audience using structured testing and clear performance metrics. Explore this guide to segmentation best practices for a more targeted approach and better use of your budget.

🔖 Measure before you risk — In unpredictable markets, every detail counts. This guide to risk mitigation KPIs offers practical tools to quantify exposure, improve compliance, and refine how capital is allocated. Clear metrics lead to more grounded decisions.

🔖 Institutionalize your vision — A lasting vision requires more than inspiration. Embedding your values into formal structures—such as a legacy council—can help ensure your long-term influence. Explore the full framework for building a legacy that outlives your tenure.

🔖 Prioritize curiosity, not control — Neuroscience and behavioral psychology point to mindset as the foundation of sustained focus and output. This breakdown explores how high performers replace harsh self-judgment with self-awareness that actually helps them make progress — read more here.

🔖 Lead without micromanaging — High-trust leadership is more than just a feel-good ideal; it supports sharper thinking, stronger commitment, and fewer roadblocks. This look at how senior leaders build clarity and autonomy shows what changes when micromanagement is replaced with accountability. Explore the shift in this breakdown of trust-based performance systems.

📰 MamayLM brings Ukrainian AI to new heights. A new 9B-parameter model, MamayLM runs on a single GPU and outperforms models many times its size in both English and Ukrainian. Developed by INSAIT and ETH Zürich, it’s designed for real-world use across sectors like healthcare, law, and education—especially where cost and data privacy matter.

📰 Big Tech at a breaking point. A high-stakes antitrust case could require Google to separate Chrome from its broader operations and open up its data reserves to competitors. The outcome may reshape the balance of power in Silicon Valley and affect how AI products are trained and deployed. Watch the unfolding Google antitrust showdown that’s testing the boundaries of the $1.8T search industry.

📰 United bets on strategic flexibility. United Airlines is preparing for two possible outcomes: a softer landing or a deeper recession. The airline is leaning on scenario planning and tighter cost oversight to stay ahead of shifting economic conditions. Take a closer look at its dual-path approach.

📰 AI geopolitics in focus. The U.S. is tightening export controls on Nvidia’s H20 chips, but China’s momentum in AI development hasn’t slowed. Read on to see why these restrictions might fall short and how they could reshape the balance in global AI competition.

📰 Google’s cookie U-turn. In a significant shift, Google will continue supporting third-party cookies in Chrome, pausing its original plan to remove them due to regulatory challenges. See who stands to gain - and lose - from this new approach.

📰 Invest in the marketer of the future. A recent AMA report points to digital marketing, analytics, and ROI measurement as key gaps in today’s workforce. Take a look at the 2025 marketing skills trends influencing how the next wave of effective teams is being built.

📰 India’s EV market undergoes a shift. Ather has reduced its IPO target to $308M while maintaining a $1.4B valuation, signaling a more cautious approach amid changing market dynamics. Here’s why Ather’s adjusted IPO could shape how future EV companies approach public listings in India.

📰 Uber taps loyalty to drive travel spend. Uber’s latest move connects its services more deeply with travel routines through a new partnership with Delta. Riders and delivery users can now earn SkyMiles across trips, food, and airport bookings. The loyalty program tie-in aims to boost customer retention and widen margins as spending patterns shift.

📰 Own the runway, skip the VC funding. Instead of chasing external investment, Jesse Pujji took the bootstrapped route. His story shows how building a high-growth business without venture capital can lead to profitability, more control, and long-term resilience.

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.

Dog Support Harness FBA: A 6-year-old Amazon store offering mobility products for dogs, maintaining stable revenue with a 4.4-star rating. Generates $9,360 annual profit with an AOV of $17. Priced at $35,000.

Sleep Assist Shopify Store: A 3-year-old ecommerce brand focused on natural sleep aids, generating $70,956 in annual profit with an AOV of $45. It has a 13% repeat customer rate and a TikTok audience of 77K followers. Priced at $71,100.

Travel Blog & Ecom Store: A seasoned 11-year-old dual-income business featuring 550+ SEO articles on WordPress and a Shopify ecommerce arm. Generates $57,247 in annual profit and attracts 23,418 monthly page views. Priced at $153,967.

Sustainable Business Blog: A 13-year-old authority blog in the business sustainability niche, generating $85,496 in annual profit with an 81% margin. The site boasts 1,300+ articles, DA 30, and strong organic traffic growth (+70% YoY). Listed for $275,000.

European Clothing Brand: A 2-year-old, highly automated ecommerce business with a $314K annual profit, 20% margin, and $65 AOV. Priced at a 2x profit multiple, this brand offers strong growth potential. Listed at $647,728.

Digital Creators Monetization Platform: A 2-year-old subscription-based platform designed for influencers and content creators. Comes with 13K email subscribers and 75% organic traffic. Listed at $1,500,000.

Need My Help?

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

🌐 Scaling enterprises on top of WordPress? 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 (hundreds of millions of monthly views), 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.

🌠 Feature your business across the community? The B2B Ecosystem includes this newsletter and 40 other digital properties (directories, newsletters, blogs, SaaS, and social accounts) targeting B2B executives. See how your business can benefit.

📈 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.