EU getting competitive, AI missed GDP growth, newsletter acquisition

Macroeconomics has been vastly underrated in traditional entrepreneurship/startup classes because it’s hardly relevant on a small scale.

But every Fortune 500 follows this transformation closely.

When beginner founders, freelancers, or side “hustlers” are in a “feast and famine” mode, just trying to get to any product-market fit, future opportunities and investing in the long term is irrelevant. Meanwhile, the global economy map has been shifting - and the transformative pace is worth studying.

116 years of GDP data (visualized)

This is a quick outlook on 116 years of GDP growth across the world:

• In 1896, Japan was at the bottom and India was non-existent. Austria-Hungary was a leading economy.

• 1965 - Soviet Union second, India 9th and Canada following.

• 1988 - Japan second, Germany still third, China at number 10

• 2021 - China second, India 5th, Canada at 9, North Korea at 10

Visual Capitalist also provides a breakdown of PPP-adjusted GDP data:

PPP-adjusted means that GDP data is aligned to the purchasing power of individuals. In other news, how far along does $1 go in each country?

The European Union has generally been lagging behind in this race. Back in 1897, 3 out of the top 4 countries by GDP were based in Europe (6 out of the top 10). Germany and France alone were almost on par with the US - and that’s if we discard the second-largest economy at the time, the United Kingdom (which left the EU with Brexit in 2020). Today, together they represent about a third of the US GDP.

Go-to-market considerations for executives (and why you should care)

Spending time on macro transformations is about clarity.

The US is the most apettite market as a whole, which means it’s also the most competitive one at the same time. While GDP data proves the hypothesis right, it’s not balanced out equally.

I published a global market expansion essay back in March of 2017 (updated last year) on why conquering global markets helps. For instance, we’ve been closing a lot of business in Bulgaria over the past 18 months as growth opportunities + inflation have enabled European businesses to scale behind the scenes + use the purchasing power to maximize profitability and compete on global markets.

While the UK generates a seventh of the annual GDP of the US, it may be 20 to 100 times less competitive in certain markets, especially if you include the additional gain from on-site staff costs (BDR/SDR) or average PPC costs (twice as cheap in the UK).

Positioning products and solutions toward other strong economies - Japan, Germany, India, France, Italy, Canada, North Korea - may tap into new opportunities that are exponentially harder to achieve in the States.

The EU is trying to get back on the map

Europe has been getting a ton of backlash over the past decade on missed innovation opportunities:

• Countries trying to depart from the Union (the UK and Brexit being a successful example for that)

• Lack of strong instruments to influence global policy (Gaza and Ukraine wars going on unbothered by UK votes and political opinions)

• VC funding in the EU is a tiny fraction of US - proven by this market cap analysis

• Ongoing conflicts with US big tech

• Hardcore regulations and bureaucracy - from GDPR through increasingly complex paperwork for freelancers, solopreneurs, SMBs

• Innovation brags across the globe mostly revolving around unifying the Apple USB-C plug and the bottle cap holder

• Virtually no competition in the AI race (what was possible with Mistral was again suppressed by bureaucracy) so private companies have to try to innovate themselves 

• JD Vance basically called out the passiveness in Munich

• US - Russia peace negotiations for Ukraine have completely ignored the EU as a possible relevant player with any significance

If you’re looking as an outsider and haven’t been following closely, this gap is probably obvious and the political status quo should have mobilized itself decades ago.

But that’s not how the EU perceives itself. As the Old Continent, Europe has lived in the past for a good while now, distantly remembering The British Raj (UK ruling over India) or Christopher Columbus discovering America (or the Vikings before that, in either case, coming from Europe).

The Netflix series “The Crown” provides a similar outlook on how the UK misses the point on innovation and gets overshadowed by different parties along the way. It’s a great documentary (fairly honest in this regard) with the first season released in 2016 (as recent as it gets).

What we’re seeing today is that the EU is trying to mobilize itself - or at least the recent news over the past couple of months say so - after the Trump elections, AI battles, and actual wars going on. There are ongoing conversations on additional funding in AI, relieving the bureaucracy, facilitating easier startup funding, increasing military spend, and elections in countries like Germany prioritizing far right (or center right) as a wake up call to old models.

Whether this will actually work out and get executed, it’s early to tell. But the winds are blowing in this direction. And what we see in the historic GDP representation above is how it takes a decade for a country to move from the bottom (or out of the chart) to number 4 or 5 among the largest economies in the world.

Is AI contributing to growth at all?

A recent twist in the AIverse is an interview with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella on AI’s actual contributions to date:

While AI is contributing to improving efficiencies internally (I also discussed that on LinkedIn), it’s not creating new work opportunities in itself.

The number of companies who need copywriting, SEO, video-generated content, etc. is not 10x larger just because AI showed up. And the results of AI-generated content or resources aren’t dramatically better either (you’ve all seen AI copy or AI photos with 6 fingers and twitchy eyes).

So while the economies are growing with the same pace they used to before, it’s still in a hype stage.

What AI currently helps with (or is positioned to do) is optimizing efficiency within larger corporations hiring thousands of people to perform menial tasks that weren’t fully possible to automate before. It also helps really small teams (1-5-15 people) to achieve more internally and move faster.

But the end output isn’t growing most companies by 50%, 100%, 200%.

On the contrary - certain services and productized services get devalued, contract sizes going down, or delivery ETAs speeding up, without being able to service a multiple on these contracts with no overhead.

One example here is the B2B ecosystem I’ve been growing over the past months. Scaling an entire network of properties with a skeleton crew of 4 other people (and a few contractors) would have been impossible 3 years ago. But with the diminishing returns of SEO, with all the AI outreach spam and social cluttering, global traffic is down and it’s merely a way to achieve comparable growth/results with an entire network vs. an individual site or two.

In other words, it takes the same resources to manage 15 properties as it took 2, but the aggregate results now are comparable because the TAM stays the same and competition is fierce and relentless.

Acquiring The Smarter Brain

Our newest addition to the media family is The Smarter Brain - a bi-weekly newsletter with 8,000 subscribers eager to get smarter with just 2 minutes a day! Think of a simplified Duolingo for smart news and insights in your inbox:

While this one is not strictly B2B (it’s tailored to sharp and curious individuals), it’s another audience-driven channel to grow a cohort of incredible people with common traits and interests.

With the absolute and abysmally degradation of social media, I’ve been spending more time on channels that are less cluttered and focused on delivering true value. It’s aligned with my 2025 resolutions for 1:1 relationships with great people, deep dive essays, and more educational content, too. I’m working with my team on structuring new, relevant newsletters, because short reads are easy to consume and stay on track with + they are fully targeted on a specific problem or interest.

You’re welcome to join the Smarter Brain (it’s free) - and also share this Growth Shuttle Insider newsletter with your colleagues or mastermind group on Slack/Teams.

Mario

✍️ Are YouTube and podcasts still important for B2B? I took a segment out of my podcast with Pierre discussing the importance of long-form content and face time with people (even virtually). With the crowded AI era, this will get more relevant as we progress in 2025 and 2026.

✍️ Ad sponosorships are getting weird - I’ve been keeping an eye on the sponsorship model as we acquire newsletters or publishing sites (and while growing the B2B ecosystem), but some ad pitches are just ridiculous.

✍️ Are young marketers aligned with the B2B expectations - I conducted several interviews this month and the biggest disparity for young B2B marketers is they learn from DTC resources. It’s almost like trying to learn entrepreneurship in middle school - the education system is designed around 9-to-5 workers and factories more than anything (last shaped a century ago) and these principles are not what entrepreneurship is about. Walking in your prospect’s shoes is the most important shift the young generation should aim at.

I was recently interviewed for The Buying Online Businesses Podcast and I haven’t had the chance to properly feature the episode here. I’m unpacking digital M&A at length here - check out the full episode above.

🔖 Keeping APIs Running Smoothly — Handling rate limits properly ensures data flows seamlessly across multiple channels. Use practical approaches like request throttling, caching, and queue-based processing to prevent slowdowns and keep systems responsive.

🔖 Shifting the Data Landscape — Nearly three-quarters of organizations now rely on AI to process data faster, reduce expenses, and improve accessibility. Dive into the role of AI in data analytics and learn how it’s shaping business decisions.

🔖 Strengthen Your Personas with Big Data — Leverage data-driven personas to track evolving behaviors, refresh your understanding regularly, and sharpen your targeting. Aligning strategies with changing consumer preferences helps ensure your marketing efforts stay effective and focused.

🔖 Make Your BI Investment Count — Business intelligence should drive real business value, not just collect data. Explore ways to track meaningful metrics, improve user adoption, and apply proven ROI measurement techniques to ensure your BI initiatives lead to tangible results.

🔖 Stay Ahead of Privacy Regulations — Privacy Impact Assessments aren’t just bureaucratic formalities; they help organizations avoid legal trouble and strengthen data security. Use this detailed checklist to identify vulnerabilities, safeguard sensitive information, and maintain confidence with stakeholders.

📃 Accountability push sparks controversy. Federal workers were instructed by the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) to report five accomplishments from the previous week by Monday night. The directive, following Elon Musk’s announcement on X, raised concerns over security risks and legal issues.

📃 AI market leadership under scrutiny. Nvidia’s financial results could determine the trajectory of AI-driven market trends. After rebounding from a sharp drop caused by Chinese startup DeepSeek’s competition, investors are watching closely for signs of sustained growth.

📃 Economic slowdown raises inflation fears. U.S. business activity stalled in February, hitting a 17-month low amid rising tariffs and deep federal spending cuts. new business activity data revealed a sharp drop in services sector growth, while manufacturing saw a slight uptick due to preemptive stockpiling.

📃 Massive staff cuts spark backlash. The US Agency for International Development (USAID) is set to lay off approximately 2,000 employees, with most remaining staff placed on administrative leave. The decision, announced via a message sent to staff, has drawn sharp criticism from unions and humanitarian groups, citing severe disruptions to global aid operations.

📃 CDU-CSU returns to power amid challenges. The CDU-CSU’s victory, led by the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) and Christian Social Union (CSU), has secured 28.6% of the vote, ending months of political instability. Friedrich Merz is set to become the next chancellor, likely forming a coalition with the SPD.

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.

Amazon Store Pricing SaaS — This SaaS business which helps Amazon FBA sellers automatically re-price products for maximum profit and competitiveness, maintains a customer lifetime value of $412.

• Annual profit: $47,000

• MRR: $5,000

• Business age: 2 years

B2B Slack App — This virtual team-building Slack and MS Teams app featuring a variety of interactive games and quizzes designed to enhance employee engagement has driven an annual revenue of $109K.

• Annual profit: $89,000

• Customer LTV: ~$1,400

• Business age: 4 years

Speaker & Music Syncing App — This app which enables multiple devices to play audio simultaneously has driven a TTM revenue of $1.4M and has seen 17.4M lifetime downloads.

• Annual profit: $480,000

• Monthly downloads: 55,000

• Business age: 9 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.