Special CEO edition: for current CEOs and aspiring leaders

This newsletter goes out to 22,700 subscribers here + another 5,000 on LinkedIn, with two distinct cohorts:

1. Existing CEOs and CXOs, founders, consultants, and side “hustlers” with a side founder job

2. Aspiring leaders still climbing up the career ladder - college students in their first year or two or FTEs who aim at a leadership role in 2-3 years

This edition is for both groups. Here’s to lessons learned, CEO opportunities, trials and tribulations, and upcoming challenges for the role.

First, 15 years with DevriX and 7 with Growth Shuttle

This month, my Growth Shuttle venture turned 7 - and by the end of the month (June 28), DevriX celebrates its 15th birthday.

Approximately 40% of my life is now spent as a founder - and probably close to a half, if we account for moving to full-time freelancing in 2008, or some “side hustle” projects I’ve run between 2004 and 2007, plus co-running communities, administering forums, co-organizing events.

Still, I keep myself extremely grounded, because the CEO’s job is “having several bosses”, in some cases dozens or hundreds. Most corporate roles have a supervisor + their CEO, and eventually another senior leader or two on top. But CEOs legitimately have everyone paying as their boss AND having to serve their entire team, especially top to bottom leadership and the first 2-3 layers under.

CEOs can’t accomplish anything alone - but 100% of the responsibility falls on their shoulders.

This was the silver lining of my first 2019 book, 126 steps to becoming a successful entrepreneur. The byline is clear: “The entrepreneurship fad and the dark side of going solo.”

(And prior to that, I published a list of 15 traits entrepreneurs should avoid on Entrepreneur.com.)

The state of CEOs in 2025

I met with over a thousand CEOs over the last year - not as a full-time job, but across on-site events, CEO mastermind groups, our own CEO Hangout community, different WhatsApp and Telegram groups with founders and executives, investor events, pitch competitions, and many more.

I also present my point of view in public, leaving it to other executives to find loopholes or help me refine this further - similarly to my keynote on the next 20 years of retail and e-commerce I led yesterday morning:

And while any statistical list will lack the breadth to cover the endless palette of CEOs across different countries, segments, industries, revenue channels, tenures, or company sizes, there are some patterns repeated in most conversations I’ve had since mid-2024.

1. Future foresight is very limited. As organizations often planned 3 to 5 years ahead (or a minimum of 1), anything past 3 months seems distant and futuristic today.

2. The evolution of AI is foreign, abstract, and frightening. We’ve had different fads before, including the blockchain, NFTs, and virtual reality. Most of them had limited use at the time, limited adoption (missing hardware to run or required devices), missing application layer.
   
   AI is different - particularly LLMs available at the tips of one’s fingers, with ChatGPT crossing a million users in FIVE DAYS and 100,000,000 users in two months. This is no joke.

3. Tons of decisions are on hold for these reasons. Even something traditional like rebuilding or migrating a site is now questioned daily. Is AI going to do this well soon? Do we need a site? Will our messaging be relatable in a month? Is AI going to clone what we do so we have to pivot? This also cascades down to hiring (and what roles we need), scale (how many vs. what’s automated), opening new offices, and restructuring services and products.

4. Smashed with 5 years of pandemic, macro instability, and a new world. I call that “the longest recession” not because of the theoretical GMV impact or shrinking cycles, but the fact that predictability in businesses in the past 5 years has been the worst since the 1970s, if not back to WWII.
   
   Businesses have been trying to sort out the pandemic of 2020 for a year, then “the great resignation” of endless remote opportunities, then the peak of VC funding and the hyperinflation, with wars between leading economies, pirates in the Red Sea, extreme political elections, and yes, AI again. The number of parallel crises CEOs had to deal with in the 2020s has been unprecedented - many have given up or retired in the process.

5. Some retired CEOs have gotten back in the cockpit. Founders with smooth sailing through the 2010s who ended up semi-retiring, sitting on boards, or overseeing a few businesses, or literally traveling while general managers and presidents were running the show, came back to work.
   
   Sergey Brin and Larry Page left in 2019 and got back in the past 18 months, spearheading the massive AI efforts going on. Jeff Bezos returned to Amazon in December, with 95% of his time on AI. Marc Benioff was running Salesforce behind the scenes, but now on all possible stages disrupting with Agentforce - same with Dharmesh on the other end with HubSpot’s AI pivots.
   
   Former founders turning VCs and investors are moving into operational roles as well, or heavily tripling down their efforts in this era of change. After the quiet 2010s, it’s a massive shift.

Digital communication and go-to-market are failing for most

It’s almost baffling how often I see or hear:

• “We were scaling with SEO for over a decade, and now our pipeline has dried out over the past year.”

• “I made it to 50 events over the last year” (I focused on that, too, but that’s wild)

• “We shut down $5M in ad spend and sales are almost intact.”

• “We know that our marketing isn’t working anymore, but we don’t know why.“

• “Our services that were a no-brainer 3 years ago have no demand today at all.”

• “My customers can’t find me online after building a brand for 10 - 15 - 20 years.”

The one cohort you won’t see this at is anyone selling infrastructure to freelancers or young founders - because social networks are cluttered with clueless solopreneurs and CEOs in their 20s trying to figure out what the hell is going on.

…it’s like selling video editing services in a YouTube video, though - not applicable outside of that.

AI avatars, deep fakes, and AI comments aren’t helping either.

And this Mark Cuban statement is no different:

Genuine, existing connections and contacts are up, and events are heavily utilized for expanded networking. There’s a massive gap online today - if I had $50M to put into something, it would be a new social network that’s fully B2B-focused and revolving on quality for executives.

Since that’s outside of my spare investment capital, the best we can do is CEO Hangout as a bootstrapped venture with nearly 200 executives today talking shop and exchanging insights. After all, the withdrawal of VC funding into anything that’s not AI taught us that spending insane amount of capital on anything is far from smart, and taking the bootstrap path whenever possible is preferred 🙂 

CEO groups are a “safe haven” - what we do in ours

Pareto’s 80-20 principle is at full play in an era of economic, innovation, or geopolitical uncertainty. What matters is how fast you can pivot and relocate resources from one area to another.

When SEO dried out, we turn off our content efforts or move to autopilot.

When LinkedIn refuses to work after a few months of calibration, we turn on the auto mode too, and gather executives ourselves.

And we’re hosting an AmA session on EQ and managing emotional intelligence at the workplace in times of uncertainty, fear, stress, mental breakdown, and other surprises that leaders are dealing with:

The event is free, fully async, and in the CEO Hangout community. The only requirements here are: you should be in a CXO role (or enterprise consultant/investor/partner) and not in a pitch mode (unfortunately, we had to kick out 3 agency founders or partners who came in and ruined everything with mass DM pitches and spam).

We’re keeping it clean and civilized - safe conversations and not cross-functional pitches. So I would rather keep it small and maintain a waitlist for now vs. degrading the quality with more spam out there.

Here’s the sign-up form if you tick the boxes: https://ceohangout.com/ceo-hangout-slack-community/

Disclaimer: I don’t encourage founders without a purpose

This may fall into the gray area of discrimination or DEI, but I have a strong, negative stance against founders who just start businesses to make their lives easier.

One exception here is stay-at-home moms or people born and raised in small villages without opportunities in town. I still see this as a purposeful “finding a creative way to juggle motherhood with a career” or “supporting the local community”, including the follow-on investments in a town or village nearby.

But from a sustainability standpoint, countless founders in the late 2010s or during the pandemic ended up branching out from an agency or launching a side gig or a lifetime business just to chill or travel, or taking advantage of opportunities with working parallel jobs (moonlighting) or steal portfolio clients. That goes against my principles and I always advise AGAINST taking this path.

I’m a firm believer of making an impact, which is embodied in one of my parallel newsletters, Legacy beyond profits. I’m sharing the link again in gratitude to all the passionate CEOs who spend crazy hours to keep the boat afloat, engage in deep thinking on weekends, look into ways to give back and support, mentor their teams, educate young talent, provide opportunities, and carry a mission forward.

Here’s to the incredible people out there in charge of these life-changing ships.

If you’re reading this on the weekend and want to keep brainstorming ideas out, join the other CXOs in Slack, too.

Mario

💼 My 20 years of forecasting retail & eCommerce. The rapid acceleration of innovative technologies within AI and in robotics, drone deliveries, holograms, AR/VR are opening up new opportunities for retail and commerce. A quick summary with tips in my post.

💼 AI can be used for faking documents - or misleading on drug abuse. Reports like this one are crazy and may be “fake news” to some, but Character AI is already under court orders being the engine leading to the tragic death of a teenager using their avatars. Stories like LLMs suggesting meth or generating fairly realistic passports with limited efforts are gaining popularity. The dark side of AI is here and can’t be neglected - just think of all the deep fakes already online, including OpenAI banning extremist groups using them for propaganda (confirmed).

📰 PHP turns 30! On the positive side, another bright report as PHP turned 30 on Monday. I prepared a special poster + my own story how I got involved with the language over 25 years ago.

📕 Great book releases - starting with the Five Circles one in Bulgarian by my friend Alex that I posted about, followed by Ray Dalio’s new book (just ordered), and The Sweaty Startup that just came in. Books are a great substitute for AI-crowded social and I’m glad more great reads are coming out lately from great leaders.

🔖 Measure the KPIs that matter. Focus on the right B2B metrics to tie marketing efforts directly to real business outcomes.

🔖 Make personalization work harder. Use user behavior tracking in mobile apps to drive retention and conversions without overstepping privacy lines.

🔖 Modernize your supply chain strategy. Companies are using digital risk tools to manage volatile markets and supply chain complexity in real time.

🔖 Fix the disconnect between sales and marketing. Adopt RevOps techniques that strengthen collaboration and accelerate growth.

🔖 Keep marketing APIs secure. Use RBAC use cases to manage access and protect sensitive data across stacks.

🔖 Don't just gather data, act on it. Visualization techniques help teams turn complex data into fast, informed decisions that drive better KPIs.

🔖 Boost ad ROI with controlled experiments. Run A/B tests on bidding strategies in Google Ads to eliminate guesswork and focus spend.

🔖 Compete better in peak PPC seasons. Gain an edge with seasonal keyword insights that stretch budgets and boost impact.

📰 Immigration bottlenecks hit tech talent. Visa changes threaten U.S. innovation, especially in AI and startups.

📰 Newborn savings proposal gains notice. A proposed $1,000 account per child could reshape long-term equity in U.S. households.

📰 Meta eyes Scale AI investment. Meta may put billions into Scale AI to strengthen its infrastructure for future AI development.

📰 Musk-Trump fallout affects contracts. Their political rift could shift tech alliances and jeopardize major deals.

📰 WBD to split into two companies. Warner Bros. Discovery plans a 2026 breakup aimed at sharpening its focus across TV and streaming.

📰 B2B marketers shift long-term. A new continuum approach builds sustained awareness and conversion across the buyer journey.

📰 Apple leans on design over AI. A new "liquid glass" look in iOS 26 emphasizes sleek UX instead of heavy AI features

📰 OpenAI hits $10B in ARR. Surging enterprise demand helps OpenAI reach $10B in recurring revenue just 30 months after launch.

📰 Dueling WBD splits. Another story on Warner Bros. Discovery explores how a strategic split could help its streaming efforts.

📰 Chipotle uses AI to expand faster. The chain is using automation to open nearly one store a day efficiently.

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

Electric Bike Conversion Kit Shopify Store: 5-year-old Shopify store selling E-Bike conversion kits, with $68,866 annual profit and a $1,323 average order value - Available for $128,154.

Sustainable and Healthy Living Food Blog: 11-year-old food blog with $57,982 annual profit, 132K monthly page views, and a loyal Instagram following of 642K - Selling for $225,000.

Top-Ranked Business Newsletter: 3-year-old newsletter with 25% CTR, $126,322 annual profit, and ranking #5 on Substack - Available for $315,000.

Specialized Consumer Brand [Niche Product]: Unique store serving a global community impacted by alcohol flush reaction, with 60,000+ customers, 76% return rate, and $176,759 annual profit - Selling for $403,782.

HVAC Ecommerce Business: 12-year-old ecommerce business with $221,741 annual profit and an average order value of ~$1,525 - Listed for $1,699,122.

3.9M Users Android Gallery App: Boasting 3.9M+ installs, 210K daily active users, and a 4.53 rating, this high-performing Android gallery app delivers $619,977 annual profit with a 67% profit margin and 781K monthly active users - Listed for $2,090,500.

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 ($1,800/mo) for $3M - $30M founders and executive teams and the smaller Strategic Growth Circle ($497/mo) 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.