The big market shift - winners and losers

August is extremely busy here as I’m shifting my days between:

• morning interviews

• noon team check-ins, org chart/KPI mapping, and project deliveries

• afternoon client calls, and evening sales pitches and RFPs

Same category players scale fast or fall fast

I called out the seasonal disparity on LinkedIn yesterday - that captured a palette of different opinions - between down markets and striving to survive, team composition shifts and competing among other talent, fighting against AI, or just being swamped with work and trying to cope with that.

I also looked up the latest report for large Bulgarian delivery companies in Bulgaria (from Digitalk by Capital) - a casino software application provider bringing in $370M for the last fiscal year, followed by other gambling, virtual reality, and even a government-backed delivery business.

Other long-standing category leaders like StangaOne or Ubisoft are announcing massive cuts, budget drops, and trimming staff as much as 30%.

Meanwhile, one of the largest and most recognizable eCommerce companies in the Shopify space, Yotpo, just trimmed over 200 of its people, a global 34% headcount reduction overnight, after a tough decision on shutting down the entire SMS and email divisions.

We’ve actually lost a couple of people to their SMS team over the past 8 years and our stores were using Yotpo actively back when I was heading Rush, a 2,800-store Shopify SaaS. I’ve been on all sides of the round table here and that decision is rough. I also know the competitive packages they offered to bring strong talent in and supressing competition.

It’s not just tech, or just ecommerce, or just on-site anymore

The key takeaway this season is that companies have been diversifying more even within their core category.

During the pandemic, we saw on-site brick-and-mortar businesses and restaurants/coffee shops going under overnight. Ecommerce was scaling, then going down. B2B got fragmented in 2023.

Many businesses have tried to open up new categories or develop several different divisions to withstand possible turmoil. I saw a pretty rough 2023 winter for many ecommerce businesses, and a hardcore 2024 in B2B. This seasonality was offset by a year back or forth for different category players around, and this is what we see in business today.

Diversification matters, and certainty is non-existent in this market - especially until the AI transformation reaches a proper peak.

Mario

📚️ Books I read this month (mostly flat, binging some revenue/finops podcasts)

• Ray Dalio’s “How Countries Go Broke: The Big Cycle” (45% in)

• Hooked - on habits and cues and product alignment (50% in)

• “Nuclear War” by Annie Jacobsen - a detailed intelligence brief of what happens if things really turn to the worst (30% in)

• “The Sweaty Startup” by Nick Hueber (10% in)

• “Revenue Architecture” by Jacco van der Kooij (40% in)

🧑‍💼 Automation, regulation, attrition - Yotpo’s cutbacks expose the new martech puzzle: solve for AI + compliance now so you don’t risk irrelevance.

❗️ Pandemic pivots reset seasonality - Ground your narrative in pivotal moments by spotlighting the pandemic’s sweeping lockdowns, airlines scrambling for bailout funds, and the rapid-fire business pivots of 2020 that forever reshaped how and when we seize opportunities.

🔖 Speed up CRO with predictive insights. Learn how AI analytics reduce acquisition costs and lift conversions by as much as 50%.

🔖 Smarter reporting cuts compliance headaches. Combine real-time data and version control with AI reporting tools to streamline approvals and improve accuracy.

🔖 Use APIs to sharpen ad performance. Real-time bid data can increase CTRs and cut costs when paired with scalable workflows.

🔖 Interactive video drives more action. Video strategies are outperforming static content in both engagement and conversions.

🔖 Align teams, grow faster. Unified metrics and tools can drive over 200% more revenue, according to this alignment breakdown.

🔖 Culture flows from leadership. This examination of executive impact shows how values and trust foster strong teams.

🔖 Use the right tools to tune ML. Bayesian tuning platforms can cut compute time and increase accuracy.

🔖 Emotions still drive B2B results. Map buyer decisions through emotional journey mapping to improve messaging and conversions.

🔖 Dashboards should drive decisions. Use advanced visualization to move KPIs from passively watched to actively used.

🔖 Track smarter on LinkedIn. Reporting tools with CRM integration provide clarity on higher-cost campaigns.

📰 UBS flags stall speed risk. Slowing demand and tariffs signal an economic slowdown in Fed policy watch.

📰 OpenAI adds emotional guardrails. ChatGPT now warns against unsafe use with new mental health features.

📰 KKR issues 5.1% notes. The firm raises $900 million with senior debt maturing in 2035 via capital market paper.

📰 Flex unveils 800 VDC shelf. The new power unit cuts losses by 60% for NVIDIA data centers via high-voltage efficiency.

📰 Economists propose new capitalism. They argue for regenerative models over old frameworks in economic planning.

📰 Reynold Lemkins backs Cloudbreak. The group injects $22.8 million into the HKEX IPO via strategic biotech funding.

📰 Skypoint boosts clinical capacity. Agentic apps automate referrals and prior authorizations to raise care by 30% in health workflows.

📰 LYNO AI starts early presale. Traders access machine learning arbitrage across 15 chains in an Early Bird program.

📰 Ad fraud stalls at $100 billion. Industry incentives keep the scam rate unchanged in programmatic advertising.

📰 Criteo defends retail media share. The firm leverages tech and clients to hold ground in the $52 billion market.

📰 Context engineering outpaces prompts. Teams embed corporate data into AI systems for precise outputs in marketing AI.

📰 Salesforce buys into CX. The $1.5 billion Genesys stake shifts focus from partnership to platform in customer experience.

📰 LLM search favors authority. Brand structure and backlinks boost citations in AI results.

📰 Clay secures $100 million. Series C brings valuation to $3.1 billion for its AI sales platform via CapitalG-backed round.

📰 OpenAI models hit AWS. Bedrock and SageMaker users get direct access in cloud services.

📰 EU AI Act sets new rules. Companies face tough compliance and global impact under regulatory framework.

📰 Asia leads mobile fintech. Digital banks scale globally and serve unbanked users in new markets.

📰 Waste Management bets on green. Landfill gas tech and automation aim for profit in sustainability strategies.

📰 Transshipment faces new tariff. A proposed 40% duty may prompt Asian supply chain shifts in global trade.

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

High-Profit Designer Education Site: An educational platform offering web design workshops, courses, and resources to help Squarespace businesses scale to six figures. Holds a respected IP with cult status in the web design niche and strong potential for global growth - priced at $195,000.

Affordable Premium Watch Business: An 8-year-old Shopify brand selling premium watches at an affordable price. Generates 32.3K monthly page views with a strong base of 120K active email subscribers and an 18 authority score. Maintains a 0% refund rate across all orders - asking price is $250,000.

Personalized Sports Merchandise Store: A 5-year-old, print-on-demand Shopify store specializing in customized sports gifts for both B2B and B2C markets. Operates with a lean, scalable product framework across multiple sports segments. Boasts 50K active email subscribers and a 4.5-star customer rating - available for $586,660.

AI-powered Presentation Template SaaS: An 11-year-old SaaS offering 45,000+ premium, editable templates for PowerPoint, Google Slides, and Keynote. Generates revenue through a high-margin subscription model and has a 290K active email list. Achieved 10.2M page views in the last year with a 44 authority score - priced at $2,899,999.

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 ($3,500/mo) for $3M - $30M founders and executive teams and the smaller Strategic Growth Circle ($997/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.