Why unstructured data kills enterprises

The market transformation over the past 2 years took place because of the following events:

• The SaaS bubble bursting, pouring infinite amount of capital into subscription MOAT was feasible to a certain extent.

• The fast moving GPT evolution reallocated capital into this progressive new market, with multiples that SaaS wasn’t able to match at its peak.

• Human productivity and efficiency has reached a peak, but competitive hiring kept boasting higher salaries and better perks. The contribution toward a goal required expensive capital expenditure, relying on subjective terms and personal preferences (never a good thing).

• 2020-2022 productivity wasn’t satisfactory for most businesses during the pandemic, pushing for return to office. While autopilot processes are achievable with stay-at-home B-player workers, that’s a disastrous environment with evolutionary changes happening once every 25 years.

• Hockey stick growth was no longer a guarantee for success. I spoke about this in my Christmas 2022 market forecast for Entrepreneur Magazine. Long customer acquisition cost payback times were unlikely to convert for most SaaS, similarly to the freemium solutions promising a % of return.

Also, the previous model was based on the MOAT of “great products with limited competition or infinite performance marketing budgets”, which was disrupted as well.

Previous MOATs are no longer as strong

The “vibe coding” wave isn’t replacing engineers per se, but copilot productivity easily 5X’es strong engineers, and bringing products to market is now faster. Additionally, if you only need 5% of HubSpot, building this is now possible for $20K - $50K, making a multiyear contract obsolete at a base of $10K/year for a single pro license, and tons of upsells for other Hubs, users, large contact lists, etc.

Besides, I’m not saying that HubSpot will disappear anytime soon. DevriX is a HubSpot partner + I’ve been investing in HubSpot for a while. But small to mid-size markets now have access to broader opportunities.

But building a SaaS is less of a value proposition today. And go-to-market costs are easier for the digital channels that PLG businesses targeted before - automated social content, programmatic SEO, automated email sequences, GPT-based social replies, and many more.

And as social is getting oversaturated with deep fakes, great buyers are pulling away too - leaving fewer users with purchasing power in these networks.

The two MOATs that remain are DATA and BRAND

With infinite knockoffs on the market, what truly makes a difference is trust (a brand/founder you can truly trust) and data (unique and personalized information or data insights you can’t pull from GPTs today).

While performance marketing still works, awareness ads today often convert better in the medium term than a purely performance play, especially in higher order value transactions. Successful organizations can’t jeopardize the future of the company by offloading work or renting SaaS seats by companies that may or may not be in market 6 or 12 months from now. Most transactions take 6-9 months anyway, or even longer - without trust and reassurance, executives in charge lose their jobs with risky moves.

We see this happening with billion-dollar businesses born in the past 2-3 years, overvalued to infinity, and going under as they failed to reach product market fit.

Our portfolio indicates this trend clearly, firsthand

Meanwhile, our consultancy was started as an agency 15 years ago, transforming and evolving along with our portfolio of clients over the years.

1. SaaS requests were on the rise in 2012-2013. DevriX was one of the first 5 market players to start building WordPress-based SaaS.

2. Partner-led motion rising was key in 2016-2020. Several high-class builds by companies after Series B or Series C, and upon securing acquisitions by FAANG companies.

3. Publishers betting on organic content (Facebook) in 2013-2016, switching to arbitrage after, and finding other ways to persevere, through selling subscriptions, eCommerce, tickets, courses, premium newsletters, affiliate, niche top brand sponsorships, and other means of revenue generation (mostly around data).

4. Service requests moving from deep tech to digital marketing to GTM to data intelligence

And in many cases, existing accounts betting their next transformation in areas outside of our core expertise, because trust + time in market is a stronger indicator of success to “figure out the best way to get there” vs. betting on a 2-year-old business with the same success track record, but pivoting to this new initiative that “makes sense” today.

This is how word of mouth works too - getting follow-up requests and new contracts this year after executives switch jobs, based on longevity and survival rates, with foundational principles pulled into the areas that deliver business outcomes.

Lacking data readouts for accurate business intelligence

The recent shift, following a broken model of bloated seat-based pricing license + ads taking 5 years to break even, broke in 2022-2023 and executives are still trying to make sense of the data.

Because CRMs and ERPs and GA4 and other tools have been plugged in, but understanding data is still missing.

Core reasons for executives falling in the data-missing trap are:

• Essential tools are still missing or misconfigured. A barebone GA4 or HubSpot implementation doesn’t do much good.

• Integrations are subpar, if available at all. 8-10 fragmented tools that don’t talk to each other are a total chaos.

• The old way to measure data was incorrect. Neglecting brand as a revenue signal is a pure performance play, and that’s not how real business works.

• Signal tracking, intent tracking, lead identification, dark social readouts, brand alerts - many of these are still misunderstood and not used in practice.

• Data is often large, chaotic, unstructured, even if present. Cutting through the noise is paramount.

• Connecting all the data points tied to business objectives is still missing for most enterprises.

This is what we’ve been focusing on hard over the past couple of years across several high profile accounts, and new private equity companies going through transformation. Because only what gets measured gets managed, and the inability to measure results is a gamble on the business.

The larger the organization we audit, the bigger the problem. Inefficient GTM channels or operational efficiency can have a 60% impact on a $5M business, but that’s still $3M in losses. PE companies can attribute 20% losses in the short to mid-term, but for a $300M business, that’s a $60M hit.

This is the core problem we’re focused on this year - with the underlying set of engineering/data/marketing services being integrated separately ad hoc in the meantime as the comprehensive revops initiatives are refined start to end.

➡️ If you’re in an executive seat for a $30M - $500M company and want to discuss the common pitfalls we see, hit Reply and we’ll set some time to dive into your core KPIs and where leakage is more common than not.

Mario

 📚️ Books I read this month

• ✅ “Main Street Millionaire” by Codie Sanchez (100%)

• Ray Dalio’s “How Countries Go Broke: The Big Cycle” (42% 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 (30% in)

🧑‍💼 Serving demanding small businesses - some companies are great in high volume, low cost, fully automated and productized solutions. I admire them. But just like a $15,000 Dacia doesn’t deliver the same level of comfort as a $150,000 BMW, different solutions serve different markets. Trying to provide a BMW experience (let alone a Rolls-Royce one) to a Dacia budget client goes south, and I felt it firsthand again.

🇪🇺 Rooting for EU Inc - an ambitious project has been in the works for at least a couple years now, and getting closer to broader adoption. I voted for EU Inc and support a consolidated entity that serves 1 set of laws, not 27 independent states, in an overly administrative environment anyway.

👥 Following the leaders. I commented on a recent sale of os.ai by HubSpot’s founder to Perplexity, about a year after his sale of chat dot com to OpenAI. Strong executive leaders stay on top of new disruptive initiatives - HubSpot had a strong marketing funnel implementation after coining Inbound Marketing, then bent it to the Flywheel, and have been strongly integrating into AI initiatives thanks to the executive suite. This is how a company evolves and matures with the right leaders at the helm.

👀 The hiring market is evolving - here’s what I see with several open roles while comparing the cycles over the past decade.

🔖 Track where buyers are headed. Use these real-time tools to identify ready-to-buy customers and shorten sales cycles by up to 30%.

🔖 Speed up your dashboards. Improve response times by applying performance best practices for real-time analytics and smoother user experiences.

🔖 Get serious about data governance. See how tight governance strategies boost marketing results and protect data integrity.

🔖 Train validation that actually works. Pick from 12 advanced techniques for building more accurate predictive models.

🔖 Get a read on customer emotion. These top AI sentiment tools help companies turn language into fast, actionable insight.

🔖 Pick the right data warehouse. Compare platform trade-offs in this guide to scalable data storage options fit for long-term growth.

🔖 Know when to nudge. SaaS teams are improving upsells by using behavior-based upgrade prompts tuned to user habits.

🔖 Fix disconnects between teams. Get better results by aligning sales and marketing training goals around shared funnel metrics.

🔖 Put AI to work in your pipeline. These AI funnel tools fine-tune messaging and drive lower acquisition costs.

📰 Trump issues tariff ultimatum. He warns Moscow of severe tariffs if Ukraine conflict isn’t resolved in 50 days in escalating standoff.

📰 Meta targets voice interfaces. Meta acquires Play AI to advance voice interfaces and content creation tools.

📰 Tariffs aren’t stoking inflation. Despite $100B in tariffs, stockpiling and cost absorption keep inflation subdued per Fortune’s deep dive.

📰 EU pauses counter tariffs. Brussels freezes measures on $72B of U.S. goods pending trade deal talks.

📰 Pentagon adopts Grok AI. The Defense Department awards Grok a $200M contract to integrate AI tools in government workflows in contract award.

📰 LegalZoom leads LLC formation. The platform earns recognition for quick filings, compliance tracking, and tailored support in Better Business Advice.

📰 Newsletters drive B2B trust. A strong newsletter fosters credibility and keeps brands top of mind until prospects buy via strategic channel insight.

📰 AI speeds up job displacement. Education systems struggle to reskill workers fast enough, making tech driven retraining models crucial in Observer analysis.

📰 GPUHammer exploit mitigation available. Turning on system level ECC blocks the Nvidia GPU Rowhammer attack immediately via security fix guide.

📰 CIOs plan custom AI agents. A study finds 93% of software leaders will deploy in house AI agents to transform workflows in agent arms race.

📰 EU seals Indonesia trade pact. The agreement grants EU access to 275M consumers and diversifies supply chains via new trade pact.

📰 Dollar decline signals worry. A 10% dollar drop and rising gold price reflect investor doubts on U.S. fiscal policy in Fortune analysis.

📰 Liquid AI open sources LFM2. The LFM2 model family boosts inference and training speeds for on device AI in open source release.

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

Craft Cocktail Kit Manufacturing Business: USDA-licensed facility producing dry cocktail kits through Amazon FBA and wholesale. Manufactures 5,000+ jars/week with no liquor license required. Strong seasonal performance, food broker relationships, and festival exposure - available for $150,000.

Luxury Silk Accessories Brand: Six-year-old Australian eCommerce brand generating $468K/year revenue with 18% profit margin, selling premium mulberry silk beauty & wellness products. Requires only ~10 hours/week to operate due to outsourced fulfillment - selling for $275,977.

Amazon Publishing Account: KDP business built around Japanese philosophy titles, generating over $250K in royalties and 71% profit margin. Proven TikTok marketing strategy, with 15K+ followers. Minimal overhead - under 1 hour/week to manage. Big opportunity for English translation expansion - priced at $325,000.

Multi-Channel Golf Brand: Content website, eCommerce store, and YouTube channel with 331K subscribers. Generates $517K/year in revenue and $261K EBITDA, with 51% profit margins - selling for $1,000,000.

French Science Media Brand: Subscription-based digital media outlet covering consciousness science and mysteries. Operating for 13 years, with 2,000+ original videos, the platform holds the largest video library of its kind in France. Boasts thousands of paying subscribers, 150K+ social followers, and 40K+ email contact - priced at $1,119,203.

Template SaaS Platform: 11-year-old, highly profitable SaaS business offering over 45,000 customizable templates with 3,700+ active subscribers. Generates $1M TTM revenue with 95% recurring subscriptions. 80% net margins. Runs on 8–10 hours of weekly owner involvement - asking price is $2,899,999.

Need My Help?

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

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📈 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.