Matthew Turner

I lost my brother-in-law to suicide today. My sister asked me to pick up her two boys from school because she was too wrecked to drive. I knew they’d wonder why I was picking them up in the middle of the school day, and I had a 30-minute drive home to get through with them. On my way there, I prayed hard for the strength to keep it together and for the right words if they started asking questions. I stopped at the middle school for the youngest before heading to the high school for his older brother. When he climbed into the front seat of my car, he pulled out his phone and read a text from his dad out loud. His dad had told him that he was sorry for the mistakes he’d made and to remember how much he loved him. My little nephew had no idea he was reading his dad’s final goodbye, but I did. It took everything in me to hold it together right then. I knew what I was taking him home to and what my sister was about to have to tell him and his brother. I sat next to them on the couch when she told them the news. The grief that followed felt like watching a heavy bone china bowl fall in slow motion and shatter into a million pieces in the middle of the room. There was no fixing it. I wanted so badly to say something that would make it hurt a little less. All I could do was sit there with them. It was a gut-wrenching day.

A currency’s true value is ultimately determined by the goods and services for which it can be exchanged. I can see the quality of Chinese goods and services continuing to improve over the next 10 years. US goods and services? Uncertain. I expect the below trend to continue.

We’ve not done meta ads for years since we fired the agencies we were using. I’m learning it now and starting up some testing. Trying to build AI agents to help with the whole process as I go too…..any recommendations or good courses I should get? I’m good at Amazon ads but meta we always used consultants

Bending Spoons could run Apollo.io with 20 people, for $100m+ profit per year. Yet Apollo has 800 employees and is likely break-even at best. WHY!??! Because Apollo - like so many other SaaS companies - is stuck in the “Zombie Trap”. What’s the Zombie Trap? - A company raised $ XXX million during COVID/ZIRP - The last round was a unicorn valuation at over 10x rev - Growth slowed, whacked people, got to breakeven - Valuations collapsed - ZoomInfo w/ 10x their rev now has lower market cap than Apollo’s last round SO WHAT THE HELL IS APOLLO SUPPOSED TO DO??? Tim Zheng was so confused by what to do that he stepped down as CEO. I don’t blame him. The pickle Apollo is in is that they literally CAN’T do what they SHOULD do … Which is what Bending Spoons WILL do when they buy this company (and many others like them). BENDING SPOONS PLAYBOOK FOR APOLLO: 1/ Reduce staff from 800 to 20 (yet ship features customers actually want FASTER) 2/ Go entirely PLG, focus on contact data, stop trying to be Clay 3/ Increase pricing sophistication to offset ENT rev collapse 4/ Crank 100+m profit/yr out of a great brand that’s lost its way Once Bending Spoon CEO Luca Ferrari gets on a podcast and explains that he can actually run companies this way, it becomes obvious to the listener that the company should have done this on their own. But they can’t. Why? BECAUSE VC’S WON’T LET THEM. Founders sign up for a system where making $100m of profit per year is so far out of the range of acceptable outcomes that it’s not even a consideration. Instead, Apollo, and other Zombies like them: - Hire new leadership, many from companies than have actually been Spoon’d - Myopically focus on the one company in their space with increasing valuation (in this case, Clay) - Ferociously build to try to create a copycat value proposition (which dilutes their brand and confuses the shit out of customers and prospects) - Aggressively market their “platform”, publicly making claims that they are not what 99.9% of their customers think they are (in this case, a contact data company) - Pray that they will be as lucky as the few and far between who Salesforce acquires (like Qualified or Braze etc etc) Meanwhile, I’m licking my chops. Apollo is the undisputed leader in contact data for the segment we’re going after with MoltSets.com, and they have completely forgotten they sell contact data. Just look at their site. It’s giving me the opportunity to hit THEIR market with a value prop VERY SIMILAR to the value prop that got them where they are today. Which doesn’t resemble what they’re currently selling. DATA IN '22: ZoomInfo - $20k Apollo - $99/m unlimited per seat DATA IN '27: ZoomInfo - $20k Apollo - $99/m for 4000 credits per seat (shrinking by the month) MoltSets - $27/m unlimited, unlimited seats (Try MoltSets here for free: moltsets.com/) YOU: Ok Adam, you have cheap data. I’m sure it’s shit! ME: We’ve been rapidly improving our dataset as we hear customer feedback. The biggest complaint were “stale profiles”, or verified/deliverable emails that were the last role... That problem will be mostly solved 11/1, and by Jan 1 we will be refreshing profiles every 3days. The insane thing? Starting Dec 1, we’re going to re-validate all email addresses of 150m global contacts EVERY 7 DAYS. MoltSets will be the highest quality B2B contact database in the world. At $27/mo unlimited. Where does that leave Apollo? You tell me.

I drive a 2019 Nissan Sentra S Bought it used in 2020 for $12k cash It had 1 owner with 30k miles on it Now it has 120k miles with no issues Not a single car payment in 6 years And I can sell it today for $7k easy Enjoy the payments on your BMW 🙂