Introducing Snapmarket 🎉

On Tuesday, I launched my new company called Snapmarket, a hyper-efficient marketing subscription to support and scale your business. Pause or cancel anytime. No contracts, no meetings, no hassle. Just great work.

We already have one client and solid conversations lined up today and next week.

I’m excited about this new company, created with my friend and business partner Parker Smith, for three reasons.

1. Globalization will kill jobs like mine.

Increasing human capital in developing economies like Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia makes it easier for companies to outsource software developers, marketing, and other services labor at a lower cost. Ultimately, this will reduce US-based services talent—like me.

The 2020 Global Outsourcing Survey from Deloitte notes that cost reduction is a major factor for outsourcing, enabled by accelerating cloud adoption and increasing remote flexibility:

Organizations are becoming increasingly comfortable with hiring through virtual interview meetings, signing new contracts without a formal handshake, replacing onsite workshops with online sessions, and celebrating project successes over a virtual cocktail party or apéro. A remote work culture is being ingrained gradually within companies, and this will help them access global talent from the most cost-effective locations. It would also allow companies to hedge their risks by diversifying their delivery locations. Also, with the global economy expected to contract, firms are “looking at ways to preserve cash.” All these developments suggest that the needle will be tilting more towards outsourcing.

Global, remote outsource firms like Support Shepherd and Accelerance will become more popular for many businesses across many sectors. I can’t tell you how many LinkedIn messages I get from overseas talent offering virtual assistant or marketing services for a fraction of the cost of a US-based employee.

To get ahead of this shift, Snapmarket allows me to control my destiny, since I can work with increased efficiency and reduced costs compared to most marketing operations—thanks to a little help from my robot friends.

2. What globalization doesn’t kill, AI will.

What I keep thinking about as a marketer is how AI is transforming marketing content as we speak. For decades, success was a simple linear function: engagement = growth rate x number of marketing assets. That led to US agencies outsourcing content production to global creators who produced at a fraction of the cost of US-based marketers. Result? More engagement.

But now, AI has created a world in which that growth rate is infinite because the cost of producing content is near zero. This leads to a non-linear function for engagement due to diminishing returns. What happens then? Already, reports indicate that half of marketers (and half of McKinsey consultants) are using AI.

The next generation of marketers will win by applying high-level judgment, insight, and taste to strategy: whom you’re marketing to, what kinds of content to produce, how it applies to the rest of the business, and what “marketing” looks like in a world with culture wars, geopolitical tensions, and exponential technology advancement.

Then they’ll need to execute on truckloads of content assets that align with that strategy with precision (what McKinsey calls a “segment of one”). This will require marketers with very high levels of education and experience—across a wide range of topics—to create the strategy, and then embrace global creators who can apply those strategies.

The most proficient and efficient marketers will win, and the middling average will lose. Only the best will survive.

Snapmarket builds extremely efficient workflows to get the best of senior-level marketers who know consulting and strategy, but we can also deliver on high-quality content that we create by hand or with the best AI tools.

3. Politicization will accelerate entrepreneurship.

In recent years, businesses have also seen a shift in the cultural climate of their organizations. An increasing emphasis on diversity, purpose, climate change, social justice, and myriad other cultural issues has led to alienation among many employees. This alienation will lead to an increase in entrepreneurship, a boom that began during the pandemic.

There are a number of reasons why employees will increasingly choose to become entrepreneurs. First and foremost, they want to be in control of their own destiny. They don’t want to be beholden to a company that values politics over their own principles, especially not one that lays them off when economic conditions change. Second, they believe that they can create companies that are better aligned with their own values, whatever those might be. And third, they see entrepreneurship as a way to create jobs and opportunities for others that matter to them.

When we pursue a “higher calling” in our careers, or boycott brands, or demand that our employers take on the role of parents to shelter us from a chaotic world, we may be only increasing burnout. Stating a moral vision or purpose can contribute to fraught political discussions at work, or just “trying to put lipstick on the pig.”

This last article from The Wall Street Journal mentioned that many employees just want a job. “Not everyone wants to change the world,” one leader said. Another employee described deep-meaning marketing as “over the top,” and if he really wanted to change the world, why would he stay at this job? Another Journal article argues that inflation puts Gen Z’s social consciences to the test.

Words like “mission,” “higher purpose,” or “change the world” put pressure not only on employees but also on business leaders. Given all the new challenges they face, business leaders can feel stretched thin. They can’t be perfect at everything—the perfect boss, therapist, politician, sociologist, financier, visionary, technologist, and so on all rolled into one human being.

These movements will alienate many employees, many of whom will become entrepreneurs as a result, which leads me back to square one: Starting Snapmarket to facilitate my future and the future of like-minded entrepreneurs.

Conclusion: Traditional business models just won’t work.

This leads me to conclude that many current business models just won’t work in the medium-term future.

All three of these trends will increase the share of entrepreneurs and new businesses seeking new ways to do marketing and other related services. In fact, entrepreneurship is surging since the pandemic began and will likely continue to increase. See stories in The New York Times, Reuters, NBER, and the Economic Innovation Group.

Here’s a chart from Statista to visualize the boom.

Business is moving faster, and it’s more complicated, than ever. What business leaders and workers want is a good job, an avenue where they can efficiently deliver great work at a fair price, after which they can go home to their families to do the things they really enjoy.

That’s it. And that’s where the subscription model comes in: There’s no contracts, no meetings, no hiring or firing—none of the stuff that gets in the way of effectively exchanging goods and services. We just do the work our clients need when they need it, and we all move on with our lives. And if they don’t want to work with us anymore, they can pause or cancel anytime.

Snapmarket will help me and Parker build the lives we want, surrounded by the people we love. And I couldn’t be more excited.

Check out Snapmarket to see if a subscription model could work for your business.