How To Predict The Future

Most great founders make bets today that pay off in the future.

In 2012, researchers made a big breakthrough when they used GPUS to achieve humanlike accuracy in tasks such as recognising a cat in an image.

This would be one of the first signals of what we all use today, AI.

Jensen Huang, CEO and founder of NVIDIA, picked up on this trend and focused his entire company on serving the future of this market.

In 2012, NVIDIA's share price was $0.28; today it’s worth $98.89. That’s a 35,217% gain in 13 years, all because Huang spotted a trend before others and tripled down on it.

Here’s how you can spot the trends in your niche to exploit in the future.

Head to whatever AI tool you prefer using and ask it this prompt:

“You have consumed more information than anyone in the history of the world, and you've demonstrated an extraordinary ability to make connections among them.

What are the most important non-consensus or even not-yet-hypothesised things that you've picked up around the future of (insert your industry)?”

I’ve used this prompt dozens of times in the last six months, and it’s helped me identify trends for clients and my industry before they become reality.

This post here on LinkedIn was a mixture of my own best guesses and this prompt.

Facebook Ads For Donkeys

This is one of those "how I won the lotto" posts.

I don't enjoy writing these, so it's probably rough - but hopefully useful…

In January, we set a goal to hit $1 mil ARR for Gravy so we can raise.

We recently “found” PMF and are sitting at $200k ARR.

To get there we need 100 users by years end (we have 34).

That means onboarding 3 new users per week, churn included.

Our current run-rate is one per fortnight.

I've sold things online for 15 years - no one's ever asked me for marketing advice. That should tell you everything. Without Facebook ads, we'd have no chance.

I've always been able to sell with Facebook Ads.

And what I do is dead simple.

First I setup a basic landing page, sometimes just the homepage. (this guide is good - https://marketingexamples.com/landing-page/guide) My landing pages suck. But sucking works.

There's only one rule: A visitor must know what you're selling in under 3 seconds.

Once that's live, I set up a Facebook Ads campaign.

I run a "get clicks" campaign with a $5/day budget.

For my ad-set I set a clear target audience (don't run ads if you don't know this) and limit delivery to Facebook feed only.

Then for my ads:

• I use a simple product-related photo.

• Link to my site

• CTA: "Learn More"

• Headline: something active like "Start fundraising"

• Copy hits three points: who it's for ("sports club"), pain point ("save time"), and benefit ("get funded")

That's it.

Across 10+ businesses & 30+ products/services leads have never cost me more than $75. And the ROAS is always good.

I don't always get it right first go.

Last month, when I set this up for Gravy, it flopped.

I had to change:

• The H1, H2, and CTA on my website (first version failed 3 second rule)

• My audience using "interests" (original audience was too broad)

• The hook from "more funding" to "save time"

A month later we're booking 4 sales calls a week.

Next, I'll try:

• Lookalike audience from website visitors

• Better creative (images)

• Open up daytime Calendly slots

I think this will double or triple our bookings.

For reference, we're converting 50% of leads and a user is worth ~$7,500.

GL!