It’s funny how everyone’s experience of Twitter is different. In fact, sometimes worlds apart. It really comes down to how one curates his follows and feed. Identity politics Twitter – bad. Maker Twitter – awesome. Everyday I learn new things from Maker Twitter, and by now, almost everything on my feed is that. It’s positive, supportive, and inspiring. 

Today, I found gold in another tweet:

Every business model has pros and cons. Combine them when possible.

“Digital products suffer from piracy and unpredictable revenue. Agencies have high marginal costs. Most SaaS businesses have no moat. Pick your pain. Then stack business models to hedge the downsides.” -@DruRly

I love this concept of stacking business models. In a way, it resonated because I’d been trying that out for some time, and still trying to figure out how to make it work. Like the tweet suggests, they all have pros and cons in terms of margins/profits, addressable market, ease of finding leads, effort and efficiency of business model. 

Outsprint - a design consulting agency for government agencies. Addressable market is small and niche, but payoffs are big, leads are good. It’s still my main income source so far, but with COVID, had become unstable source as face-to-face consulting is frowned upon. 

Keto List - a listing directory of keto shops in Singapore. It’s a digital info product, B2C mainly, with ads for B2B. Very small and niche community but growing steadily so potential for big addressable market, but ad income isn’t high right now. Leads are easy to find, not as much maintenance required, but low margins.

Sweet Jam Sites - productized service for JAMstack web design, efficient business model. Addressable market is huge, but there’s no moat, and lead generation had not been scalable so far. 

So you can see, the three businesses kind of cover for each other’s shortfalls and build on each other’s strengths. In order of highest to lowest, each takes turn:

? Margins/profits - Outsprint, Sweet Jam Sites, Keto List

? Addressable market - Sweet Jam Sites, Keto List, Outsprint

? Lead gen - Keto List, Outsprint, Sweet Jam Sites

? Effort and efficiency/passivity - Keto List, Sweet Jam Sites, Outsprint

I guess this is the maker equivalent of a diverse investment portfolio? Spread out risks, ensure optionality, have skill-stacks at hand to gain from disorder. Now, I’m trying to make a SaaS to complete the product mix. 

All of them takes time and effort to grow. But when you have all four in a flywheel effect, pushing each other to gain even more momentum, then it’s a powerful business model stack you got. I’m not there yet, and perhaps they are not even in the same industry to enjoy the flywheel effect. 

More to learn, even more to continue experimenting.