Q1 '25 Report

Kicking off the new year with a recurring report of how No Fixed Plans (NFP) is doing, some highs and lows of '24 and what we've got coming up.

Highs

Still Here! - Seriously, with everything happening in the world and the impact AI is having on...well everything, the world is a very different place than when I started NFP in '21. I consider that a win, especially with our focus on profitability and vertical/niche solutions.

Positive FeedGeni Growth - Our largest acquisition, FeedGeni, grew by a healthy amount in '24 despite our focus being mostly on the new eBay opportunity (more on that below). The existing business was very much in the "weed" stage of the whole "Seed, Feed, Weed" model for most of '24. Churn was very low, customer expansion was high and we launched a few new plans, increasing ARPU. All good things.

Merchant of Record (MoR) Launch - Continuing our land and expand focus, we launched a new, adjacent service to provide Merchant of Record services for our automotive parts merchants. A MoR handles all of the payment processing and sales tax obligations of e-commerce merchants, leaving them to handle the cataloging and order management, while still maintaining 1st part branding on their store. This is common as companies expand internationally, but less common domestically. It comes into play here as a lot of our customers transition from pure B2B / Wholesale models into DTC. The service has been a success and we're steadily expanding it in '25.

Putting on Big Boy CFO Pants (aka Financing) - I restructured some outstanding capital obligations used to acquire FeedGeni into a single vehicle, reducing complexity (and costs!) which was a big win. Starting NFP has forced me to dive head first into capital allocation and financing (debt, underwriting, QoE, et al...), something I had no experience with previously.

Lows

FeedGeni Roadmap - When we acquired FeedGeni in '22, we had big plans to bring it into the portfolio, expand the focus to include eBay Motors integration and provide a credible offering for the automotive parts market for managing large catalogs. We started off strong by landing an anchor customer (think side of a NASCAR car big) at the end of '23 and making a splash by launching in '24. Sadly the market doesn't stand still and we found ourselves backing away from the opportunity by EOY. There's a few reasons for this which I'll dive into later. Suffice it to say: it sucks, but that's business. Sunk costs be damned.

It is a kind of process which I think is important to go through at one time or another. The great effort which produces nothing. The great stymie. - Robert Pirsig

Standard Parts Toolkit Slowed - After a strong '23, growth with our first product, SPT, took a hit in '24. Combine that with higher than expected churn and overall the product didn't produce like we wanted too. We've got some strong growth ideas for '25, (including launching on additional e-commerce platforms) so the future is still bright but still stings.

Writing Off 1st Acquisition - We made a minor bolt on acquisition early in the No Fixed Plans days that didn't pan out for a bunch of reasons. We finally decided to kill it and move on. We learned a lot about acquiring a product, so it's still a valuable (and cheap) education. Call it a good 'first pancake' that we're tossing out and moving on from.

Q2 Outlook

Focused Growth - Mostly centered on two paths: expanding MoR service offering and moving to more e-commerce platforms so we can start taking on some larger / more enterprise customers (think Magento & Salesforce Commerce Cloud) as well as new locales (like PrestaShop in Europe)

New Product - We're working on a new product that's an evolution of our SPT e-commerce integration, but more streamlined and powerful. Staying a bit mum, but suffice it to say it will rhyme with everyone's favorite topic-de-jour. I will say that a topic I've been enamored with for 2+ decades (industrialized Software Factories and Product Lines) is finally within reach. More on that in a further post.

More Acquisition(s) Maybe - Despite a new product coming, I'm always looking for the right type of acquisition for the portfolio. Sadly, since we started, prices and multiples have skyrocketed, loads of people have rushed into the space, leaving a lot of acquisitions with upside down financials and even more outsized expectations. The math ain't math'ing as they say. I'm patient and firmly believe in focusing on winning the buy vs. doing a bad deal.

It’s far better to buy a wonderful company at a fair price than a fair company at a wonderful price. - Obligatory Buffet quote.

Yearly Theme Checkin

I don't do yearly goals, preferring yearly themes. My two for this year are:

Ambition - I'm pushing myself to make bigger bets and to level up from where I had been. That means having higher expectations and going after larger opportunities. It's an intentional move on my part that will show up in several areas.

Communication - Despite my history with speaking and organizing people, I'm notoriously tight lipped when it comes to stuff I'm actually, you know, doing. That's gonna change this year. More communication, putting myself out there more and seeing what sticks (this one builds a bit ontop of Ambition)

-Griff