My Quarterly Update: Q2 2024
“What drives you? What motivates you to do all that you do?”
These two questions were recently asked of me by a local reporter who wanted to feature MarketBeat as part of an upcoming city event. They’re great questions, and we should all ask ourselves periodically. Why do we do what we do? Why are our friends, our friends? Why is our spouse, our spouse? Why do we have the job that we have now? Why do we have the hobbies that we have? What are our deepest motivations? What makes us, us?
In my case, there are a few factors that drive me to stay busy, work hard, get involved, and give back where I can. First, my Christian faith helps me recognize that life is short, that there is no prize for dying with the most money, and we should all do what we can for the benefit of others while we are here. Second, I enjoy solving problems and identifying unique paths to solutions that others may have missed. Finally, I get bored easily and have a hard time relaxing by enjoying traditional forms of entertainment. I’d much rather work on a project or build something than watch Netflix.
I am a straightforward thinker with simple motivations. As you read my quarterly updates, see me for what I am – a guy that likes to have fun, do interesting work, and make a positive change where I can. That said, here is my quarterly update for the second quarter of 2024:
Work and Family Travel
Q1 was a relatively light travel quarter, both personally and professionally. Members of the MarketBeat team flew to Jacksonville, FL, to participate in the Financial Marketing Summit in January. Karine, Micah, Ady, and I traveled to Las Vegas over President’s Day weekend. We were originally planning on going to Orlando but made a last-minute change of plans after the weather forecast in Orlando called for rain all weekend. Our company rented a suite at a Timberwolves game a couple of weeks ago and flew up and back the same evening.
Next quarter, I’ll be spending an evening in Kansas City for a venture capital conference. I am also tentatively planning on attending Capital Camp in Columbia, MO again this year. We have a niece and a nephew graduating high school this year, so we’ll make day trips to Minneapolis and Wisconsin for those two graduation parties. Micah asked if we could go to Washington D.C. to “see the monuments”, so Micah and I are planning a D.C. trip later in June. Monuments and museums aren’t of interest to Karine, so she and Ady are staying back home. Karine and I are hoping to take a trip together sometime in July, and I might head out to Los Angeles in August for a mastermind event.
Media and Podcast interviews
The first quarter was a busy season from a media perspective. I was interviewed for Matt McGarry’s Newsletter Operator podcast, where I talked about the economics of the financial media space and working with Agora and MarketWise. I was also interviewed on the Make Lemonade podcast at the beginning of the year. StarterStory posted an update about MarketBeat as well. Locally, I did a live interview with Caleb from The Video Lab. Results Junkies recorded an episode of their podcast from my private bar and interviewed me on their show. SiouxFalls.Business posted a nice business update article about MarketBeat MarketBeat’s growth and another story about MarketBeat’s new office. I did an interview with Adam Weber for his “The Conversation” podcast, but the episode wasn’t live yet as of when I wrote this update. Finally, I spoke at the Financial Marketing Summit in January, but the recording has not yet been published online.
MarketBeat
MarketBeat had a strong first quarter on all fronts. Top-line revenue was up a whopping 81% in the first quarter of 2024 compared to 2023. We attribute this growth to a variety of factors, which include increasing our advertising spend, general optimism in the stock market, asset prices reaching all-time highs, an increase in organic search traffic, and improved monetization of our subscriber base. In short, things are good right now and we are getting better at what we do every day.
Our focus for the first quarter included launching a new earnings-focused newsletter, Earnings360, and implementing an on-page search engine optimization strategy developed by Uproer, a digital marketing firm based out of Minneapolis. We also launched two additional partner mailing lists, tested several new advertising channels, and launched a new 13-F filings section on our website. We are also working on a major redesign of our website that will go live next quarter.
We welcomed two new hires to our team. Jessica Mitacek now works at MarketBeat as an Associate Editor. She most recently worked at private equity firms and hedge funds in the New York City area in addition to freelance writing. Amanda Kjelden now works at MarketBeat as our Office Manager. She previously worked at Dakota Fluid Power as an HR Coordinator. We also had our first departure in several years. Michael Hixson, our former Digital Advertising Manager, left MarketBeat to return to the banking industry. We plan on some additional incremental hiring over the next year. We see a need for a server/database administrator, as well as some additional resources on our marketing team.
Finally, we had our open house and ribbon cutting at our new headquarters in downtown Sioux Falls. More than 300 people attended the event and our office was “standing room only” for most of the evening. Thank you to JJ’s Wine and Spirits and Chef Dominique’s for helping with our event. If you missed our grand opening, you can watch the video tour of our office that 4Front Studios produced below.
2024 Sioux Falls.Business/MarketBeat CEO Summit
MarketBeat and SiouxFalls.Business held its second annual CEO Summit on March 6th, 2024. Our keynote speakers were William Dillard III and Chris Johnson, who are both senior executives with the department retailer Dillards. With Dillards opening a major retail location in Sioux Falls last month, they talked about how their company’s long-term approach has allowed them to stay profitable and expand while other department stores are closing locations and fighting to remain relevant.
Joe Mahon, a representative from the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis, spoke about current economic conditions in the region. We also held a banking panel featuring senior executives from some of the city’s larger community banks and a downtown investment panel featuring business owners who have recently opened or expanded businesses in downtown Sioux Falls.
We had about 150 Sioux Falls executives in attendance at the event and plan to hold it again next year. Regrettably, the event was held on the same day as Founder’s Day (fka Entrepreneurship Day), a city holiday that I helped start five years ago. Unfortunately, we have very limited dates to work with when working with out-of-town speakers and were stuck with that date. Next year, we will work hard to ensure that the two events do not overlap.
Along with the CEO Summit, we announced this year’s SiouxFalls.Business/MarketBeat “30 Under 30” list of 30 young rising leaders in our community. We think this list is a great way to highlight up-and-coming community leaders who may currently be flying under the radar. Over the next year, we plan to do four events with this year’s cohort. With last year’s cohort, we visited City Hall, the Washington Pavilion, and the Cherapa II project.
Commercial Real Estate Investing Update
In 2020 and 2021, when interest rates on commercial mortgages were below 4%, my business partner Kevin Tupy and I pursued a strategy of rapid acquisition and development. Between 2020 and 2022, we developed or acquired 28 commercial properties. That rapid activity naturally slowed down toward the end of 2022 as the Federal Reserve began raising interest rates to combat inflation.
We are now finding ourselves in a position where many of the projects that we started a few years back, such as The MarQ and The Crimson, are now complete and generating regular cash flow. This is leading us to ask, “What’s next?” Interest rates appear to be receding, and while there will be a glut of multi-family housing that comes online in Sioux Falls in 2024, that activity will slow down substantially in 2025 and 2026 as few new apartment projects were started in 2023 and 2024. We still think there are strategic opportunities in multi-family and commercial property development in Sioux Falls.
Our acquisition strategy for the second half of 2023 and into 2024 has been to make strategic land acquisitions for future projects. We purchased 15 acres of land on Veterans Parkway in March, which will be a future multi-family project. We also own some undeveloped land on Marion and Benson, the Tea Exit, and 26th and Ellis Road. We also have a smaller lot on the east side under contract for another future commercial project.
Homegrown Capital Updates
I currently serve on the board of directors for two technology startups, Prismatic and Pitchly. Prismatic announced a $22 million Series B fundraising round in January, shortly after my last quarterly update. I led Prismatic’s seed round in 2021 and participated in both the Series A and B investment rounds in 2023 and 2024 respectively. Homegrown Capital and Falls Angel Fund also participated in the Series A and Series B investment rounds.
Homegrown Capital also recently invested in Devii, a North Dakota-based software company that allows companies to create programming interfaces (API) that customers and vendors can use to integrate with their data. This is Homegrown Capital Fund 1’s ninth investment. We anticipate wrapping up investment activity in Homegrown Capital Fund 1 sometime in the next twelve months and will likely start fundraising for our second fund later this year.
Philanthropy
One of the challenges that I face as a Christian giver is the principle of anonymous giving (Matthew 6:3-4). While some of my and MarketBeat’s charitable initiatives are partially for branding and marketing purposes (such as the MarketBeat Holiday Plaza), most of my giving occurs because it is simply the right thing to do with the resources I have been blessed with. I typically do not ask for credit or recognition for most of my gifts but find myself in the unique position of having non-profits ask me if they can use my name to lend credibility to their organizations. In these cases, I typically let them use my name with other donors if they think it will help them with additional fundraising. I don’t know what the right mix of public corporate giving and private personal giving is. The only solution I have found to date is to do a healthy mix of both.
We have made some changes to MarketBeat’s Community Impact Fund this year. First, we increased the baseline budget from $50,000 to $150,000. Now that our philanthropy team is established and has a year of experience evaluating requests, I am trusting a bigger percentage of our corporate giving to our philanthropy team. In addition, Maureen Ohm is now serving as our Director of Community Relations and is leading all our philanthropy and community efforts. Organizations that MarketBeat supported in the first quarter include Active Generations, Sioux Falls Schools Public Education Foundation, Rare By Design, Sioux Falls Figure Skating Club, Bishop Dudley House, Enterprise Institute, Midwest Street Medicine, and the Veterans Community Project.
We also have a significant new non-profit partnership that will be publicly announced in May, so stay tuned.
If you are involved with a non-profit doing interesting work in Sioux Falls, encourage them to apply for a grant from MarketBeat here.
Sioux Falls City Council and Republican Primary Elections
This municipal election cycle, I agreed to serve as the campaign co-chair for Jennifer Sigette, who is running for the Northwest City Council seat. She is running unopposed, which has made the job quite easy. This has freed me up to help other municipal candidates, such as Richard Thomason and Miranda Basye, who are also running for Sioux Falls City Council seats.
In other election news, residents of Sioux Falls voting precinct 3-16 will find my name on the ballot in the June Republican primary. No, I am not running for state legislature or anything all that important. I agreed to put my name down to run to be a precinct committee person, which basically means I would be able to vote at the next state party convention and help elect local party leadership.
Wrap-Up
This concludes my quarterly update. If you are still reading, I would encourage you to learn about The Foster Network, a small non-profit organization in Sioux Falls that helps connect foster families to much-needed resources. They do great work supporting foster families and largely fly under the radar in the non-profit community.