Hey all, I have an established newsletter (10 years) and planning on launching a community. I was going to use Heartbeat for my community (heartbeat.chat/) but know that Skool has been growing in popularity. My question is, why is Skool so popular? I can't seem to wrap my head around it. It seems pretty basic and the design (IMHO) is... ugly/boring. So why are so many people flocking to and promoting school?

I get so much value and inspiration from @Ewen Finser's https://newsletter.nichemediapublishing.com/ and @Shawna Newman's https://skipblast.beehiiv.com/ - do yourself a favour and subscribe like right now

I really like how Flippa has integrated Partnerstack directly into their platform so you get a button underneath each listing you can promote with one click. For example why wouldn't you promote a SaaS listed for $90M and earn $540K! But I've always loved me a leaderboard and seeing me at #31 on Empire Flippers is making me have to get into the top 10!

I've not looked at the state of the industry reports since I was at Flippa, and was surprised to see just how much sales have reduced over the last couple of years. (Props to EF for always being so transparent). In the 2023 report, total sales were $86M Over the last 12 months on the EF scoreboard, total sales are $42M. Is this a change in the overall industry? EF is of course fine, but are the majority of smaller M&A marketplaces now struggling to get enough new deals to close?

Interesting looking at all the new Flippa categories: • Digital Agencies • AI Apps & Tools • Crypto & Blockchain • Plugins & Extensions • Gaming Community has to be next! Also interesting how newsletters seem to be tied with youtube and social media in the same category? So many niche marketplaces have been launched over the last couple of years, I can't help but think that almost all will get crushed attempting to compete with the unit economics of Flippa. However, some such as https://gomerge.com/ appear to be doing very well by just focussing on one niche, i.e. digital agencies in their case. Thoughts?