📦 Rolling Up Ourselves

Hey there 👋,

Last week I mentioned how we were looking to scale by helping other niche AI operators launch and taking a piece of equity. That remains a core part of the plan. However, we have found another way to scale that we will be running alongside it.

For 15 years I worked through my UK company, going over VAT when selling assets that triggered it, but most of the time trying to stay under VAT as it’s a massive ballache in the UK to administer.

In the UK and Poland, once you pass the allowance you are boxed in. Even if you try to split activity into different entities the tax office can collapse them back together.

Slovakia is different. Here we can spin up separate companies by vertical and keep them capped. The model is straightforward. As soon as we sign five customers at $997 per month (or 10x at $499/m etc), we create a company for that vertical, cap it at the €50K Slovak allowance, and then move on to the next one.

This gives us:

• Operators focused on a single customer base

• Clean books and clear brands per company

• No artificial aggregation of turnover

• Small but complete companies that can be scaled further or sold

Instead of one messy agency we are building a portfolio of lean vertical operators. Each one is simple to understand and valuable in its own right.

Why start with ecommerce email

Because this is where our roots are.

More than ten years ago I built and sold a Shopify dropshipping store selling iPhone panorama photos. Around that time I was also featured on the Shopify Partner Blog explaining why every store needs a marketing and sales funnel.

That experience left me with two convictions. Ecommerce is repeatable. Stores change but the fundamentals of traffic, conversion, and retention stay the same. And email is the channel that compounds growth. Paid ads bring clicks but email turns those clicks into repeat purchases.

Back then I had to stitch tools together to make it work. Today Klaviyo makes it simple. Which is why this is the right moment to return to ecommerce with a sharper and more scalable model.

And before I teamed up with Maciej on LetterOpeartors, his whole focus was on email marketing for ecommerce and he has achieved incredible results for brands:

Enter: LetterSight

Our first vertical operator is LetterSight. It is dedicated to done-for-you Klaviyo campaigns for ecommerce brands.

What we deliver:

• Four campaigns every month covering promotions, reviews, tips, and seasonal hooks

• Playbooks refined with AI and polished by humans

• Campaigns dropped directly into Klaviyo, ready to send

Here is the key: we are not building this from scratch. We are leveraging everything we have learned from running LetterOperators. The same AI workflows and automations that create and deliver newsletters there are now being adapted for ecommerce campaigns. That means LetterSight is productized, efficient, and built on a proven operational engine.

At $997 per month plus the up front fee, LetterSight only needs four customers plus upfront fees to cap out its Slovak allowance. At that point it stands alone as a complete company. Then we repeat the process with the next vertical.

The bigger picture

We are now scaling in two ways.

• Helping other niche AI operators launch and taking equity

• Building our own capped Slovak operators one by one

Ecommerce is the first but more verticals such as media and local services will follow.

Bottom line:

We are no longer capped by self-employment. By combining equity stakes in external operators with our own Slovak company model, we can grow multiple lean vertical businesses side by side. Each one is focused, capped at €50K, and powered by AI workflows that handle creation and delivery.

LetterSight is the first. More are coming.

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That’s it for this week, until next time, buy my product and catch me in the community!

Cheers!

Richard (@richardpatey)

Disclaimer: This email is for informational and entertainment purposes only. It is not financial advice, and I am not a licensed investment adviser. I share what I’m doing personally in the digital asset space—always do your own research. Some links may be affiliate links, so assume I may earn a commission if you use them.