Boom, Bust, or Bankroll? SBA Loans, Supersonic Speed & Shipping Showdowns.
The Weekly from The Liquid Lunch Project, Issue No 151 | January 31, 2025
Running a business is like the Super Bowl—high stakes, fierce competition, and only the best strategy wins. And just like in business, the ones who prepare, pivot, and play smart come out on top. Unless, of course, it’s all rigged, in which case, congrats to whoever the NFL scriptwriters picked this year.
So, who’s making the winning plays this year? Cast your vote! ⬇️
ON TAP THIS WEEK
🤞🏼 Hope Is NOT a Funding Strategy: Why you need a damn backup plan.
🤦🏼 When Your Biggest Rival Steals Your Biggest Deal
🤖 From Reinforcement Learning to World Domination? DeepSeek is here.
💰 Rolling in Luxury? (Or just rolling in tax credits?)
🪙 From Tweets to Transfers: Is X the new Venmo?
⚡ The Need for Speed is Real…and Boom just delivered.
🙄 Did the Government just make running a small business more complicated (again)?
🌐 And from Around the Web: Faux Shrimp, Overpriced Showers & a Flower That Smells Like Death
THE CLASSROOM
The (Short) SBA Loan Freeze Was a Wake-Up Call—Do You Have a Funding Backup Plan?
by Luigi Rosabianca
If your funding plan is just “cross fingers and pray,” we need to talk.
Business owners who rely on one source of funding are playing financial Russian roulette. Banks can say no, credit lines can vanish, and government-backed programs can hit the brakes (hi, SBA loan freeze👋).
The solution? Have a damn backup plan. Cash reserves, lines of credit, alternative funding—whatever keeps your business running when the unexpected happens.
🔗 Read more to make sure your business isn’t one funding hiccup away from disaster.
HEARD ON THE STREET
🔫 Water Fight for the Ages
Denmark’s busiest commercial port, Aarhus Havn, had long been a vibrant hub for shipping behemoth Maersk. So, when plans were announced for a new terminal, it was widely assumed the Copenhagen-based company would get the business. Not only did Maersk lose out, but the contract went to Geneva-based MSC - its fiercest competitor and partner for the past decade in a fractious vessel-sharing alliance. That partnership will officially be disbanded today, January 31st, as the world’s biggest container carriers pursue radically different strategies.
That rocky partnership, a product of the relentless pressure on the industry to cut costs, officially reached a breaking point this week. The age-old question remains: What’s the most efficient, reliable, and cheapest way of moving standardized metal boxes filled with cargo around the globe? 🤔
MSC controls over 20% of global container capacity, and Maersk clings to a 14% share. MSC wants to be the lone ocean heavyweight, declaring itself an ‘alliance-free carrier’ in an industry dominated just a few years ago by three partnerships. Based on the number of new ships entering service, its commanding lead is likely to widen. The company now owns (or charters) 886 vessels and has 132 on order. In comparison, Maersk controls 722, with 51 to be delivered.
Maersk is honing an end-to-end logistics network on land and sea and has a new ocean partner in Hamburg, Germany-based Hapag-Lloyd AG. They’ve formed the Gemini Cooperation alliance. Its focus will be on schedule reliability - a concept lost during the trade disruptions of the past five years that, on average, prevented half of the ships from arriving on time. Gemini will offer fewer direct routes to ports and focus on hubs where the two partners control container terminals. That should help reduce delays from congestion. This gamble hinges on the ability to manage shorter loops with large vessels between hubs, and smaller ‘feeder’ ships to deliver freight to their final marine destinations. Maersk has invested $3B since ‘20 to expand eight terminals at ports, including Tangier in Morocco and Rotterdam, in preparation for the launch. The hub-and-spoke model - a model popularized by Amazon and FedEx - should allow Gemini to increase timeliness quickly. The goal is 90% reliability by Q3. Punctuality frees up capacity and allows the company to grow its annual tonnage without buying new ships. MSC’s go-it-alone strategy serves major trade arteries with more direct port calls. Whereas the 2M alliance now stops at 15 hubs, Gemini will only use eight to nine ports from February 1st. MSC’s standalone network will have 12 port calls.
Considering recent stresses affecting the shipping business (Red Sea disruptions, proposed tariffs, pirates, political conflict) there may be enough opportunities for both these companies to lay their anchors. Godspeed Captains!
🏭 MAIDE In China
China-based AI lab DeepSeek introduced its first reasoning model, R-1 last week. Much like OpenAI’s o series, R-1 leverages chain-of-thought reasoning to tackle complex logic and math challenges and generate more accurate and coherent answers than conventional large language models. Benchmarks indicate the open-source R-1 model not only rivals OpenAI’s closed-source o1 model but also surpasses other contenders in the market.
In a detailed paper, DeepSeek revealed how a version of R-1, dubbed R-1 Zero, evolved from a ‘pure reinforcement learning’ training regimen. With DeepSeek v3 as the base, engineers challenged the model to solve advanced logic and math problems, leading to the development of ‘emergent’ reasoning without massive amounts of human-labeled chain-of-thought data. The approach pays homage to AlphaGo Zero with self-directed learning and is the first time this training method has been applied successfully to language models in a detailed publication. The open-sourced version of R-1 includes additional training steps on top of R-1 Zero’s pure reinforcement learning approach to improve the interpretability of its thinking patterns and ensure alignment with user preferences and safety guidelines.
DeepSeek also showcased R-1’s versatility as a ‘trainer model’ that can enhance the performance of smaller models, including Llama, through distillation. By transferring knowledge and refined reasoning to models with fewer parameters, R-1 underscores the potential for advanced AI to enhance reasoning in a broader range of models.
Two months after OpenAI released the full version of o1, R1 exemplifies DeepSeek’s iterative ability, propelled perhaps by Chinese government support. R1’s accelerated timeline also highlights the intensity of the global AI race after the Biden Administration’s eleventh-hour crackdown on AI exports and the Trump Administration’s announcement of Stargate - a $500B US AI infrastructure initiative led by OpenAI, Oracle, and Softbank.
🚗 Fancy Wheels or Just Tax Savvy
According to our buddies at Kelley Blue Book data, sales of vehicles priced $80K+ increased 37% in December compared to the year prior. The category includes cars like Land Rover’s Range Rover, Cadillac’s Escalade, and Tesla’s Cybertruck.
In the past, approximately 4.4% of total industry sales each month, or roughly 60K units, were for deals priced above $80K. Last month, approximately 84K vehicles – or 5.6% of total sales – transacted at prices higher than $80K, the highest volume ever. This category includes the Land Rover Range Rover, Cadillac Escalade, BMX X7, GMC Yukon, and Tesla Cybertruck. Robust sales of Full-Size Pickup Trucks – average price $64,261 – also drove this segment higher. The segment volume was 223,293 units, the highest point in 2024.
Two take-aways here: the American taste for fancy items continues, and the well-heeled are leaning toward tax incentives via the IRS Section 179 tax credit for vehicles 6K pounds+.
💳 X Marks the Spot …on your paycheck.
X partners with Visa on digital payments push. The App formerly known as Twitter, which owner Elon Musk wants to be an ‘everything App,’ announced a deal with Visa yesterday as the first partner for its forthcoming digital wallet and payments service. Much like Venmo or Zelle, ‘X Money’ will allow X users to connect their debit cards and bank accounts to send money to their friends and family. The service is expected to be launched in Q1 and is likely to partner with additional financial partners.
It’s the first concrete move from X to create a financial ecosystem for the social media site. Musk has been applying for money service business licenses for over a year for X. According to its website, X Payments LLC is currently licensed in 41 states and registered with the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, or FinCEN. Time will tell whether this is another moon shot or whether it will be shot down!
✈️ We Have the Need for Speed
A jet from aerospace company Boom just broke the sound barrier during a test flight this week, making it the first private aircraft to achieve supersonic speed and the first of any kind to pass that mark since the government-funded Concorde jetliner retired in 2003.
The XB-1 aircraft cleared Mach 1 as it flew over the Mojave Desert, maintaining a supersonic speed for four minutes. Pilot Tristan ‘Geppetto’ Brandenburg reached Mach 1.1, or a speed 10% faster than the speed of sound, which is roughly 761 mph. Boom CEO Blake Scholl said its aircraft surpassed the Concorde due to aerodynamics, material, and propulsion improvements. XB-1 is a smaller-scale test operation in developing Boom’s endgame, a supersonic commercial jet known as Overture. According to Boom, Overture jets will have 64 to 80 seats and will be able to fly more than 600 routes in about half the usual time (think Miami to London in less than five hours).
It’s unclear when Overture will be available, but it already has 130 orders and preorders, including from American Airlines and United Airlines.
THE MONEY MINUTE WITH MRM
New Rule Alert: Is Your Business Affected?
with Matthew R. Meehan
The Supreme Court just gave the green light to a major small business regulation aimed at fighting money laundering. The Corporate Transparency Act now requires owners of 32.6 million small businesses to register personal details—including photo IDs and home addresses—with the Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN).
This controversial rule was on hold but is now back in action, creating massive uncertainty for business owners. Will the Trump administration enforce it? Will penalties kick in for late filers? Will Congress step in? No one really knows.
📌 What does this mean for your business? Should you worry about compliance? Get the full breakdown here 👉 Click to Read More
AROUND THE WEB
Liar, Liar, Shrimp on Fire: Think you’re eating fresh Gulf shrimp? Hate to break it to you, but there’s a 96% chance you’ve been catfished. Restaurants are passing off cheap, imported shrimp as local, while real Gulf shrimpers are getting screwed. Moral of the story? Trust no menu. Ask for proof. Or just assume your “fresh catch” took a long-ass flight from Vietnam.
Hot Water, Half the Cost: Your current water heater? It’s basically a greedy little gremlin, sucking up energy and running up your bills for fun. Meanwhile, Midea just dropped a heat pump water heater that uses way less power, saves you money, and won’t wreck the planet in the process. Oh, and the government is literally handing out cash to people who upgrade. But hey, if you love overpaying for lukewarm showers, carry on.
NYC’s Latest Must-Smell Attraction: New Yorkers will wait in line for anything, including a flower that smells like rotting garbage and gym socks. The rare Amorphophallus gigas—aka the corpse flower’s equally stinky cousin—just bloomed in Brooklyn for the first time since 2018, and people are flocking to sniff the funk before it disappears. It won’t bloom again for years, so if you missed it, don’t worry—just leave some food in your fridge for too long and you’ll get the same experience.