Reading Signals In A Noisy Market with Daniel Nikic

Markets aren’t just noisy; they’re rewiring in real time. We sit down with global investment researcher Daniel Nikic to decode what founders should actually track, how to turn headlines into decisions, and why the most resilient companies pick problems that will matter for the next five to ten years. If you’ve felt overwhelmed by AI hype, shifting supply chains, and choppy investor sentiment, this is your field guide to clarity.

We start with the investor lens: what problem are you solving and how durable is it? Daniel shares how he reads signals from trade flows, raw goods, and energy dynamics to spot second-order effects before they hit revenue. From Detroit’s auto halo to fertilizer shocks tied to war, he shows how “faraway” events change your cost structure and demand curves. The playbook is simple and sharp: track a few leading indicators that map to your model, define thresholds, and pre-decide your moves so you act fast when the line gets crossed.

AI takes center stage as leverage, not oracle. Daniel frames today’s tools as junior analysts that excel at scraping, summarizing, and formatting secondary research. The win is speed; the risk is unexamined bias and hallucinations. We dig into human-in-the-loop workflows, practical use cases for founders (market mapping, interview synthesis, competitor baselines), and why experience turns data into insight. Expect clear guidance on when to trust the model, when to audit, and how to keep outputs actionable.

We also hit the founder operating system: persistence through rejection, pivoting without drama, and reputation as a compounding asset. With limited resources, you’ll hear how to use free pilots and testimonials to compress trust and lower CAC. On the macro map, Daniel spotlights the Middle East’s surge in entrepreneurship and LP capital, along with America’s ongoing edge in innovation. Looking ahead, we explore a bold trendline: smaller teams powered by AI, building faster with tighter focus and sharper distribution.

Enjoy the conversation. If it sparks an idea, share it with a builder who needs it, and subscribe for more unfiltered, practical strategies. Got a takeaway or a challenge to our view? Drop us a note—we’d love to hear your signal.

Transcript

Welcome And Episode Setup

SPEAKER_01 0:02

Welcome to Scaling with People, your weekly playbook for turning chaos into compounding growth. Each week we go under the hood with battle test experts in all areas of business, from marketing to sales, operation finance, and people, plus product and leadership to unpack the plays, numbers, and systems that turn chaos into compounding growth. Learn straight from founders and experts who've done it and continue to do it successfully. There's zero fluff, just moves that you can still immediately. This podcast is brought to you by Guide to HR, human expertise, AI-powered impact. Welcome everyone to today's Scaling with People podcast. I'm Gwen Virgy, your host and CEO and founder of Guide to HR. All right, founders, just strap in because today's podcast, we're going global. We've got Daniel Nikkich in the hot seat, a sharp global investment research specialist who spends his days decoding markets, AI trends, and the entrepreneurial models that will actually build empires. If you've ever wondered how to read the signals in a chaotic market where AI is bending the rules of finance, or what founders should really watch before making their next big leap, this is your episode. Well, welcome, Daniel. I'm excited to get started on this topic, but before we do so, introduce yourself to the audience.

SPEAKER_00 1:18

Well, first of all, thanks for having me. And a little bit of background about myself is I'm originally from Canada, Toronto, and uh area, and I moved to Europe in 2009 when I finished university. And my background has always been finance and market research. But what combined me to think about pursuing an investment research via my company, CoreS, was my maybe you could say it's love, but my curiosity to see what's going on in the world, what are trends, and why are certain companies successful. And what I do, and long story short, is help investors make investment decisions in providing market research, financial analysis, and in some cases auditing data. And now we know the big word is AI. So I dealt with a lot of preparation for internal AI models.

What Investors Really Ask Founders

SPEAKER_01 2:15

That's a lot to digest. And I think, you know, for our family, for our founders out there listening, the key I heard was, oh, you work with investors. So how as a founder should I be setting myself up for those investors? So let's dive in. Markets feel chaotic right now. I, you know, I feel like we probably said that five years ago, 10 years ago, but every year it just seems like it gets more and more chaotic, more noise, more information, impossible to consume at all. So what signals should founders actually pay attention to? And which ones are just the noise that they should cut out?

SPEAKER_00 2:46

Great question. So one big question that I see from investors when they're asking founders is what problem are you solving? We hear all the time. And can you penetrate the global market? So that goes back to following global trends. It could be from shipping. If there's we see with trade awards and stuff, can you solve the issues in terms of shipping? It could be imports, exports, for example. Data, try to find uh best case scenarios in terms of shipping procs the cheapest way. Another way thing to really think about when thinking about problems is is it a problem that's really important? Or is it just, as I say, a quick solution? We've seen, like when it was COVID, if you remember Clubhouse, everyone was on it, it was a big thing, and it dropped. So in some ways, you have to think about is this problem that I'm solving for the next five to ten years? And because a lot of founder and founders are going to be asked, are you solving just a quick problem? Or are you solving a problem that's gonna be ongoing?

Signal Vs Noise And Durable Problems

SPEAKER_01 3:59

Yeah, that makes sense. Because if it's a quick problem, then you're maybe getting some great revenue through the door today, but what's happening tomorrow? And that longevity of the business, and how do you continue having annual uh recurring revenue ARR if you're solving today's problem and it's just okay, I've solved it now. There's no problem tomorrow. That makes so much sense. So, what should leaders be focusing on that they might not necessarily be paying attention to, but that you'd like to share with them? Like, start paying attention to this.

SPEAKER_00 4:30

Well, being that we're both based in North America, we have to be more open to the fact that the world's connected. It could be we have to see what's going on in India, for example. I'll just use India, for example. 1.4 billion people in the world live in India. What's going on in China? What's going on in Africa, South America, because we're all connected. And we see in many industries, it could be from manufacturing goods. A lot of clothes that we wear is manufactured in Southeast Asia, or it could be in terms of let's just say agriculture. We saw with fertilizers when the war happened with Ukraine and Russia. A lot of people I know I had this one client, they were asking, How can I get fertilizer to the states? Because we were connected with Ukraine. And some people would not know what that's important, but yeah, it's very important. And we saw with what's going on with the importance of I would say which countries have a large market share in the global aspect in terms of I would say raw goods, because I still think raw goods are very important and it connects to several other, I would say, sectors. And another thing is we have to take into account that the world is changing rapidly. For example, we're talking right now, we have a podcast, you're based in the States, I'm based in Europe. There's also a person who has a podcast, they can be in Mongolia or in let's just say Kenya, and etc. The world's connected with technology, and the internet, I in my opinion, was a big change to the world. And I think AI is a big change, and we're gonna keep on going with other changes. And how are we gonna adapt and how the world's changing? Because we're all connected at the end of the day, in my opinion.

SPEAKER_01 6:21

I so agree with that. I mean, we all breathe the same air kind of concept, right?

SPEAKER_00 6:24

Exactly.

Think Globally: Supply Chains And Shocks

SPEAKER_01 6:24

And also too, like, you know, some people out there listening, including like my from my business, oh well, I don't, I I support, you know, XYZ, my ICP, my ideal customer client profile is ABC. They're not going to be impacted. Like, so therefore, my customers, I'm not impacted by this, but you got to think about well, how is those customers impacted by it? Right. And so it's like a domino effect. You might not necessarily be immediately impacted, but you might be connected through, you know, second and third connections of being impacted.

SPEAKER_00 6:59

Oh, I definitely agree. Uh, let's take, for example, Detroit, the auto industry.

SPEAKER_01 7:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 7:05

If I'm not mistaken, in the late 50s, it was the richest city in the world, Detroit. And when you think of it, GM Ford, Chrysler. And people can say, well, it's just auto industry. But how many other businesses and sectors were connected to that industry? From insurance, from real estate, and et cetera. And they can be like, oh, well, it doesn't matter that Toyota's building, let's just say, has different types of cars that consumers would like more in the states. It's a domino effect, like you said. And we have to take that into consideration, just like we see about uh energy. Yeah, America's a huge oil producer. But also, there's them, we see what's going on with Iran, Saudi Arabia, Russia. So there's a lot of things you have to take into consideration.

SPEAKER_01 7:51

It's really a delicate balance. And when you have things that kind of get off balance, such as the Ukrainian and Russia war, it might not feel like it is impacting you, but that delicate balance does. And it might not seem like it, but at the end of the day, if you pull back the onion, you'll find that it is connecting to you somehow in some way. So having the knowledge about that could help you build your business and make business decisions today that will have positive or negative impact in the future. And that's kind of what you do, right? You you provide those insights and data intel.

Domino Effects Across Industries

SPEAKER_00 8:27

Yes. So for example, some people might call me a nerd or a dork, but I follow the news quite a bit. And uh I see what's going on in you could see in Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, whatever someone prefers could be insider and et cetera. And you see what's going on in the news, automatically you have to think, what's the aha, what's the takeaway when doing research? So a lot of times we see with generational AI like Chat GPT or perplexing stuff, and it's getting more and more advanced, these AI models. And they're looking to research, but you have to you have all this information. And I was my biggest advice is from what I got from my mentors throughout my career is what's the big aha, what's the takeaway of this information? Because if there's no use of it, it's just uh you can provide a nice 20-page report, it doesn't mean anything you're just killing a few trees. Yeah. If you're printing it, if you're printing or you're wasting energy with uh megabytes. But you really have to think about what's the action plan I could take from this information. For example, if you hear that let's just say mental health is a big issue that's going on more and more with your youth. Okay, what can I do to solve this problem? If you're a founder or if you're an investor, okay, which companies are trying to tackle this problem and have a service or product that I believe is going to be profitable because let's be realistic, investors want to return on their investments, and so I can tell my shareholders, hey, we invest in this great company, let's keep on going.

SPEAKER_01 10:04

Yeah, that totally makes sense. So, talking about AI, obviously businesses are using it a lot uh in their finances, in the businesses world. Where is AI having the biggest impact in the financial analysis and decision making that you see right now?

SPEAKER_00 10:20

I think the biggest impact AI is doing is scrapping secondary sources. Tell me more.

SPEAKER_01 10:26

What does that mean?

SPEAKER_00 10:27

Okay. So secondary resource is getting information that someone else has done. So for example, like I said earlier, I watch the news. The news would be a secondary resource for me if I were to provide you with some re information or research. And with we see with these AI models, a lot of them are just scraping information from the internet and forming it in it could be in a summary or in a manner that a user wants. And a lot of times it is another thing I see it doing a lot is summarizing a lot of information. So what would take us humans 20 hours to do, it does it within a few minutes. But I will say this you have to audit the AI.

unknown 11:14

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 11:15

Because a lot of times you have to under I think a user has to understand the information that's getting, you have to make sure is it correct? And you have to double check your work. It's just like when you're in elementary school, as you know, you're taking English class or whatever, math, double check your math, double check uh your essay and stuff. So the basic rules of providing a good service or providing a finished result still applies, even with AI, in my opinion.

SPEAKER_01 11:45

Yeah, you absolutely need the human in the loop, as they say, uh, to make sure that the AI is giving you factual information and then also taking it in and analyzing it through the lens of your experience. I was just talking to someone about this the other day, and it was like AI is great. It has, you know, PhD level, tons and tons of information and knowledge, but it has zero experience, real life experience, right? So that's where we can come in and interpret that and bring our experience to the table. So are there any specific AI tools or approaches that founders should be adopting early to get a competitive edge?

Turning News Into Actionable Insight

SPEAKER_00 12:22

Oh, that's a great question because I would say we're still in the augmented AI stage, which means we're still in this stage of AI that's human bias. For example, you might like the color burgundy. I like the color purple. But if I make an AI model, I'm gonna say if you're gonna design a website, you use the color purple as a template. So I say the best ways to use AI is if you need to, if you're thinking of rewording something to make it more articulate or you want to make it more simpler, that's a great way to use AI. If you want to ask AI to give you pretty much a breakdown of how you want to do certain things, it could be I have a business idea, what are certain approaches to use this to develop this idea? That's a good way to use AI. I would say AI is kind of like a junior analyst, and this is me being very vulnerable because if someone impacts my industry, but I was saying that way. You can use it for writing too, but like you mentioned, experience is important. People like stories. Hence, you're doing podcasts, people like to hear stories. Why do we like to watch the movies or read books? The stories it tells. So I still think human experience is important, but I can see it doing a lot of the bot work. What I mean bot work is work does not need too much insight. So it could be like, I have a bunch of data, can you please just format it in a nice manner? Or it could be like, I need a quick summary of this. Give me a summary, but I want to see what does it mention about this information, so you're not going through thousands of pages. So there is a lot of ways AI can help in that way. And then I think it can also help if you want to know about certain information. We saw there's a lot of like custom GPTs with chat GPT, so you can use certain tools like that, kind of like little, I would say, oh, what's the pardon me, I just had a brain freeze. The Chrome, the Chrome tools, these little tools.

SPEAKER_01 14:26

Oh, the yeah, the Chrome extensions.

SPEAKER_00 14:28

A Chrome extension, sorry. Okay that you can use. There's so many Chrome extensions that people can use for various things to summarize stuff to for this, for this. And I think AI can also be used as a second colleague or an assistant. That's what I would use AI. I want to use it as the main, I would say, decision maker, but an assistant to complete your work. That's how I look at AI. But once we get to general intelligence, then we're talking more.

Where AI Helps In Finance Workflows

SPEAKER_01 15:00

And maybe that will make this podcast be, you know, dated in a year or two from now, or maybe even sooner. And it seems like it's growing so fast. I mean, I definitely use it the same way I ask it. What did I miss? What should I have asked? You know, those are the kind of questions because you know, we can't think about everything all the time. So I I like using it kind of uh beyond what you've said as a thought partner. Like, what else should I be thinking about? Where are the gaps in my communication? How can I improve in the way I'm analyzing this data? So um, I like to have it teach me as I teach it.

SPEAKER_00 15:33

Oh, definitely. And I think uh it is still uh it's a great tool, but we have to be careful with it. It's just like using calculator in math. If you can't do two plus two, I know it's simple, but you're not gonna learn how to do multiplication or division.

SPEAKER_01 15:49

Yeah, exactly. I totally agree with you. Okay, so you know, for the founders out there who are, you know, trying to scale, they're very entrepreneurial. From your lens in market research, what do successful entrepreneurials get right when it comes to timing their big moves?

SPEAKER_00 16:07

I think persistency is a big thing. So I'll take, for example, Canva. We all heard about the story how they contacted so many VCs and got rejected. You have to be persistent. You have to, I won't say the word obsessed because that could be taken out of context, but you have to have a passion and a belief that you won't fail.

SPEAKER_01 16:27

To never give up.

SPEAKER_00 16:29

To never give up. And I think you've gone through, I've gone, I remember I've been caught thousands of people on the phone, in emails, LinkedIn, whatever you can to contact people. You get rejected, and it builds your self-esteem because you're like, oh, if I got rejected a hundred times, what's another third or four hundred times? And I think you have to be able to deal with rejection, but you have to be able to pivot.

SPEAKER_01 16:53

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 16:54

For example, I pivoted my company. Initially, it was just market research and finance. Then I had to pivoted to investment research, and I'm probably gonna have to continue to pivot with the innovation of technology. Yeah, so you have to be able to pivot. And I one thing I would say that you have to be respectful, you have to bite your tongue. If you're rude and stuff, I know some people like to think that they can act like certain individuals in the public spotlight, but you have to understand they have a lot of financial capital and I would say network and power, business power, and a lot of times they're playing PR games.

unknown 17:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 17:29

So you have to think that can you do that? Like I'm just saying in general public, if you're trying to build a startup to be profitable. So I would say more of the interpersonal skills are very important to have a successful startup, but obviously a product that works in service. I think reputation is very important, even though some people say fake it till you make it. And I understand you have to have belief in yourself, but you cannot use people, their time, and you cannot give them false promises.

unknown 17:57

Yeah.

Human In The Loop And Bias

SPEAKER_00 17:58

And what your product and service, and we've seen that with, for example, Toronto's and etc. Initially, I'll take that example. Initially, the idea, I think it was great, but something you can't keep on doing, and I understand I think sometimes people founders panic because they have shareholders and stuff and they don't want to fail. And I think one thing I will say this, and I've heard from a lot of international business people from the Middle East Europe, they really like about America, for example, is that they're not afraid to fail. And I think that's what makes a big difference. Are you afraid to fail? If you are, you probably will be very stressful being an entrepreneur.

SPEAKER_01 18:36

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, innovation is all. I mean, as an entrepreneur, you're trying to build something that doesn't exist, trying to solve a problem that hasn't been solved. And you're gonna fail as you're trying different things to get to that end solution and you're gonna pivot, like you said. I mean, I know so many founders that started as a one company and three years, 10 years later, they're a completely different company than what they thought they were gonna do because they realize that that's what the market needs and that's how they're gonna grow the business.

SPEAKER_00 19:06

No, I agree 100%.

SPEAKER_01 19:08

So, you know, if you're advising a startup with limited resources, because you know, we all know that money does not grow on trees, unfortunately. Where should they focus first? Market expansion, product innovation, operational efficiency someplace else? Like, what is your recommendation on the focus?

SPEAKER_00 19:26

That's a great question. It depends where they are, what product and service. If they need monies to develop their product and service, then they should look into getting funding. It could be with uh accelerator, which is usually, I would say, investors at a very early stage of a company that had is looking for companies that have not yet developed a product or service that needs funding. But another uh thing could be, for example, if they want to deal with marketing, look at the free tools available. And sometimes you kind of have to spam your product and service in a way.

Practical AI For Founders

SPEAKER_01 20:05

Yeah. And when you can give feedback too on how to make adjustments along the way, too.

SPEAKER_00 20:10

Definitely. And I think sometimes a lot of entrepreneurs tend to not do this is offer a free sample or product to a potential customer. Let them use it, let and just be like, hey, you can use my product for free. All I would like is a testimonial.

SPEAKER_01 20:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:29

Everybody likes free stuff. I don't know if you've done this, but I've done this. I want to work with certain investors. I would say, hey, let me do a pilot project for free. A little pilot project. If you like it, perfect. Maybe we can continue talking. If not, you get free work. Yeah. You have nothing to worry about. And it works a lot. It works a lot because I think a lot of people have to understand everyone's getting bombarded to buy stuff. Everybody wants to check out the free things. Why was social media so popular? Because it was free in the beginning and it still is. But if it was, if you had to pay 10 bucks per month, I do not think social media networks would be as popular as they are today.

SPEAKER_01 21:10

Yeah, I would agree with that. So you've got the global perspective. What emerging markets or regions are the most exciting for entrepreneurs right now, from your perspective?

SPEAKER_00 21:22

I think the Middle East is very interesting.

SPEAKER_01 21:24

And why is that?

SPEAKER_00 21:26

Because the government initiatives to promote entrepreneurship and to innovate technology. For example, a lot of these countries were oil rich and now the tourism, but now they're really pushing entrepreneurship. And we see, for example, for those who don't know, a lot of venture capital funds get a lot of their LP. So LP is limited partner money. So their shareholders tend to be a lot of times from the Middle East, from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the UAE. And they are really pushing entrepreneurship. A lot of investors are going there, and even family offices. And another thing I noticed is they're really trying to implement AI into their economies and they're diversifying their economies. So I think they this region can learn a lot from the other regions that are probably, I would say, more developed in certain ways, what mistakes they made. So it's very interesting. And it's believe it or not, there's always something changing there. So I think that's a really interesting region. America is still, I think, number one in terms of innovation. We see it with the big companies. It's still going to be an innovative powerhouse, in my opinion, and also financial capital.

SPEAKER_01 22:43

Interesting. And so if you had to bet on one AI trend, and I know it's kind of like, you know, get your uh future mind in play, right? But um, if you had to bet on one AI trend that it will reshape entrepreneurial ship in the next five years, what do you think it would be?

Timing, Persistence, And Pivoting

SPEAKER_00 23:02

AI trend that'll really shape entrepreneurship. I think more startups are gonna be have less employees. It's gonna be one and two teams, and they probably won't have as many employees. I think that's definitely gonna change. But I also think there's gonna be a big push in entrepreneurship. I think, well, maybe it depends, but I don't think there's gonna be as many big corporations as it were in the past. And I if I'm not mistaken, please correct me. I think the average lifeline for a Fortune 500 company is 18 months. So I think a lot of times there's gonna be a lot of big companies coming in and out in acquisitions. So yeah, AI, I think it's definitely changing how we look at the business aspects.

SPEAKER_01 23:48

Yeah, I would totally agree with you. I think that there are so many opportunities where someone who sees a problem or wants to build something through AI, they actually have more power to do it for less costs with less people and make a bigger impact on the world. So uh, well, Daniel, with the final last thoughts or tips or tricks that you'd like to offer to the audience as we wrap up today.

SPEAKER_00 24:13

One thing I would say for those who are entrepreneurs is you have to be open-minded to criticism because it might suck at the moment, but sometimes a person who has more experience or has a different outlook at things could give you the right criticism to get over that big hump to be successful.

SPEAKER_01 24:37

I love that. I think that is such a great uh tip there because I would agree. It's hard. It's hard to hear the feedback sometimes, but if you're open to it, that could be a game changer for you, for your business and how you succeed in life. So, Daniel, thank you so much for giving us some insight about uh market trends and the global economy. And I appreciate your time and hope that the audience got to learn something from you. And until next time, audience, we look forward to you joining us on the next one. Have a great day.

SPEAKER_00 25:07

Thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_01 25:09

That's a wrap for today's episode of Scaling with People. If you got value from this conversation, do me a favor, share it with someone building something big. And hey, I'd love to hear your take. Drop a comment, shoot me a message, or start a conversation. And don't forget to subscribe so you never miss the bold, unfiltered strategies we drop every week. I'm Gwendar Crury, founder and CEO of Guide2HR, where we help high growth companies scale smart with people for strategies and AI powered systems that don't just keep up, they lead. If you're building fast and want your HR to move faster, head to guide2hr.com and let's talk. And remember, scale isn't just about speed, it's about people. Until next time, have a great one.