The highest leverage use of my time is to sit at my desk and work on the underlying business systems that power MarketBeat – our sign-up forms, our internal CRM, our internal ad server, our monetization flows, our distribution systems (email/SMS), our marketing campaign triggers, etc. All these things work together to generate revenue for MarketBeat, and the best financial use of my time is to sit at my desk and work on the system.
This is what allows MarketBeat to generate substantial revenue. It’s what allows us to pay our employees exceptionally well. It’s what allows us to give back to the Sioux Falls community in such a big way.
What I recently learned is that I need to prioritize my “deep work” time, where I’m sitting at my desk working on MarketBeat’s core systems. I am now putting that time on my calendar first and letting everything else flow around that. This means a lot of morning meetings are now afternoon meetings, and some meetings just don’t happen. It also means I can’t go to every community event I’m invited to, but the main thing must remain the main thing if MarketBeat is going to grow into a $100 million/year company that does a lot of good for a lot of people in a lot of ways.
Work and Family Travel
I think I mentioned this in my last update, but our first summer trip right after school got out was to Newport Beach, California.
Later in the summer, we spent a long weekend in Minneapolis to attend WWE Summer Slam at U.S. Bank Stadium. We stayed at the J.W. Marriott at the Mall of America, which is where we normally stay when in Minneapolis.
I also went to Las Vegas for a few days to attend an Alex Hormozi marketing workshop.
Wrapped up our first ACQ workshop.
It was really interesting to see their social media strategy in action, how they use A.I. for content creation, and how they do upsells at the event. Two full days, packed with information.
We went to their marketing workshop, which is new.… pic.twitter.com/h08s96ggC3
— Matt Paulson (@MediaKing) July 31, 2026
It was a decent event, but there was way too much downtime, and the venue left a lot to be desired. It was one of the first times they did that particular workshop, so I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt about the content and format a bit. I would attend another event there again.
This fall is a lighter travel schedule. I have a trip to Fargo coming up to attend the Prairie Capital Summit in October. I also plan to travel to Baltimore for a few days to meet with key industry partners (MarketWise and Agora). It’s football and hockey season again, so we’ll have many one-day trips to Minneapolis for Vikings games.
We’ll also spend many evenings at the Midco Arena for Augustana Hockey. MarketBeat recently became a founding partner and the jersey patch sponsor for Augustana Hockey.
Introducing Clementine, The Leopard Gecko
Last school year, Ady was in Mr. Peterson’s third-grade class at Discovery Elementary. Mr. Peterson had a class pet, which was a leopard gecko named Clementine. Soon after, Ady started asking for a leopard gecko of her own to have at home. We resisted for several months because often Ady’s interests do not stick.
After the school year ended, Micah, Ady, and I went to the Reptile Zoo’s Chamber Ribbon Cutting. I was the plaque-hand-outer on behalf of the Chamber, so I brought the kids along to check out the place. They had a leopard gecko there for $40.00.
Again, Dad said no. After we got home, Ady took $40.00 out of her money box and handed it to Karine and me, saying, “Leopard Gecko, Forty Dollars. Daddy, go buy leopard gecko for forty dollars.” Of course, we gave in.
Over the Fourth of July weekend, Ady went to Grandma’s house for a few days. When she came home, there was a leopard gecko sitting in a tank waiting for her in the dining room. Ady chose the name Clementine for her leopard gecko (she often reuses names for pets and characters). Three months later, Ady is still enamored with Clementine. She wants to get Clementine out of the tank immediately after school every day and gives us updates on what Clementine is doing throughout the evening.
South Dakota Hall of Fame
Last month, I was inducted into the South Dakota Hall of Fame for the business I have built and the community investments I have made in the state. Unfortunately, I had strep throat right before the event. Fortunately, I was feeling just well enough to participate in all the activities. I did some research, and I am the second-youngest Hall of Fame inductee anyone is aware of. Greg Latza, a photographer and artist, was inducted in 2010 at age 39. You can read my Hall of Fame entry here.
MarketBeat Update
The story of the summer at MarketBeat was the SpaceX IPO. Once every five years, there is a story that captures the attention of the entire market. Five years ago, it was the rise of the retail investor and the GameStop/AMC mania that followed. In 2026, it was the opportunity to invest in the company that hopes to colonize Mars. We had our best months ever for revenue and traffic in May and June 2026. The excitement died down in July and August, and August was our worst month of the year. Our industry normally has a “summer slump” and picks up again in the second half of September.
On the product side of things, we continue to make improvements. We revamped our search feature over the summer to incorporate A.I. summaries and better results. In Q4, we are working on a new valuation section that will allow investors to compare a company’s current valuation to its peers and sector/industry averages. We will also be adding company reports in presentations that we get in partnership with Quartr. MarketBeat is a mature website, and there isn’t much that’s missing anymore. Many of our competitors are building out A.I. tools, such as on-site chat and MCPs, but I don’t think they will get much usage. If people want to use A.I. to research stocks, they will use Claude or ChatGPT, not a MarketBeat-branded A.I. wrapper.
A.I. Usage
My personal A.I. usage continues to evolve as new tools and models get released. Six months ago, everyone was moving from ChatGPT to Claude. Now, many people are moving back to ChatGPT as OpenAI’s GPT 5.6 and GPT 6 “Astra” models have impressed many, while Claude increasingly seems to get lost in its own train of thought, leading to convoluted outputs. Personally, I have primarily been using ChatGPT for my day-to-day A.I. use (although this quarterly update was generated 100% by Matt’s human brain).
In my last couple of updates, I talked about the OpenClaw I had running various reporting tasks for MarketBeat and me personally. OpenClaw is an A.I. harness that pairs a variety of skills, persistent memory, and recurring tasks (cron jobs) with an A.I. model (which serves as the processor or brain). OpenClaw has struggled since it was acquired by OpenAI, and I’ve since migrated to a team of specialized GrokBots, which require much less technical maintenance and understanding to run.
An interesting use case of GrokBot has been MarketBeat’s support queue. We receive hundreds of spam messages per day at our MarketBeat “reply to” and contact addresses. Normally, they would go unread if a user did not click on a link in a confirmation email to confirm their support ticket. Now, a GrokBot named “Supportive Stevie” goes through them and surfaces any tickets that it thinks should be reviewed by a human. Supportive Stevie can also handle basic user requests (such as unsubscribes) and uses the same web interface that our human support agents use.
Commercial Real Estate Update
It has been an active quarter for our commercial real estate portfolio. We purchased the Arby’s on 41st Street and the building next to it (currently a vape shop) for potential future redevelopment. Raising Cane’s, which we have a ground lease with, is nearing completion of its first Sioux Falls location. We have a new strip mall under construction on East 41st Street near Highway 100 that will hold another Tilted Trophy restaurant. Our new apartment project at Marion and Benson, currently named The Vertex, is well under construction. We are also considering starting an apartment project on some land we own at 26th and Tea Ellis, and have been sitting on for a while.
From a macro perspective, the federal government can’t keep its spending under control. That means inflation will be persistent and rates will trend higher in the next several years. Ultimately, this will create a tighter commercial real estate development market, meaning fewer new projects. I would expect our future development projects to focus on areas where we have strategic opportunities – land we already own that needs to be put to work, or projects where we already have a tenant lined up. Right now, it just doesn’t make financial sense to go start a new big project on spec, hoping tenants will show up in the future.
Homegrown Capital Update
Homegrown Capital is well into the investing period of its second fund. Earlier this year, we invested in Brevity, a sales coaching software tool, and Cattler, a “system of record” software company for the beef industry. In the third quarter, we invested in Rosie AI, which is an AI answering service for small businesses. I have known the founder, Jordan Gal, for many years through an event called Microconf and invested in one of his previous companies, CartHook. Rosie AI hit an inflection point earlier this year, and we provided an equity round to double down on the growth that they were seeing.
The venture capital industry is going through an identity crisis right now. With the proliferation of AI tools, the durability of recurring revenue from software companies is in question. It’s difficult to determine the market cap of a software company if you are not confident in its future revenue forecast. The idea is that some people will vibe-code their own software, and others will use AI models to do work that specialized software did previously. Personally, I think the whole thing is somewhat overblown. People and companies will continue to purchase and use third-party software as the default option. Ultimately, the public markets will determine what mature software companies are worth, and venture capital firms will be able to price what they can afford to pay for a startup software company accordingly.
Events and Sponsorships
While summer has come and gone, there are several events that MarketBeat is sponsoring that are coming up:
– The EMBES: A Tribute to Women is happening today, October 1, at the Canopy in downtown Sioux Falls. EmBe hosts the event each year to recognize women making an impact in the Sioux Falls community.
– The MarketBeat Open, a USTA Pro Circuit / ATP Challenger 100 tennis tournament, is coming back to Sioux Falls from October 25 to November 1.
– AiEDGE, a local conference where companies can learn AI tools to use in their business, is returning to Sioux Falls on October 29. We have sponsored this event for the last several years, mostly because my friend Andy runs it.
– The Sioux Falls Leadership Summit is on November 5 at the Sioux Falls Convention Center and brings together local business owners and leaders for an afternoon of speakers and professional development.
– The MarketBeat Invitational, an NCAA women’s basketball tournament, is coming to the Sanford Sports Complex on November 14. The event runs from 1:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m.
– Journey of Hope’s Be the Light in the Darkness is on November 19 at Mosaic Arts & Events. The annual fundraiser supports Journey of Hope’s programs in the Sioux Falls community.
In addition to these sponsorships, MarketBeat donated $85,000 to a variety of charities in the third quarter, including The Gathering Well, The Community Outreach, Call to Freedom, Families Finding Joy, Center of Hope, SME Sioux Falls, and Educators Rising South Dakota. We recently published a full recap of that giving in the MarketBeat Press Room, which you can read here.
Wrap Up
In the coming months, I hope to be more active on YouTube. We have a studio, editors, etc., and I might as well make good use of them. I am trying out a few formats, and I think the format that will stick is a long-form business advice format. I’ll sit down with someone, they will tell me about their business, and I’ll give them advice on how to improve it. We did a rough demo version of this with Vlad Strizheus last month, which you can watch here. I’ll write more about this in my next quarterly update.