Robert Nikic

I wrote a book. Most men were taught one thing about problems: handle it yourself and don't let anyone see you sweat. Nobody taught us to use them. Problems Pay is out now. Every problem has a price, and every problem pays.

Something I wish more people said out loud: SDG 8 is measured in jobs, and most of those jobs start in businesses too small for most lenders. Makhtar Diop at IFC talks about turning capital into jobs at scale. I agree. The scale part starts small: the 6-person shop that could be 20 with one loan. If you want the jobs, lend to the small ones.

The rule I come back to more than any other: build on platforms. Don't live in them. I've seen an app that lived entirely inside one store's rules. One policy change, and downloads fell 60% in a month. The founders who came back didn't fight the platform. They built a channel they controlled: a list, a community, a direct way to reach their users. Use the platform. Own the way back to your customers.

I'll keep saying it until it changes. The full case for small-business credit is now in one place.

I've watched this one hurt more than almost anything in e-commerce: the worst time to find your site's limit is the hour the ad finally works. Hostinger put it well. You can't predict which Black Friday promo will send a full day's traffic to your store in a matter of minutes. I've seen a brand pay for the spike and lose the checkout. Thousands of visitors. A spinning wheel. Ad spend gone. Load-test before you spend. Not after.

Profit is a report. Cash is the rent. I've lived both ends of that sentence. Once with no rent money at all, and later running a company that grew fast enough to make the Inc. 5000 two years in a row. Fast growth can feel like the first one all over again. Bigger orders mean more inventory, more people and more bills before the customer pays you. The P&L says you're winning. The bank balance says otherwise. Watch the bank balance. It's the one the landlord takes.

Not a crypto take, just a cost take: whatever gets the cost of moving money under 3%, I'm for it. Stripe is expanding its stablecoin card program to 100+ countries by year-end. The UN's own target, SDG 10.c, says sending money home should cost under 3%. The world average to send $200 is still 6.36%. Small exporters and the families they support are the ones paying the difference.