This week’s Founder Finds includes:

🚀 How AI moats are built
✨ A UI & UX design library
💡 12 growth hacking strategies
💎 How to measure feature success
🎨 How to make a living as an artist
➡️ And more…

🪶 Remember This

The quieter your mind, the clearer your purpose.

🤓 Fav Finds

Tools, tweets and more from Trends Pro Members

🚀 How AI Moats are Built shared by Eddie Forson
A podcast episode covering Anthropic’s rise, defensible AI moats and AI market dynamics

🎨 How to Make a Living as an Artist shared by Ben Fisher
An essay on staying true to your art while paying the bills

✨ Mobbin shared by Alper Tunga
A library of UI & UX design examples

🏆 Trends Pro Member Wins

🧿 Dru Riley added the ability to add people to your HeadsUp dashboard

🤖 Jd Fiscus received a testimonial about his AI consulting work

🖥️ Yuyu built a screen size checker

🌱 Jason A Erickson launched a lawn bid calculator

✨ Knight built a personal bio site

🔧 Try This

How Did Airbnb and Dropbox Get Massive Growth With Creative Marketing Strategies?

Steal this playbook that made Airbnb, Dropbox and WhatsApp household names:

• Gamify user progression: humans are naturally competitive
• Create scarcity: exclusivity drives demand better than advertising
• Hack existing platforms: borrow audiences instead of building them
• Build virality into your core experience: make your product work better with more users

🛠️ Tools of the Week

👁️ LookAway — Relax your eyes and mind

🎨 ​UX Pilot​ — Build UI designs and wireframes with AI

⚡ M1-Project — Build your marketing strategy 10x cheaper

💬 Join the Conversation

Here’s what Trends Pro Members are talking about…

• (📈 Pro) Best blogging platforms
  
• (📈 Pro) Building LLM chatbot apps
  
• (📈 Pro) Best prompt engineering courses

🎧 Listen To

How to Know If Your Product Delivers Value?

Here’s how to measure the real impact of your features:

• Map specific behaviors to actual user outcomes and test if changing behavior actually changes outcomes
• Measure five success metrics that matter: usage, usability, behavior change, user outcomes and business impact
• Ask “Is it working?” during prototype phase, not when customers are churning and you’re rebuilding instead of iterating

🔧 Try This

60 Seconds to Your First Competitive Insight

HeadsUp is an AI-powered competitive intelligence platform that watches your market 24/7.

It doesn’t just tell you what changed… It tells you what to do about it.

🏆 #1 Product of the Day on Product Hunt

Get 90 days of competitor intelligence in 60 seconds with HeadsUp:

• See what you’ve been missing (pricing, features, positioning)
• Know what to do about it, not just what happened
• Get weekly briefs summarizing what matters

See what you’ve been missing 👉 Try HeadsUp free

🍢 Trends Tribe

1-on-1 live meetups for Trends Pro Members.

• Make real connections
• Solve problems faster
• Help each other grow

Next meetup: December 15

The Most Popular Link From Last Week:
🔎 Better Google Search Console Analytics

Get Weekly Reports

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Subscribe

📈 Unlock Pro Reports, 1:1 Intros and Masterminds

Become a Trends Pro Member and join 1,200+ founders enjoying…

🧠 Founder Mastermind Groups • To share goals, progress and solve problems together, each group is made up of 6 members who meet for 1 hour each Monday.

📈 100+ Trends Pro Reports • To make sense of new markets, ideas and business models, check out our research reports.

💬 1:1 Founder Intros • Make new friends, share lessons and find ways to help each other. Keep life interesting by meeting new founders each week.

🧍 Daily Standups • Stay productive and accountable with daily, async standups. Unlock access to 1:1 chats, masterminds and more by building standup streaks.

💲 100k+ Startup Discounts • Get access to $100k+ in startup discounts on AWS, Twilio, Webflow, ClickUp and more.

Brought to you by the team behind HeadsUp

This week’s Founder Finds includes:

🔬 An MCP vs CLI benchmark
🐴 A browser for ADHD minds
⚔️ Good strategy, bad strategy
⏰ Effective meeting interruptions
🔎 Better Google Search Console analytics
➡️ And more…

🪶 Remember This

Overnight success is perseverance and 10 years of trying.

🤓 Fav Finds

Tools, tweets and more from Trends Pro Members

🔎 SEO Gets shared by Elia Zane
An advanced dashboard for Google Search Console data

🔬 MCP vs CLI Performance shared by Jd Fiscus
A benchmarking analysis of AI agents

🐴 ADHD Browser shared by Knight
A browser based on trails instead of tabs

🏆 Trends Pro Member Wins

🧿 Dru Riley added competitive IQ assessment to HeadsUp onboarding

🎞️ Philip Obosi launched Vivo

🤵🏻 Elie Steinbock sponsored a wedding

🚗 Jason A Erickson is building Shy Car

(📈 Pro) Illés Vörös added a space for Trends Pro Members to promote their products

🎧 Listen To

Good Strategy, Bad Strategy

Each business should have a strategy to grow and stay alive.

In this episode of Lenny’s Podcast, you’ll learn:

• What makes a bad strategy
• The essential components of a good strategy
• The value of knowing history when building effective strategies

🛠️ Tools of the Week

👁️ LookAway — Relax your eyes and mind

🎨 ​UX Pilot​ — Build UI designs and wireframes with AI

⚡ M1-Project — Build your marketing strategy 10x cheaper

💬 Join the Conversation

Here’s what Trends Pro Members are talking about…

• (📈 Pro) Best blogging platforms
  
• (📈 Pro) Building LLM chatbot apps
  
• (📈 Pro) Best prompt engineering courses

🔧 Try This

How To Interrupt (and Be Interrupted) Respectfully in the Workplace

Have you ever listened to someone speak for 10 minutes, when it could have been 10 seconds, because you knew what they were saying but you felt bad about interrupting?

If yes, learn how to politely interrupt others and when to let others interrupt you.

This will help you and others get a shared understanding instead of wasting more time.

🔧 Try This

60 Seconds to Your First Competitive Insight

HeadsUp is an AI-powered competitive intelligence platform that watches your market 24/7.

It doesn’t just tell you what changed… It tells you what to do about it.

🏆 #1 Product of the Day on Product Hunt

Get 90 days of competitor intelligence in 60 seconds with HeadsUp:

• See what you’ve been missing (pricing, features, positioning)
• Know what to do about it, not just what happened
• Get weekly briefs summarizing what matters

See what you’ve been missing 👉 Try HeadsUp free

🍢 Trends Tribe

1-on-1 live meetups for Trends Pro Members.

• Make real connections
• Solve problems faster
• Help each other grow

Next meetup: November 17

The Most Popular Link From Last Week:
🔄 $80k Pricing Pivot

Get Weekly Reports

Join 54,000+ founders and investors

Subscribe

📈 Unlock Pro Reports, 1:1 Intros and Masterminds

Become a Trends Pro Member and join 1,200+ founders enjoying…

🧠 Founder Mastermind Groups • To share goals, progress and solve problems together, each group is made up of 6 members who meet for 1 hour each Monday.

📈 100+ Trends Pro Reports • To make sense of new markets, ideas and business models, check out our research reports.

💬 1:1 Founder Intros • Make new friends, share lessons and find ways to help each other. Keep life interesting by meeting new founders each week.

🧍 Daily Standups • Stay productive and accountable with daily, async standups. Unlock access to 1:1 chats, masterminds and more by building standup streaks.

💲 100k+ Startup Discounts • Get access to $100k+ in startup discounts on AWS, Twilio, Webflow, ClickUp and more.

Brought to you by the team behind HeadsUp

This week’s Founder Finds includes:

💻 A free AI coding agent
✨ A screen recording tool
💰 Optimizing pricing pages
⭐ Social proof best practices
🔄 An $80k pricing model change
➡️ And more…

🪶 Remember This

Choose markets where you have unfair advantages from your background or skills.

🤓 Fav Finds

Tools, tweets and more from Trends Pro Members

🔄 $80k Pricing Pivot shared by Shivam
How changing the pricing model can make all the difference

💻 cto.new shared by Elia Zane
A free AI coding agent

✨ ScreenSage shared by Yuyu
A screen recording tool with 3D effects

🏆 Trends Pro Member Wins

🧿 Dru Riley added a feature to track your own company in HeadsUp

🚀 Elie Steinbock was featured in Vercel Open Source Stories

🎙️ Jd Fiscus was featured in the This New Way Podcast

🤖 Eddie Forson wrote about his AI consulting experience

(📈 Pro) Ren Saguil is hosting a sales workshop for Trends Pro Members

📘 Read This

How to Turn Customer Success Into Conversion-Boosting Social Proof?

Social proof taps into basic human psychology: when uncertain, people follow others.

Steal these social proof formats that work:

• Show success metrics and micro case studies in visual grids
• Capture first-time customer reactions showing genuine “wow” moments
• Display awards and famous customer logos:  third-party validation builds instant credibility by association

🛠️ Tools of the Week

💲 Reply.io — Automate sales outreach

🔎 GummySearch — Discover new markets on Reddit

🎨 UX Pilot — Build UI designs and wireframes with AI

💬 Join the Conversation

Here’s what Trends Pro Members are talking about…

• (📈 Pro) Best blogging platforms
  
• (📈 Pro) Building LLM chatbot apps
  
• (📈 Pro) Best prompt engineering courses

❔ Ask Yourself

Why Do Pretty Pricing Pages Convert Worse Than Ugly But Clear Ones?

A lot of SaaS pricing pages fail not because they’re ugly, but because they show rows of micro-differences.

The pricing psychology that kills conversions:

• Build tiers by outcome (“For launching. For growing. For scaling.”) instead of feature lists
• If buyers need binoculars to tell plans apart, they postpone instead of purchase
• Choose one primary action and one recommendation to lower decision fatigue

🔧 Try This

60 Seconds to Your First Competitive Insight

HeadsUp is an AI-powered competitive intelligence platform that watches your market 24/7.

It doesn’t just tell you what changed… It tells you what to do about it.

🏆 #1 Product of the Day on Product Hunt

Get 90 days of competitor intelligence in 60 seconds with HeadsUp:

• See what you’ve been missing (pricing, features, positioning)
• Know what to do about it, not just what happened
• Get weekly briefs summarizing what matters

See what you’ve been missing 👉 Try HeadsUp free

🍢 Trends Tribe

1-on-1 live meetups for Trends Pro Members.

• Make real connections
• Solve problems faster
• Help each other grow

Next meetup: November 17

The Most Popular Link From Last Week:
📈 How Did Tally Reach $4M ARR by Doing One Thing Really Well?

Get Weekly Reports

Join 54,000+ founders and investors

Subscribe

📈 Unlock Pro Reports, 1:1 Intros and Masterminds

Become a Trends Pro Member and join 1,200+ founders enjoying…

🧠 Founder Mastermind Groups • To share goals, progress and solve problems together, each group is made up of 6 members who meet for 1 hour each Monday.

📈 100+ Trends Pro Reports • To make sense of new markets, ideas and business models, check out our research reports.

💬 1:1 Founder Intros • Make new friends, share lessons and find ways to help each other. Keep life interesting by meeting new founders each week.

🧍 Daily Standups • Stay productive and accountable with daily, async standups. Unlock access to 1:1 chats, masterminds and more by building standup streaks.

💲 100k+ Startup Discounts • Get access to $100k+ in startup discounts on AWS, Twilio, Webflow, ClickUp and more.

Brought to you by the team behind HeadsUp

This week’s Founder Finds includes:

📱 An AI mobile app builder
📈 How Tally grew to $4M ARR
💎 How to justify premium prices
⚠️ Hidden costs of AI prototyping
⚙️ A fully automated AI newsletter
➡️ And more…

🪶 Remember This

Learning never stops for those who stay curious.

🤓 Fav Finds

Tools, tweets and more from Trends Pro Members

⚙️ Fully Automated AI Newsletter shared by Josh Kubicki
How to build a fully automated daily newsletter with n8n and AI

📈 How Tally Grew to $4M ARR shared by Elie Steinbock
A blog post on Tally’s growth by focusing on simplicity and user experience

📱 Rork shared by Alper Tunga
An AI tool for building mobile apps

🏆 Trends Pro Member Wins

🧿 Dru Riley added personalized action plans based on competitor moves to HeadsUp

📨 Elie Steinbock was featured on Indie Hackers

🤖 Eddie Forson is co-organizing an event around Claude Code

🎨 Wojtek Wozniak launched a course on vibe coding websites with Webflow

(📈 Pro) Ren Saguil is hosting a sales workshop for Trends Pro Members

❔ Ask Yourself

How To Justify Premium Prices?

A restaurant owner complained about $2 tortillas versus competitors’ 20-cent ones. The real problem was failing to tell customers about fresh tortillas trucked in every morning.

Here’s how to communicate value and justify premium prices:

• Craft the story behind why you do things differently that create quality
• Find unique processes that are expensive but under-communicated to customers
• Integrate this narrative everywhere customers interact with your brand to justify premium pricing

🛠️ Tools of the Week

💲 Reply.io — Automate sales outreach

🔎 GummySearch — Discover new markets on Reddit

🎨 UX Pilot — Build UI designs and wireframes with AI

💬 Join the Conversation

Here’s what Trends Pro Members are talking about…

• (📈 Pro) Best blogging platforms
  
• (📈 Pro) Building LLM chatbot apps
  
• (📈 Pro) Best prompt engineering courses

🎧 Listen To

Why Are AI Prototypes Creating More Problems Than They Solve?

Teams using AI prototyping tools think they’re moving faster, but most are actually building technical debt.

Here’s how to not start from scratch later:

• Remember that AI generates code that works, not code that works well for production
• Apply the “disposable mindset” and treat prototypes like movie trailers, not the final film
• Document everything ruthlessly: known bugs, security gaps and AI hallucinations before they bite you

🔧 Try This

60 Seconds to Your First Competitive Insight

HeadsUp is an AI-powered competitive intelligence platform that watches your market 24/7.

It doesn’t just tell you what changed… It tells you what to do about it.

🏆 #1 Product of the Day on Product Hunt

Get 90 days of competitor intelligence in 60 seconds with HeadsUp:

• See what you’ve been missing (pricing, features, positioning)
• Know what to do about it, not just what happened
• Get weekly briefs summarizing what matters

See what you’ve been missing 👉 Try HeadsUp free

🍢 Trends Tribe

1-on-1 live meetups for Trends Pro Members.

• Make real connections
• Solve problems faster
• Help each other grow

Next meetup: November 17

The Most Popular Link From Last Week:
📱 $2M/Year App Playbook

Get Weekly Reports

Join 54,000+ founders and investors

Subscribe

📈 Unlock Pro Reports, 1:1 Intros and Masterminds

Become a Trends Pro Member and join 1,200+ founders enjoying…

🧠 Founder Mastermind Groups • To share goals, progress and solve problems together, each group is made up of 6 members who meet for 1 hour each Monday.

📈 100+ Trends Pro Reports • To make sense of new markets, ideas and business models, check out our research reports.

💬 1:1 Founder Intros • Make new friends, share lessons and find ways to help each other. Keep life interesting by meeting new founders each week.

🧍 Daily Standups • Stay productive and accountable with daily, async standups. Unlock access to 1:1 chats, masterminds and more by building standup streaks.

💲 100k+ Startup Discounts • Get access to $100k+ in startup discounts on AWS, Twilio, Webflow, ClickUp and more.

Brought to you by the team behind HeadsUp

This week’s Founder Finds includes:

👨‍💻 A free coding agent
🛠️ Claude Agent Skills
📱 A $2M/year app playbook
🤖 How to rank higher in ChatGPT?
🚀 Turning marketing channels into programs
➡️ And more…

🪶 Remember This

Test the riskiest assumption first.

🤓 Fav Finds

Tools, tweets and more from Trends Pro Members

👨‍💻 Amp Free shared by Eddie Forson
An ad-supported, free coding agent

📱 $2M/Year App Playbook shared by Elie Steinbock
Lessons from scaling an AI app through paid ads, UGC and influencers

🛠️ Claude Agent Skills shared by Alexandre Kantjas
Reusable skills that let Claude handle specialized tasks

🏆 Trends Pro Member Wins

🧿 Dru Riley added smart alert grouping to HeadsUp

🎞️ Philip Obosi opened early access for Vivo

⌨️ Elie Steinbock was featured in Business Insider

🥷 Josh Kubicki wrote about prompt injection in legal documents

💻 Eddie Forson wrote about coding with Claude 4.5 Sonnet

📘 Read This

How to Rank Higher in ChatGPT?

AI Chatbots now search the web first, then summarize results. Meaning your content could be featured in AI answers or completely ignored.

Here’s how to show up in AI search:

• Focus on the 5% that drives impact: build question-focused pages and optimize for citations
• Measure “Share of Answers” across multiple AI chatbots instead of traditional rank positions
• Do question research by targeting hundreds of related questions per page, not individual terms

🛠️ Tools of the Week

💲 Reply.io — Automate sales outreach

🔎 GummySearch — Discover new markets on Reddit

🎨 UX Pilot — Build UI designs and wireframes with AI

💬 Join the Conversation

Here’s what Trends Pro Members are talking about…

• (📈 Pro) Best blogging platforms
  
• (📈 Pro) Building LLM chatbot apps
  
• (📈 Pro) Best prompt engineering courses

🎧 Listen To

How Can You Turn Marketing Channels Into Revenue-Building Systems?

Most founders manage SEO, email, paid ads and social media as separate channels. This is why growth feels like pushing water uphill instead of building momentum.

Do this instead:

• Turn channels into programs: unite multiple distribution methods around core content or themes
• Build systems like webinar programs that use social media, paid ads, email and partnerships to distribute one piece of content
• Focus on the five growth levers: awareness, sales, retention, revenue and operations instead of channel-specific vanity metrics

🔧 Try This

60 Seconds to Your First Competitive Insight

HeadsUp is an AI-powered competitive intelligence platform that watches your market 24/7.

It doesn’t just tell you what changed… It tells you what to do about it.

🏆 #1 Product of the Day on Product Hunt

Get 90 days of competitor intelligence in 60 seconds with HeadsUp:

• See what you’ve been missing (pricing, features, positioning)
• Know what to do about it, not just what happened
• Get weekly briefs summarizing what matters

See what you’ve been missing 👉 Try HeadsUp free

🍢 Trends Tribe

1-on-1 live meetups for Trends Pro Members.

• Make real connections
• Solve problems faster
• Help each other grow

Next meetup: November 17

👋 New Trends Pro Members

• JAC

• Nour Chaaban

• Muhammed Kılıç

• Asad Dhamani (MemoryPlugin, AskLibrary)

• Mashhour Alharthi

The Most Popular Link From Last Week:
⚙️ n8n MCP Server​

Get Weekly Reports

Join 54,000+ founders and investors

Subscribe

📈 Unlock Pro Reports, 1:1 Intros and Masterminds

Become a Trends Pro Member and join 1,200+ founders enjoying…

🧠 Founder Mastermind Groups • To share goals, progress and solve problems together, each group is made up of 6 members who meet for 1 hour each Monday.

📈 100+ Trends Pro Reports • To make sense of new markets, ideas and business models, check out our research reports.

💬 1:1 Founder Intros • Make new friends, share lessons and find ways to help each other. Keep life interesting by meeting new founders each week.

🧍 Daily Standups • Stay productive and accountable with daily, async standups. Unlock access to 1:1 chats, masterminds and more by building standup streaks.

💲 100k+ Startup Discounts • Get access to $100k+ in startup discounts on AWS, Twilio, Webflow, ClickUp and more.

Brought to you by the team behind HeadsUp

This week’s Founder Finds includes:

⚙️ An n8n MCP server
📖 Storytelling in SaaS
🦾 An agentic AI crash course
🧠 How to get your brain to focus
🌴 6 principles of lifestyle businesses
➡️ And more…

🪶 Remember This

Do not cling to a mistake just because you spent a lot of time making it.

🤓 Fav Finds

Tools, tweets and more from Trends Pro Members

🦾 Agentic AI Crash Course shared by Alejandro Arango
A guide to learn agentic AI for real world applications

⚙️ n8n MCP shared by Elia Zane
An MCP server to build n8n workflows with AI

🧠 How to Get Your Brain to Focus shared by Jd Fiscus
A talk on harnessing focus for deeper work and more creativity

🏆 Trends Pro Member Wins

🧿 Dru Riley added weekly competitor summaries to HeadsUp

⚡ Ren Saguil is hosting a series of sales workshops on Maven

💬 Elie Steinbock was featured in an interview on 20i

📺 Alexandre Kantjas reached 30,000 subscribers on YouTube

🎨 Paul Martin made a video on the redesign of Bondex

📘 Read This

Why Do Most Founders End Up Working More, Not Less?

The secret to lifestyle businesses is building systems that work without you:

• Build simple products with no maintenance required
• Price strategically to avoid support nightmares (too low) and consultant dependency (too high)
• Choose uncrowded markets where you can dominate without constant competition crushing margins

🛠️ Tools of the Week

💲 Reply.io — Automate sales outreach

🎞️ Zubtitle — Edit social media videos fast

📊 Julius AI — Analyze your data with computational AI

💬 Join the Conversation

Here’s what Trends Pro Members are talking about…

• (📈 Pro) Best blogging platforms
  
• (📈 Pro) Building LLM chatbot apps
  
• (📈 Pro) Best prompt engineering courses

🎧 Listen To

Why Are You Selling Features When Customers Buy Outcomes?

Most SaaS founders pitch “40% faster processing” and wonder why prospects don’t get excited.

Instead, use stories to close the gap between features and outcomes people actually want:

• Build a story bank with customer wins, personal struggles and company milestones. When people see themselves in your stories, they stop evaluating and start buying
• Tell three types of business stories: mission (why you started), vision (what success looks like) and milestones (what you’ve overcome)
• Show what’s at stake, what they want to learn, how you want them to feel and what they should do next

🍢 Trends Tribe

1-on-1 live meetups for Trends Pro Members.

• Make real connections
• Solve problems faster
• Help each other grow

Next meetup: October 20

The Most Popular Link From Last Week:
🎨 Build UI Designs and Wireframes with AI

Get Weekly Reports

Join 54,000+ founders and investors

Subscribe

📈 Unlock Pro Reports, 1:1 Intros and Masterminds

Become a Trends Pro Member and join 1,200+ founders enjoying…

🧠 Founder Mastermind Groups • To share goals, progress and solve problems together, each group is made up of 6 members who meet for 1 hour each Monday.

📈 100+ Trends Pro Reports • To make sense of new markets, ideas and business models, check out our research reports.

💬 1:1 Founder Intros • Make new friends, share lessons and find ways to help each other. Keep life interesting by meeting new founders each week.

🧍 Daily Standups • Stay productive and accountable with daily, async standups. Unlock access to 1:1 chats, masterminds and more by building standup streaks.

💲 100k+ Startup Discounts • Get access to $100k+ in startup discounts on AWS, Twilio, Webflow, ClickUp and more.

Brought to you by the team behind HeadsUp

This week’s Founder Finds includes:

✂️ How to avoid feature bloat
🤖 A context engineering guide
📈 Shutting down a $1.5M product
🎨 An AI UI and wireframe generator
🛠️ Should we say goodbye to startups?
➡️ And more…

🪶 Remember This

Momentum is easier to maintain than to build.

🤓 Fav Finds

Tools, tweets and more from Trends Pro Members

🤖 Context Engineering Guide shared by Eddie Forson
Anthropic’s guide to effective context engineering for AI agents

🎨 UX Pilot shred by Alper Tunga
A tool to build UI designs and wireframes with AI

📈 Shutting Down a $1.5M Product shared by Elie Steinbock
How Fiscal.ai prioritized long-term vision over short-term revenue

🏆 Trends Pro Member Wins

🧿 Dru Riley added an onboarding video to HeadsUp

💻 Jd Fiscus made a video on Claude Code custom status lines

🤝 Mike Williams is organizing an LA meetup on AI-powered marketplaces

🎨 Wojtek Wozniak is hosting a workshop on vibe coding websites with Relume

✔️ Sam McKay wrote about validating AI output

📘 Read This

Should We Say Goodbye to Startups?

Check out the three shifts reshaping tech business:

• Expect multi-product makers running 10+ tools for the same audience
• Use “influencer + maker” collaborations to get shared distribution and cross-promotion
• Make friends now as solo makers will struggle vs organized groups with combined audiences

🐦 Tweet of the Week

🛠️ Tools of the Week

💲 Reply.io — Automate sales outreach

🎞️ Zubtitle — Edit social media videos fast

📊 Julius AI — Analyze your data with computational AI

💬 Join the Conversation

Here’s what Trends Pro Members are talking about…

• (📈 Pro) Best blogging platforms
  
• (📈 Pro) Building LLM chatbot apps
  
• (📈 Pro) Best prompt engineering courses

🎧 Listen To

What Will Happen If You Start Removing Features?

64% of features are rarely used and actively slow down both development and user experience.

Here’s what you can do to avoid feature bloat:

• Frame feature removal as improvement, not loss: Slack celebrated removal of Stories
• Analyze usage frequency, user impact, maintenance cost, strategic alignment and opportunity cost
• Recognize zombie features draining dev time, confusing users and stealing focus from what matters

🍢 Trends Tribe

1-on-1 live meetups for Trends Pro Members.

• Make real connections
• Solve problems faster
• Help each other grow

Next meetup: October 20

The Most Popular Link From Last Week:
☁️ Cloudflare’s AI Coding Platform

Get Weekly Reports

Join 54,000+ founders and investors

Subscribe

📈 Unlock Pro Reports, 1:1 Intros and Masterminds

Become a Trends Pro Member and join 1,200+ founders enjoying…

🧠 Founder Mastermind Groups • To share goals, progress and solve problems together, each group is made up of 6 members who meet for 1 hour each Monday.

📈 100+ Trends Pro Reports • To make sense of new markets, ideas and business models, check out our research reports.

💬 1:1 Founder Intros • Make new friends, share lessons and find ways to help each other. Keep life interesting by meeting new founders each week.

🧍 Daily Standups • Stay productive and accountable with daily, async standups. Unlock access to 1:1 chats, masterminds and more by building standup streaks.

💲 100k+ Startup Discounts • Get access to $100k+ in startup discounts on AWS, Twilio, Webflow, ClickUp and more.

Brought to you by the team behind HeadsUp

This week’s Founder Finds includes:

💰 An interview with Justin Welsh
☁️ Cloudflare’s AI coding platform
🚀 Why ignore common VC advice
⚖️ How not to be defined by your job
💡 Disruption vs. incremental progress
➡️ And more…

🪶 Remember This

Work harder on yourself than you do on your job.

🤓 Fav Finds

Tools, tweets and more from Trends Pro Members

💰 $10M+ Solo Business shared by Paul Metcalfe
An interview with Justin Welsh about building a million-dollar one-person business

☁️ VibeSDK shared by Elia Zane
Cloudflare’s AI coding tool that lets you deploy your own vibe coding platform

🚀 Ignoring Common VC Advice shared by Shushant Lakhyani
How Gamma reached $50M ARR by raising little and staying lean

🧿 HeadsUp of the Week

Pipedrive is split testing their CTA from ‘Try it free’ to ‘Try 14 days free.’

Small change, massive psychology shift.

Advantages of 14 days?

Concrete details are more persuasive than abstract promises.

• ‘Try it free’ = vague commitment, easy to ignore
• ‘Try 14 days free’ = specific timeframe, creates urgency

This is conversion optimization 101, but most companies still get it wrong.

Spotted by HeadsUp competitor monitoring from Trends.vc

🏆 Trends Pro Member Wins

🧿 Dru Riley added missed alert estimations to HeadsUp

🎙️ Sam McKay recorded a podcast on Microsoft Fabric

🦾 Alexandre Kantjas is hosting a workshop on AI agents

💿 Darren Travel released a new music album

💻 Elie Steinbock made a tutorial on running multiple coding agents locally

📘 Read This

Could “Being Disruptive” Sabotage Your Startup’s Success?

Don’t try to change the world. Focus on building a profitable business instead:

• Most people don’t like big changes. Focus on solving their specific problems.
• It’s okay to have smaller goals. They are easier to reach and can still be very rewarding.
• Make things that are valuable, not disruptive. It’s okay to make small improvements instead of trying to change the world.

🐦 Tweet of the Week

🛠️ Tools of the Week

💲 Reply.io — Automate sales outreach

🎞️ Zubtitle — Edit social media videos fast

📊 Julius AI — Analyze your data with computational AI

💬 Join the Conversation

Here’s what Trends Pro Members are talking about…

• (📈 Pro) Best blogging platforms
  
• (📈 Pro) Building LLM chatbot apps
  
• (📈 Pro) Best prompt engineering courses

👀 Watch This

Does Your Life Have Meaning Outside of Work?

If you feel like your job defines you, try to find meaning in life beyond your job:

• Many people tie their identity to their work, often due to a lack of other sources of meaning like religion and community.
• A “dream job” is not the only path to happiness. A “good enough” job can provide the means and time to pursue other fulfilling activities outside of work.
• To diversify your identity beyond work, think about your values and how you spend your time. Ask yourself: What would you do if you couldn’t do your current job?

🍢 Trends Tribe

1-on-1 live meetups for Trends Pro Members.

• Make real connections
• Solve problems faster
• Help each other grow

Next meetup: October 20

The Most Popular Link From Last Week:
✨ Awesome Mac Apps

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Brought to you by the team behind HeadsUp

This week’s Founder Finds includes:

🥱 Why you’re so tired
🔍 An AI SEO playbook
💭 11 pieces of life advice
✨ A curated list of Mac apps
🤖 Cursor instructions for GPT-5
➡️ And more…

🪶 Remember This

Each try brings you closer to success.

🤓 Fav Finds

Tools, tweets and more from Trends Pro Members

✨ Awesome Mac Apps shared by Elia Zane
A curated list of great macOS software

🔍 AI SEO Playbook shared by Ben Fisher
How to optimize your content for AI search

🤖 GPT-5 Cursor Instructions shared by Alper Tunga
Custom Cursor Agent instructions optimized for GPT-5

🧿 HeadsUp of the Week

Notion just quietly launched ‘Agents’ that can actually DO tasks for you.

This is the first major productivity tool to go fully autonomous.

Agents can manage your projects, update databases and handle workflows while you sleep.

The shift from ‘AI assistant’ to ‘AI employee’ is happening faster than we expected.

Spotted by HeadsUp competitor monitoring from Trends.vc

🏆 Trends Pro Member Wins

🧿 Dru Riley added backlink, keyword and domain authority tracking for competitors to HeadsUp

🌱 Jason A Erickson hit 5,000 monthly organic search visits with Simply Lawn Directory

🎓 Paul Martin collected 50 resources for learning Web3

🖥️ Yuyu launched What Is My Screen Size on Product Hunt

🚀 Paul Metcalfe launched Founder

🔧 Try This

What 11 Things Could Have Saved You Years of Struggle?

One bad thing can ruin your entire month. But here’s how good and bad can coexist:

• Replace perfection with interest
• Build competence to eliminate fear
• Remember your choices belong only to you

🐦 Tweet of the Week

🛠️ Tools of the Week

🖼️ Aragon AI — Use AI to do a photo shoot

🎬 Zebracat — Create marketing videos with AI

👨‍💻 CodeFast — Learn to code in weeks, not months

💬 Join the Conversation

Here’s what Trends Pro Members are talking about…

• (📈 Pro) Best blogging platforms
  
• (📈 Pro) Building LLM chatbot apps
  
• (📈 Pro) Best prompt engineering courses

❔ Ask Yourself

Why Are You So Tired?

Here’s why nowadays everybody’s so tired:

• Modern life is chemically draining: Screens block sleep chemicals (melatonin), while work demands and decisions build up brain toxins that need proper sleep to clear out.
• Our brains weren’t built for this: We make lots of decisions daily vs our ancestors’ simple choices. Each decision creates chemical buildup (glutamate) that exhausts us, even without physical work.
• We fight natural rhythms: Everyone has a natural sleep pattern (chronotype), but modern schedules force a one-size-fits-all approach. Plus, we block tiredness signals with caffeine, leading to harder crashes.

🍢 Trends Tribe

1-on-1 live meetups for Trends Pro Members.

• Make real connections
• Solve problems faster
• Help each other grow

Next meetup: October 20

👋 New Trends Pro Members

• David Robson (Spiral Math)
  
• Vara Kumar
  
• Caleb Hong
  
• Tana Parrott
  
• Sofia Salazar

The Most Popular Link From Last Week:
🚀 Where to Launch to Get Your First Customers?

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🧠 Founder Mastermind Groups • To share goals, progress and solve problems together, each group is made up of 6 members who meet for 1 hour each Monday.

📈 100+ Trends Pro Reports • To make sense of new markets, ideas and business models, check out our research reports.

💬 1:1 Founder Intros • Make new friends, share lessons and find ways to help each other. Keep life interesting by meeting new founders each week.

🧍 Daily Standups • Stay productive and accountable with daily, async standups. Unlock access to 1:1 chats, masterminds and more by building standup streaks.

💲 100k+ Startup Discounts • Get access to $100k+ in startup discounts on AWS, Twilio, Webflow, ClickUp and more.

Brought to you by the team behind HeadsUp

“At the heart of capitalism is creative destruction.”  — Joseph A. Schumpeter

Get Full Access to Trends Pro

❓ What You’ll Learn

• Why is AI more than task automation?
• What jobs are most affected by AI?
• How to remain a valuable employee in the AI era?
• What AI tools to master to stay competitive against AI tools?
  
  

⭐ Why does the impact of AI on jobs matter?

AI tools are “intelligent units” that go beyond task automation. They can create original work: market analysis, risk assessment, investment insights and more. This helps employees focus on more complex and creative aspects of their jobs.

But people are concerned about job displacement.

With so much uncertainty, we’re diving into how AI impacts the future of jobs.

🤖 What jobs are most affected by AI?

Customer Service Agents
AI chatbots can resolve standard customer queries and complaints without call center staff.

Digital Marketers
AI can create, manage and optimize marketing strategies involving social media, search engines, email, content creation and online advertising.

Salespeople
AI can manage customer inquiries through chatbots, analyze consumer behavior, qualify leads, do cold outreach and predict future buying trends to optimize sales strategies.

🚀 How can you survive the adoption of AI?

The first thing that you can do is use AI tools. This is the reality. If you rely on yourself only, you may lose to a colleague that knows how to use AI to do tasks faster and better than you.

But here are other ways to remain valuable and competitive:

Customer Service Agents

Learn AI tools to automate routine tasks so you can focus on more complex and high-value customer interactions. Find ways to communicate to offer a personal touch that AI can’t match.

AI tools for customer service agents:

• Brainfish is an AI for self-service customer support.
• Tidio interacts with customers as a real customer support agent.
• Yuma offers automated AI customer service for Shopify merchants.
• Balto offers real-time call guidance in customer support call centers.
• Kustomer is a customer service platform with AI chatbots and assistants.

Digital Marketers

Build strategies that resonate with audiences based on your domain expertise and cultural knowledge. Use consumer psychology to adapt your marketing efforts to world events and trending topics.

AI tools for digital marketers:

• Fullstory uses AI to analyze customer behaviour.
• Customers.ai offers in-depth visitor insights and remarketing.
• Albert.ai is an autonomous AI agent that builds and optimizes marketing campaigns.
• Surfer SEO uses AI to boost organic traffic, increase visibility and improve your rank in search results.
• Brand24 uses AI to track mentions across social media, news, blogs, videos, forums, podcasts, reviews and more.

Salespeople

Build strong relationships with customers by focusing on trust and a personal touch. Keep in touch with your clients after sales to solve problems and make sure they remain happy with your service. Clients are real people, not mere quotas.

AI tools for salespeople:

• Regie.ai is an all-in-one hub for AI sales outreach.
• Bland AI helps you build, test and scale AI phone agents.
• Reply.io sets up outreach sequences, handles prospect replies and books meetings.
• B2B Rocket offers AI agents that can dial your leads, engage them and book meetings.
• Oliv is an AI sales rep that does pre-meeting research, takes live notes and updates CRM after every call.

📈 What else?

Trends PRO #0149 — AI Impact on Work has more insights.

What you’ll get:

• 12 Jobs Most Affected by AI (300% More)
• 12 Ways to Survive The Adoption of AI Tools (300% More)
• 60 AI Tools to Master to Stay a Valuable (300% More)
• 12 Expert Opinions on the Future of Jobs (1,200% More)
• 15 Data Points From AI Industry Impact Reports (1,500% More)

With Trends Pro you’ll learn:

• (📈 Pro) Which companies have already replaced workers with AI?
• (📈 Pro) What do experts say about the future of jobs?
• (📈 Pro) How is AI taking away your competitive advantage?
• (📈 Pro) Who’s had their job taken by AI?
• (📈 Pro) What B2B opportunities does AI open up for entrepreneurs?
• (📈 Pro) How many employees use AI at work?
• (📈 Pro) How many organizations have an AI training program?
• (📈 Pro) What percentage of companies plan to replace jobs with AI?
• (📈 Pro) What jobs will be “reserved” for humans for a long time?
• (📈 Pro) How to boost employee morale when adopting AI tools?
• And much more…
  
  

Get Weekly Reports

Join 54,000+ founders and investors

Subscribe

📈 Unlock Pro Reports, 1:1 Intros and Masterminds

Become a Trends Pro Member and join 1,200+ founders enjoying…

🧠 Founder Mastermind Groups • To share goals, progress and solve problems together, each group is made up of 6 members who meet for 1 hour each Monday.

📈 100+ Trends Pro Reports • To make sense of new markets, ideas and business models, check out our research reports.

💬 1:1 Founder Intros • Make new friends, share lessons and find ways to help each other. Keep life interesting by meeting new founders each week.

🧍 Daily Standups • Stay productive and accountable with daily, async standups. Unlock access to 1:1 chats, masterminds and more by building standup streaks.

💲 100k+ Startup Discounts • Get access to $100k+ in startup discounts on AWS, Twilio, Webflow, ClickUp and more.

Brought to you by the team behind HeadsUp