Short-Form Videos: Generative AI, Creator Funds, Content-Format Fit

“The play button is the most compelling call to action on the web.” – Michael Litt

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❓ What You’ll Learn

How will short-form video platforms improve the shopping experience?
How to monetize with exclusive videos?
How are short-form video platforms attracting creators?
How to make short-form videos fast?
Why should podcasts use short-form videos?
Why should you start a faceless YouTube channel?
How to monetize your traffic?
How to find the content-format fit?
How to boost retention?
How to tell great stories in shorter formats?

💎 Why It Matters

Short-form videos are easier to consume and share.

🔍 Problem

We have short attention spans.

💡 Solution

Short-form videos let you explore many independent interests in the time it takes to watch one long video.

🏁 Players

Short-Form Video Examples

How to Win on Social Media • Gary Vaynerchuk shares how to make engaging content
Lessons on Money • Ryan Holiday shares 3 lessons on money from the Stoics
The Power of Packaging • Alex Hormozi shares how people perceive information
Gardening Hacks • Sabrina & Andrew Pougnet share how to grow a sunflower fence
Making a Corset Maxi Dress • MissJophiel shares how to make a corset dress
Cheese Sandwich • Bayashi TV shares how to cook a cheese sandwich
Number Your List • Miss Excel shares how to automatically number Excel lists
Little Girl Room Decor • Sophia Lee shares how to design a room for a little girl

🔮 Predictions

Short-form video platforms will embed storefronts into videos to improve the shopping experience.
- YouTube Shopping lets creators tag products in their Shorts.
- TikTok Shopping lets creators add product tags and checkouts to TikTok videos.
- Instagram Shopping lets creators add product tags, waitlists and checkouts to Reels.
- Snapchat’s Public Profile Stores let creators add product tags and checkouts to Spotlights.

Fans will buy paid subscriptions to access exclusive videos.
- TikTok’s LIVE lets viewers watch exclusive videos.
- Instagram Subscriptions let viewers get access to exclusive Reels.
- YouTube’s Channel Memberships let viewers get members-only videos.

New short-form video platforms will launch creator funds to lure creators into using them. This will help them solve the chicken-and-egg problem.
- Snapchat paid creators $1,000,000 per day for making Spotlight videos.
- YouTube had a $100,000,000 Shorts fund paying creators $100-$10,000 per day.
- Instagram had a Reels Play program that paid creators up to $35,000 for Reel performance.
- TikTok had a $200,000,000 creator fund which turned into a Creativity Program Beta with cash rewards.

☁️ Opportunities

Use generative AI to make lots of short-form videos fast.
- Kristian Fagerlie shares how to automate short-form video creation.
- Max Jones shares how to make 100 TikTok videos in 1 hour with AI.
- Think Media shares how to make 30 YouTube Shorts in 1 hour using AI.
- Ryan shares how to make 100 short-form videos with AI and bulk uploading.
- Brandon Washington shares how to make 30 Reels in 24 hours with ChatGPT.

Turn your podcast into short-form videos to pique interest.
- Rich Roll posts clips from Rich Roll Podcast.
- Tim Ferriss posts clips from The Tim Ferriss Show.
- Ali Abdaal posts clips from Deep Dive with Ali Abdaal.

Start a faceless YouTube channel. You can build an audience without worrying about how you look, speak and act on camera.
- Kimigami shares origami tutorials.
- Simple Man’s Life shares food recipes.
- Chinese Driver shares street photography videos.

Monetize traffic with affiliate marketing. Help your fans find the best products.
- Rahul Rai has an affiliate link to TurboTax.
- Rachel Meaders has affiliate links to products on Amazon.
- Devan Anderson has shop collections of rings, watches and more.
- Gabby Morrison has a promo code ‘gabbymorr10’ for Roadway Moving.
- Bonnie Rodríguez Krzywicki has affiliate links to beauty products and clothes.

🏔️ Risks

Content-Format Fit • Short-form videos have limited context. This makes it hard to convey complex concepts. Can you teach backend development in 1 minute?
Platform Risk • You’re subject to YouTube, TikTok, Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat policies.
Creative Burnout • Short-form videos can quickly become outdated. You may need to produce timely content fast. This can lead to creative burnout.

🔑 Key Lessons

Short-form videos can drive growth for your long-form videos. Using a combination of both formats can boost your reach. Joshua Weissman shares quick cooking tips and food recipes.
Short-form videos are mobile–centric. If you take them from your long-form videos, ensure that the content is optimized for mobile screens.
Short-form videos are great for sharing quick, focused solutions. Learn how to use chopsticks fast.

🔥 Hot Takes

Short-form videos are best for casual content. Longer-form videos are best for serious subjects.
Using clickbait captions will boost retention. “Wait until the end” or “That’s what happens if…” are popular ways to lower the chances of skipping your video.
Captivating short-form videos are hard to make. You need to adapt to new trends and formats to keep your content engaging. People get used to the same narrative fast.

😠 Haters

“It’s harder to tell compelling stories in shorter formats.”
Focus on a single idea, use catchy visuals and add smooth transitions. If this doesn’t work, it can be wise to use long-form videos to tell your stories.

“Saturation makes it harder to stand out.”
Use your personality to stand out. Your character and experiences are unique.

“Attention span is a myth. People may spend more time watching short-form videos than long-form videos.”
You’re talking about watching videos as a process. We’re talking about watching individual videos.

“Short-form videos lack depth. They focus on entertainment instead of meaningful content.”
What is meaningful content? Here’s how to safely walk dogs. Here’s how to help a choking baby. Here’s how to strengthen your wrists.

🔗 Links

How Charli D’Amelio Got Hundreds of Thousands of Followers Per Day • The thread for this report.
Keyword Insights on TikTok • Trending script keywords from voice-overs, captions and ads.
The Best TikTok SEO Strategy • How to optimize TikTok videos for search.
Building a Report on How Create and Monetize Short-Form Videos • The Tweet behind this report.

📁 Related Reports

Micro-Education Businesses • Learn new skills fast
Faceless YouTube Channels • Become a YouTuber without worrying about your looks
Virtual Influencers • Choose how they look, what they do and where they are
Influencer Marketing • Find customers by breaking through the noise
Voice Cloning • Create audio at scale

🙏 Thanks

Thanks to Maciej Cupial, Stewart Townsend, Errol Tiozon, Uwe Dreissigacker and Hamed Mohammadpour. We had a great time jamming on this report.

✏️ Emin researched and wrote this report. Dru researched and edited this report.

📈 What else?

Trends PRO #0128 — Short-Form Videos has more insights.

What you’ll get:

21 Short-Form Video Examples (163% More)
9 Predictions (200% More)
16 Opportunities (300% More)
5 Risks (67% More)
10 Key Lessons (233% More)
12 Hot Takes (300% More)
9 Links (200% More)

With Trends Pro you’ll learn:

(📈 Pro) How to get brand deals?
(📈 Pro) How can teachers use short-form videos?
(📈 Pro) How to use prompt engineering to make short-form videos?
(📈 Pro) How to turn long videos into short clips at scale?
(📈 Pro) How to get user-generated content?
(📈 Pro) How to boost brand awareness?
(📈 Pro) What are hashtag communities?
(📈 Pro) How to lower platform risk?
(📈 Pro) How to build trust?
(📈 Pro) Why should you use cliffhangers?
(📈 Pro) How to go viral fast?
(📈 Pro) Why does SEO matter?
(📈 Pro) How to optimize visuals for tutorials?
(📈 Pro) Why does watch time matter?
(📈 Pro) Who offers productized short-form video services?
(📈 Pro) What is content-platform fit?
(📈 Pro) How to turn short-form videos into online courses?
(📈 Pro) What are 9 short-form video ideas?
And much more…

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🗨️ Better Prompts ⚖️ Mastering Negotiation 🗺️ Slowmading with Kids

This week’s Founder Finds includes:

🎡 5 creator flywheels
🗺️ Slowmading with family
🤖 An AI prompt writing tool
💳 What is expectations debt
💭 A list of ideas for founders
🧘 3 quick ways to lower stress
🧪 A copy guide for SaaS products
⚖️ A book about mastering negotiation
➡️ And more…

🪶 Remember This

Be undeniably good. No marketing effort can substitute for that.

🤓 Fav Finds

Tools, tweets and more from Trends Pro Members

🤖 Prompt Refine shared by Jordon McKoy
A tool to compare, organize and refine your ChatGPT prompts

🧪 SaaS Copy Guide shared by Tim Jones
A short guide on improving SaaS landing page copy

💭 37signals shared by Christa Clarke
A high-signal collection of ideas for founders

🔧 Try This

5 Creator Flywheels from Top Creators

Creator flywheels are growth loops that will help you build and grow your audience.

Here are 5 creator flywheels used by top creators to get more followers, customers and sales.

🌟 Founder of the Week

Hamed Mohammadpour

“Entrepreneurship is hard and having motivated, ambitious people around is very helpful. The Trends Pro Community and reports are top-notch. I’m learning a lot from each of them.”

Hamed is building Dolores. This is an AI tool that makes stunning videos and podcasts at scale with a single prompt.

What’s your most important habit?
Meditating twice a day for 10-30 minutes.

What are you reading right now?
$100M Offers by Alex Hormozi

Never Split the Difference by Chris Voss

The first one is about making irresistible offers and the second one is about communication. Both are crucial for any successful entrepreneur.

What product or service do you wish existed?
I love drinking tea but the tea brewing experience is subpar compared to coffee. The “Nespresso for Tea” (as a company, not tea capsules) is a missing opportunity for the part of the world that consumes tea but still brews it in the traditional way. I have started sketching the product and collecting feedback to see if anyone wants to bring this idea to life.

What product are you obsessively using right now?
ChatGPT. I use it to learn new things and do my work faster.

What are you bullish on?
Fusion energy. It has an incredible potential with less radioactive waste. It could provide a nearly limitless and clean energy source for generations to come.

A company I’m following in this space is Helion Energy. It raised funds from Sam Altman and Microsoft, aiming to go into production in 2027.

What are you bearish on?
Traditional education. It can’t keep up with the tech innovation and relies on outdated teaching methods. A more flexible and innovative education system with lifelong learning and an interdisciplinary approach is key for preparing people for the challenges and opportunities that the future holds. It’s about nurturing creativity, curiosity and skills that go beyond the classroom.

What’s your favorite Trends Report?
Working on a media generation tool, I can’t help but love the two relevant Trends reports: 📺 Faceless YouTube Channels and 🎙 Podcasts.

Exclusive Deal: Hamed is offering Trends.vc readers pre-launch access to Dolores and 40% off the Pro plan for 6 months. Use the code “TRENDS” in the referral field to claim.

💬 Join the Conversation

Here’s what Trends Pro Members are talking about…

(📈 Pro) Favorite to do list app
(📈 Pro) Building 30 AI tools in 30 days
(📈 Pro) Distribution ideas for indie games

📘 Read This

Expectations Debt

Expectations are like a debt that must be repaid before you get any joy out of what you’re doing.

Your portfolio surged during a bubble, your company hit a huge valuation or you got a salary that exceeds your skills. It feels great…

But reality will catch up.

Expectations debt is repaid in the form of self-doubt and crushed morale. When you understand that, you become careful about what you wish for.

Companies should want the valuation they deserve and not a penny more.
Workers should want a salary that matches their skill and nothing more.
Families should want a lifestyle they can sustain and nothing higher.

🎧 Listen To

3 Quick Ways to Lower Stress at Work

Taking a quick break to lower your stress level can boost your productivity.

Drink water: It has natural calming properties
Go for walk: This leads to better mood and relaxation
Look out the window: Natural light will lower eye strain and anxiety

🏆 Trends Pro Member Wins

👥 Jordon McKoy unlocked 1:1 Founder Intros by joining daily standups

📈 Katt Risen launched the Build the Trends newsletter

🗺️ Mac Martine wrote a viral tweet about slowmading with his family

✍️ Marc Fletcher launched Owndraft

🤖 Eddie Forson launched an AI feature for EnVsion

🛠️ Frank Jones hosted a workshop on Rapid Prototyping AI Tools

🧠 Frank Jones and Renae Gregoire unlocked Trends.vc Masterminds by reaching 30-day standup streaks

Get Weekly Reports

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📈 Unlock Pro Reports, 1:1 Intros and Masterminds

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💬 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.

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Online Events: Validating Demand, Lead Magnets, Hybrid Events

“Find a group of people who challenge and inspire you, spend a lot of time with them, and it will change your life.” – Amy Poehler

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❓ What You’ll Learn

How to offer hands-on experience in online events?
What are examples of successful metaverse concerts?
How to validate demand?
How to get early revenue?
How to find qualified prospects with online events?
What are hybrid events?
Who’s building online events for AR/VR headsets?
How will open startups use online events?
How to break the ice in your online event?

💎 Why It Matters

Online events are borderless.

They are a cost-effective and scalable way to spread your message.

🔍 Problem

We want to connect, learn and be entertained without leaving home.

💡 Solution

Online events have lower friction.

Anyone with web access can join.

🏁 Players

Online Events

Trends.vc Masterminds • Share your goals, progress and solve problems together
Userlist Happy Hours • Live SaaS-related hangouts
API World • Trends, insights and best practices on the API and microservices
The Women in Tech Summit • Event for educating, inspiring and connecting women in tech
Zoomtopia • Annual celebration of Zoom customers, partners and communities
TypeScript Congress • Online event for web developers using TypeScript
Silicon Labs Works With • Developer conference for the Internet of Things

Online Event Tools

Zoom • Connect with video, audio, phone and chat
HeySummit • Build, grow and monetize online and hybrid events
Livestorm • Simple meeting and webinar platform
Gather • Build 2D online conference spaces
Podia • Sell workshops, classes and webinars
StreamYard • Live streaming and recording studio in your browser
BigMarker • Platform for webinars, virtual and hybrid events

🔮 Predictions

People will join remote group fitness classes to boost accountability and track progress.
- Peloton lets you invite friends to fitness classes.
- Uptivo tracks the performance of remote fitness groups.
- Apple Fitness lets you share fitness activities with your friends.
- Myzone tracks group fitness performance in the gym, outdoors or at home.

Online events will send craft kits to offer hands-on experience.
- Host sends cocktail kits with recipes for Virtual Mixology Classes.
- Unexpected Virtual Tours sends mini-golf kits with Design a Golf Course.
- Scott’s Pizza Tours sends kits with pizza ingredients for Online Pizza Making Classes.

Artists will hold live concerts in the metaverse to break physical barriers. They will perform for tens of millions of fans at once.
- Lil Nas X, 24kGoldn and 21 Pilots performed in Roblox.
- Justin Bieber, John Legend and Tinashe performed live in Wave.
- Travis Scott, Marshmello and Ariana Grande performed in Fortnite.

☁️ Opportunities

Presell your online event to validate demand and get early revenue.
- IRE21 is a virtual event for journalists that offers a 25% discount for early tickets.
- SHARP is an event for authors, readers and publishers that offers a 33% discount for early booking.
- ATOMICON is a hybrid sales and marketing event for small businesses. It offers early tickets with a 55% discount.

Turn your online event sessions into on-demand videos. This is free marketing material.
- Globant shared Converge 2020 on YouTube.
- Amazon shared parts of AWS re:Invent 2020 on YouTube.
- Salesforce shared parts of Salesforce World Tour Reimagined and Dreamforce.

Use free online events as lead magnets to build an email list of qualified prospects.
- Ben Collins turned SheetsCon into a free online course.
- Alex Hormozi used an online event to launch his book $100M Leads.
- MarTech Alliance offers Anticon DialUp recordings in exchange for contact details.
- Lumivero Virtual Conference is a free conference on data analysis and student placement.

🏔️ Risks

Connectivity Issues • Internet disruptions, slow speeds and lag spikes can lead to missed content, poor peer interaction and frustration.
Coordination Risk • Failure to manage groups can lead to poor attendee experience.
Reputation Risk • Misbehavior such as Zoom Bombing can lead to negative experiences and a lack of interest in future events.

🔑 Key Lessons

Online events have higher margins. Lower costs and wider reach make it easier to make a profit.
Hybrid events are a “two-sided medal”. Balancing in-person and online aspects of the same event requires 2x much effort.
Have a backup plan. You should be able to switch platforms when having technical issues.

🔥 Hot Takes

Online events with hundreds of attendees make it hard for each member to share value. This makes it more appealing to watch the recording on-demand than attending a live event.
We’ll see online events built for specific AR/VR headsets. Connect is a virtual event on virtual, mixed and augmented realities. You need a Quest device to attend the event.
Open startups will host public board meetings with past achievements and future plans. Gumroad shares its board meetings on YouTube.

😠 Haters

“It is hard to engage remote audiences. They can get distracted by their friends, family and pets.”
Host the event over a few days. Break down content into shorter portions. Add interactive activities such as polls and Q&As. Change the pace of the event with videos and quick discussions. This can help attendees stay focused and to not get bored.

“In-person events have higher-fidelity interactions than online events.”
True. In-person events also have more friction since everyone needs to attend in person. Online events are more inclusive while in-person events have higher fidelity.

“Hybrid events have the best of both worlds.”
Hybrid events are complex. You need to solve logistics, catering and security problems for in-person attendees. As well as connectivity, engagement and moderation issues for online attendees.

“Online events are exhausting. Zoom fatigue is real.”
Short breaks, chit-chatting and letting attendees turn off video can help to lower online fatigue.

“What if I want to go to two sessions that happen at the same time because of tracks?”
This is a tradeoff for having a focused experience. Most online events share recordings that you can watch later.

🔗 Links

Building a Report on How to Grow and Monetize Online Events • The Tweet behind this report.
35 Ice Breaker Games for Virtual and Hybrid Events • Ways to lighten the mood at the start of an event.
Hybrid Events Are Essential • Learn the 10 benefits of hybrid events.

📁 Related Reports

Audience-First Products • Validate products, build distribution and stay accountable
Gamification • Boost engagement with missions and rewards
Presales • Validate demand before investing time and money into building new products
Influencer Marketing • Borrow audiences’ attention to build awareness and find customers
Freemium • Lower your customer acquisition costs with a free version of your product

🙏 Thanks

Thanks to Frank Jones, Mark Todd and Stewart Townsend. We had a great time jamming on this report.

✏️ Emin researched and wrote this report. Dru researched and edited this report.

📈 What else?

Trends PRO #0127 — Online Events has more insights.

What you’ll get:

20 Online Event Examples (186% More)
14 Online Event Tools (100% More)
12 Predictions (300% More)
15 Opportunities (400% More)
7 Risks (133% More)
12 Key Lessons (300% More)
7 Hot Takes (133% More)
9 Links (200% More)

With Trends Pro you’ll learn:

(📈 Pro) How can artists make live concerts more accessible?
(📈 Pro) What are token-gated online events?
(📈 Pro) How to help team members feel closer when they are miles apart?
(📈 Pro) What are VR business meetings?
(📈 Pro) What are virtual workspaces?
(📈 Pro) How can companies help employees fight loneliness?
(📈 Pro) How to handle traffic spikes during online events?
(📈 Pro) How to build an immersive online event?
(📈 Pro) How to lower competition?
(📈 Pro) How to use online events to onboard SaaS users?
(📈 Pro) How to boost engagement?
(📈 Pro) How to boost brand loyalty?
(📈 Pro) What are breakout rooms?
(📈 Pro) What are online event tracks?
(📈 Pro) How to maximize reach?
(📈 Pro) How to help attendees build personal connections?
(📈 Pro) Why should you vet attendees?
(📈 Pro) How to boost the attendance rate?
(📈 Pro) Why should you offer virtual gifts?
(📈 Pro) What is NFT ticketing?
(📈 Pro) Who has built an online event for 5,000 people with no-code?
And much more…

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📈 Unlock Pro Reports, 1:1 Intros and Masterminds

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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.

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💬 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.

🚀 Journey to $50k MRR 📣 Marketing Channels That Work 🔺 How Much To Ask

This week’s Founder Finds includes:

🕒 How to be patient
🤔 8 logical fallacies
🔺 The pyramid of trust
🏆 An award-winning to-do app
🤝 An essay on service marketplaces
📣 11 marketing channels for founders
🚀 Reaching $50,000 MRR in 5 months
🧠 A book about neuroscience and productivity
➡️ And more…

🪶 Remember This

If the pain is strong enough, someone will pay you for it.

🤓 Fav Finds

Tools, tweets and more from Trends Pro Members

📣 Marketing Channels That Work shared by Royce Johnson
A list of 11 marketing channels that consistently work for founders

🔺 Pyramid of Trust shared by Prabhjot Singh Lamba
A video about not asking for too much too soon

🤝 Service Marketplaces shared by Ryan Booher
An essay on the potential and challenges of service marketplaces

📘 Read This

8 Logical Fallacies

Logical fallacies are errors in reasoning that make us think that we know something that we don’t.

Red herrings: Arguments that seem relevant to an issue but actually are not.
Slippery slope: Chaining negative consequences thinking that one leads to the other.
Correlation is not causation: If 2 things often occur together, this does not mean one causes the other.

🌟 Founder of the Week

Edward Danilyuk

“I have been a Trends Pro Member for a few years now. I love it for two reasons.
1. The reports. Dru and the team do a great job of diving into different topics. These would take me weeks if not months to do the research on.
2. The people. We have daily standups, I have had a lot of 1-1 calls with Trends Pro members and have even worked with some of them.”

Edward is building Black Mammoth, providing fast and reliable web development services for a flat monthly fee.

What’s your most important habit?
Doing what I say I will do.

Many years ago I asked Paul Jarvis for advice on how to be a good contractor. He told me two things:

“Do the work”,

“Do what you say you’re going to do”.

I have made a good living so far by following this simple advice.

What are you reading right now?
Your Brain at Work by Dr. David Rock

I want to improve my performance while understanding more about the science of how our brains work. I’m a big fan of testing new routines, keeping what works and tossing the rest.

This book dives into your brain limitations and gives you good ideas on how to better organize your work day.

What product are you obsessively using right now?
Things. It’s a simple to-do app that organizes my life.

What are you bullish on?
Decentralization of things such as energy and food supply.

Almost everything we get comes from a big corporation and we can’t see what’s going on behind the scenes.

What are you bearish on?
AI.

I think it’s going to either become regulated to death or tightly controlled by a few big corporations who will stifle innovation with the goal of increasing their own profits.

Pretty much every major innovation has run into this.

What’s your favorite Trends Report?
🧳 Digital Nomads

We (my wife and our four kids) have committed to a 2+ year journey around the world 😅 Reading this report gave us a lot of insight, tools to checkout and people to follow.

The idea of optimizing where and specifically WHEN we live somewhere really stuck with me.

What else?
As cheesy as this sounds, you can literally make anything possible.

I went from digging holes in rocks in the heat and freezing snow, to full-time consulting as a software engineer while traveling the world. It all started with a thought. Don’t underestimate the power of thoughts you have.

💬 Join the Conversation

Here’s what Trends Pro Members are talking about…

(📈 Pro) Getting started with Figma
(📈 Pro) Building 30 AI tools in 30 days
(📈 Pro) Time-based pricing for newsletters

🔧 Try This

Journey to $50,000 MRR

Nick went from making $350,000 at Meta to making $0 as an indie hacker.

He built a portfolio of 9 products which grew to $50,000 MRR in 5 months.

The more you try, the higher are your chances of success.

❔ Ask Yourself

How to Be Patient in an Impatient World?

Many people mistake patience for the ability to wait for something.

Patience isn’t simply waiting. It’s your attitude towards waiting.

You ordered a pizza and you can wait for it:

Patiently: Reading a book while waiting for it
Impatiently: Pacing around the house and calling the restaurant (again!)

Waiting patiently benefits everybody but we’re getting worse at being patient.Learn how to be more patient to win in an impatient world.

🏆 Trends Pro Member Wins

👥 Chris Bulen and Eren Suzer unlocked 1:1 Founder Intros by joining daily standups

💰 Milly Tamati crossed $50,000 ARR with Generalist World

🫐 Mehmet Gonullu featured InvoiceBerry by Uwe Dreissigacker in The CTO Show newsletter

👔 Jesper Delporte hit a $1,200 order with Cheegs thanks to landing page redesign tips from Errol Tiozon

🌐 Karthik Vijayakumar has started getting organic traffic to Kartvee.com

🧭 Bernardt J. Vogel reached 6,000 subscribers with Curious Compass

🧠 Elie Steinbock unlocked Trends.vc Masterminds by reaching a 30-day standup streak

Get Weekly Reports

Join 54,000+ founders and investors

📈 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.

Shopify Plugins: Referral Programs, Productized Services, Organic Growth

“Because of Shopify, the problem we have to solve is what to build, not how to build.” – Mukul Chaware

Get Full Access to Trends Pro

❓ What You’ll Learn

How to personalize customer support?
What is virtual shopping?
How to boost your chances of success?
How to boost your sales?
How to build trust?
How to optimize app store listing?
How to get featured by Shopify?
How to grow faster with less risk?
How to keep up with Shopify API updates?
How to stair-step your way to success?

💎 Why It Matters

Shopify has 1,750,000 merchants and only 8,000 apps.

🔍 Problem

Each merchant has unique needs that Shopify can’t fulfill on its own.

💡 Solution

Shopify apps fill unaddressed needs by allowing merchants to customize their stores.

🏁 Players

Shopify Apps

BlogHandy • Build a SEO-optimized blog for your store
Stackend • Add social features such as live shopping, user profiles and more
Klaviyo • Smart email marketing and SMS automation
Bevi Design • Animated pop-ups
Rewind Backups • Backup your store’s items, themes and more
Tidio • Live chat and chatbots for customer support
DSers • Place orders, find suppliers and import products from AliExpress

🔮 Predictions

Shopify stores will use ChatGPT for personalized customer support. This will boost engagement, conversion and sales.
- Rep AI is a ChatGPT-powered sales bot.
- Yuma adds ChatGPT to customer support tools.
- Youness Idbakkasse and Kinane are building Store Copilot, an AI shopping assistant.

Shopify stores will use AR to offer virtual shopping experiences. They will help customers see if the product fits their looks and needs.
- LUV+CO lets you try on makeup with Auglio Beauty Try-On.
- Forno Piombo lets you fit their ovens in your space with LEVAR.
- GIALLO JEWELRY, Yasèmia and SO SVN let you try on jewelry with mirrAR.

Shopify stores will use gamified referral programs to boost engagement and retention.
- AsherKate uses Growave for its referral program with points and weekly missions.
- Sculpted by Aimee uses Smile for its referral program with reward points and tiers.
- Eyefood Factory uses Gameball for its referral program with points, levels and badges.

☁️ Opportunities

Build lots of Shopify apps to boost your chances of success.
- Arpit Roy is bootstrapping Zegsu with 8 Shopify apps.
- Yung is running OneCommerce with 14 Shopify apps.
- Marouane is growing Royal Apps with 4 Shopify apps.
- Alex Hardy has 4 Shopify apps that make $35,000 MRR.
- John Speed built 5 Shopify apps with 8 more on the roadmap.

Offer custom development services to help customers get apps that fit their needs.
- Youness Idbakkasse builds custom Shopify apps.
- Beni builds full-stack web and mobile Shopify apps.
- Union Works builds smart and simple Shopify apps.
- Zachary McClung builds simple and complex Shopify apps.

Build in public to boost your reach, sales and trust.
- Gil is building Checkout Blocks in public.
- Sam is building BeSure Checkout Rules in public.
- Mathieu Gesbert is building Checkout OS in public.

🏔️ Risks

Platform Risk • Shopify apps are subject to Shopify’s outages and policies.
Competitor Risk • You’ll have to convince customers that your app is better than competitors.
Compatibility • Shopify apps can conflict with each other. This can break store operations such as order processing, inventory management and more.

🔑 Key Lessons

“Built for Shopify” and other achievements help you build trust. They signal that your Shopify app is easy to use, safe and performant.
Optimize your listing to boost your reach and growth.
Staff Picks can boost your reach. Shopify picks apps that follow app guidelines and offer great customer support. Mukul Chaware says Appointo was picked by Shopify 2 weeks after launch. This helped them get feedback and iterate fast.

🔥 Hot Takes

Those who copy successful paid apps and offer freemium alternatives will grow faster with less risk.
Excessive customization leads to confusion and poor customer experience. Merchants want to be able to quickly set up the app and do the job.
Free Shopify apps devalue the marketplace and make it harder for paid apps to survive. Why would merchants pay for your discount spin wheel if they can get it for free?

😠 Haters

“Shopify updates its API every 3 months. I don’t want to deal with constant maintenance.”
Shopify gives you 9 months to adapt your Shopify app. If you fail to do so, Shopify will switch your app to the oldest supported API version to lower the chances of breaking your app.

“Shopify can take me out of business by building similar products. Sidekick can kill all AI-powered apps.”
That’s part of the platform risk. While ecosystems help you grow, nothing stops them from adding their own tools.

“Competitors can see the reviews to spot the pros and cons of my Shopify app. This makes it easier to compete with me.”
You can’t stop copycats but you can build an unlisted app. Though this will lower your reach and social proof. Stop worrying about competitors and focus on building an app that is so great your customers will feel dumb switching to anything else.

🔗 Links

Building a Report on How to Launch and Grow Shopify Plugins • The tweet behind this report.
How to Build a Shopify App • In-depth guide on building Shopify apps.
Stair-Stepping with Plugins • Benefits and risks of building on existing ecosystems.

📁 Related Reports

Ecosystems • Build services, SaaS apps and digital products to extend and improve platforms
Competitor Risk • Index into an existing market instead of trying to create one
Micro-SaaS • Solve a specific problem for a specific group of people
Million-Dollar, One-Person Businesses • Find your highest point of leverage
Product-Led Growth • Build a product that sells itself

🙏 Thanks

Thanks to Vikash Kumar Prajapati, Dan Schoonmaker, Uwe Dreissigacker, Eamonn Carey, Sam Schrup and Tim Jones. We had a great time jamming on this report.

✏️ Emin researched and wrote this report. Dru researched and edited this report.

📈 What else?

Trends PRO #0126 — Shopify Plugins has more insights.

What you’ll get:

23 Shopify Apps (229% More)
11 Predictions (267% More)
9 Opportunities (200% More)
5 Risks (67% More)
7 Key Lessons (133% More)
7 Hot Takes (133% More)
11 Links (267% More)

With Trends Pro you’ll learn:

(📈 Pro) How to sell products on live streams?
(📈 Pro) How will social networks adapt to online shopping?
(📈 Pro) Where to learn how to build, grow and monetize Shopify apps?
(📈 Pro) How to turn web stores into mobile stores?
(📈 Pro) How to automate store operations?
(📈 Pro) How to lower competitor risk?
(📈 Pro) How to lower your customer acquisition costs?
(📈 Pro) How to turn your Shopify app into a full SaaS product?
(📈 Pro) How much time does it take to build a SaaS-like Shopify app?
(📈 Pro) Who has made $900,000 with Shopify apps?
(📈 Pro) What are store operation niches you can build a Shopify app for?
(📈 Pro) How to market Shopify apps?
(📈 Pro) Who grew a Shopify app to $10,000 MRR?
(📈 Pro) How to pass the review of your Shopify app?
(📈 Pro) What are key lessons shared by Shopify developers?
And much more…

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💬 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.

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

🦾 Awesome AI Agents ⌛ Taking Control of Time 🎨 1,448 Design Principles

This week’s Founder Finds includes:

🦾 A list of AI agents
📈 The power of tiny gains
👕 A project estimation tool
🎨 A list of design principles
🤖 How to fine-tune GPT-3.5
🕑 How to gain control of your time
🧠 Why smart people have bad ideas
🐄 How to stand out in a crowded market
➡️ And more…

🪶 Remember This

Learning how to break habits can serve you in life almost better than anything else.

🤓 Fav Finds

Tools, tweets and more from Trends Pro Members

🦾 AI Agents Landscape shared by Mehmet Gonullu
An overview of currently available AI agents

👕 T-Shirt Sizing Project Estimation shared by David Fu
A project estimation tool based on T-shirt sizes

🧠 Why Smart People Have Bad Ideas shared by Royce Johnson
An essay on the challenges of creating products that people will want to buy

📘 Read This

Continuous Improvement

Continuous improvement occurs when you make small positive changes each day.

If you get 1% better each day for 1 year, you’ll end up 37x better at the end of it.

Here’s how you can start getting better right now:

Do More of What Already Works: Floss every day and never miss workouts.
Avoid Tiny Losses: Lower your credit card limits and eat fewer unhealthy foods.
Measure Backward: Make decisions based on what happened, not what will happen.

🌟 Founder of the Week

Frank Jones

“I started using Trends Pro at the end of 2022. However, the new year started with two deaths in my family and that took my attention away from work. I recently returned to the Trends Pro Community. Today, I’m just over a week into a standup streak shooting for the 30-day mastermind goal.”

Frank is building ENC Explorer. This is a travel guide for anyone that visits or relocates to eastern North Carolina.

What’s your most important habit?
Putting my health first. Exercise, community service and family time are anchors in my calendar.

What are you reading right now?
I’ve just finished Thinking in Systems by Donella H. Meadows. I’m reading Purple Cow by Seth Godin and Ready, Fire, Aim by Michael Masterson will be next. I’m looking for patterns related to remarkable businesses that I can launch fast.

What product are you obsessively using right now?
ChatGPT API. Everyone has access to these tools, just like we all have access to website builders. There is an opportunity right now to develop niche tools based on clever prompt engineering and simple user interfaces.

What are you bullish on?
Prototyping AI tools. Most people won’t become prompt engineers. If you find a clever way to transform user input into a valuable output, there is an opportunity to build niche tools.

What’s your favorite Trends Report?
I have a portfolio of niche websites, so I appreciate the broad list of report topics. They help me find content topics for new or existing websites.

Exclusive Deal: Frank is offering Trends.vc readers a free membership to the SEO Social Club. They meet each month to discuss digital marketing and SEO. Create your account on https://seosocial.club/ to claim.

💬 Join the Conversation

Here’s what Trends Pro Members are talking about…

(📈 Pro) Getting started with Figma
(📈 Pro) Building 30 AI tools in 30 days
(📈 Pro) Time-based pricing for newsletters

🔧 Try This

Design Principles

An open-source collection of 1,448 design principles and methods that form the basis of good products.

Including 195 real-life examples used by organizations, individuals and product teams.

👀 Watch This

How to Gain Control of Your Free Time

Key to time management is setting priorities.

If you don’t have time to do something, it means it’s not a priority.

You say you’re busy but if the water heater breaks and there’s water all over your basement, you’ll find time to deal with the mess.

Time is a choice.

Even if we are busy we have time for what matters.

When we focus on what matters we can build the lives we want in the time we’ve got.

🏆 Trends Pro Member Wins

🤖 Elie Steinbock made a tutorial for fine-tuning GPT-3.5 Turbo

🎥 Maisha Cannon made a video comparing Claude and GPT-4

📈 Jakub Nowikowski wrote a monthly update for Languive

🔒 Anderson Dadario launched a free security tool

🗣️ Meiko S. Patton wrote a guide on making talking photo avatars

🧠 Royce Johnson, Meiko S. Patton and Ryan Booher unlocked Trends.vc Masterminds by reaching 30-day standup streaks

Get Weekly Reports

Join 54,000+ founders and investors

📈 Unlock Pro Reports, 1:1 Intros and Masterminds

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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.

Chrome Extensions: ChatGPT, Pink Oceans, No-Code Tools

“Consumers are expecting personalized experiences.” – Mary Beth Laughton

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❓ What You’ll Learn

How to build Chrome extensions with no-code?
Which Chrome extensions turned into SaaS platforms?
Who offers productized services for building Chrome extensions?
How to build Chrome extensions with ChatGPT?
How to index into existing markets?
How to grow organically?
What is a pink ocean?
How to find Chrome extension ideas?
How to spy on competitors?
What Chrome extension makes $1,500,000 ARR?
Who presold a Chrome extension for $1,000 in 24 hours?

💎 Why It Matters

Google Chrome has billions of users but each person has unique needs.

🔍 Problem

Google Chrome tries to cater to everyone.

But each of us has unique needs.

💡 Solution

Chrome extensions improve your browsing experience with custom features.

🏁 Players

Chrome Extensions

Wappalyzer • Helps to see what technologies websites use
Grammarly • Check spelling and grammar mistakes
Mailtrack • Track your email open rate
Loom • Record your screen, video and audio
Keywords Everywhere • Get keyword data with traffic, cost and volume estimates
Honey • Find coupons on 30,000+ sites

Chrome Extension Makers

Tony Dinh • Black Magic adds analytics and CRM features to X (Twitter)
Ajay Goel • GMass automates cold email outreach
Peter Coles • GoFullPage takes a screenshot of an entire web page
Rick Blyth • Merch Wizard organizes Amazon Merch on Demand items
Glen Allsopp • Detailed SEO Extension shares SEO insights into any website

🔮 Predictions

No-code tools will help anyone build, test and publish Chrome extensions.
- Charles lets you build Chrome extensions in Bubble.
- Bildr lets you build Chrome extensions without code.
- PixieBrix lets you use mods to build Chrome extensions for personal use.
- Extendo lets you design, develop and publish Chrome extensions without writing code.

More Chrome extensions will turn into SaaS platforms. They will cover complex use cases with advanced features.
- Surfe was a Chrome extension for LinkedIn which turned into a full sales CRM.
- Loom was a Chrome extension that turned into a video recording and editing platform.
- Postman was a Chrome extension for testing APIs that turned into an API testing platform. Its Chrome extension is now deprecated.

Freelancers will offer productized services for building Chrome extensions. They will offer a clear time scope, feature list and cost.
- Thomas will build a Chrome extension for up to €380.
- Dixyantar will build a Chrome extension for up to $9,516.
- Hasan Mahmud R. will build a Chrome extension for $1,200.
- Bilawal Umer will build a Chrome extension for your Amazon store for up to $400.

☁️ Opportunities

Use ChatGPT to build Chrome extensions. Save time writing and debugging code.
- Jake Browatzke built a Chrome extension that turns the highlighted text into pirate speech.
- Sashank Gondala built a Chrome extension that asks questions about the highlighted text.
- Ihor Stefurak built a Chrome extension in 10 hours and got $1,000 in pre-orders in 24 hours.
- Ann Stein built a Chrome extension that shows GIFs for the highlighted text using 1 prompt.
- Adriano Interaminense built a Chrome extension that tracks real-time events in the browser.

Index into existing markets. Take competitor risk instead of market risk.
- Alex Chernikov built Mate for translating text which grew to $260,000 ARR.
- Ajay Goel built GMass for cold email outreach which grew to $1,500,000 ARR.
- Jói Sigurdsson built CrankWheel for screen sharing which grew to $580,000 ARR.
- Joel Griffith built Browserless for browsing automation which grew to $85,000 MRR.

Niche down to lower competition. Serve customers with unique needs that nobody else is serving.
- OneTab turns many tabs into 1 tab.
- Closet Tools helps you automate listings on Poshmark.
- PrintFriendly turns web pages into a print-friendly format.
- FlowCrypt adds end-to-end encryption to emails in Gmail.
- Web Cursors lets you interact with other visitors on the same page.
- Helperbird improves the browsing experience for people with dyslexia.
- FantasyPros helps you get expert advice for your fantasy football team.
- Momentum adds to-do lists, weather, photos and quotes to browser tabs.
- AirReview helps hosts and investors to screen guests and see average income.
- Reddit Enhancement Suite improves the browsing experience for fans of the old Reddit design.

🏔️ Risks

Platform Risk • Manifest V3 changed the way content-filtering extensions work. All extensions using Manifest V2 had to migrate or get shut down.
Copycats • Chrome extensions run locally. Anyone who has knowledge can crack and copy your code.
Competitor Risk • Many Chrome extensions focus on the same job-to-be-done. Why should users pick your PDF converter over another one?

🔑 Key Lessons

Chrome extensions can boost your reach. Grammarly grew from 0 users in 2009 to 1,000,000 daily active users in 2015 when it launched Grammarly for Chrome. It grew to 7,000,000 daily active users in the next 2 years.
Having badges can help you build trust and get more users. They prove that an extension follows Google’s best practices and was published by a verified developer.
Chrome extensions are hard to debug. They rely on third-party websites that may or may not work properly.

🔥 Hot Takes

Chrome Web Store is a pink ocean. There are ~137,000 extensions for ~3,000,000,000 Chrome users. In contrast, there are ~1,600,000 apps for ~2,000,000,000 Apple users.
Many Chrome extensions are SaaS apps. They offer features for a recurring price.
You can succeed by offering alternatives to obsolete Chrome extensions. Tim Leland says you can find many extensions that have not been updated in years and have high user counts.

😠 Haters

“I can’t provide enough value with a Chrome extension. The problem I’m trying to solve is too complex.”
Chrome extensions often excel at doing simple actions. If you have a complex workflow, you can build a full SaaS platform with a Chrome extension being a nice-to-have.

“You underestimate how hard it is to build complex Chrome extensions.”
While you can build a simple extension in 1 day, a complex one may take months to build. Taplio’s new extension for LinkedIn outreach took months to develop.

“I can obfuscate my code so that nobody can steal my Chrome extension.”
This goes against Chrome Web Store policies.

🔗 Links

Building a Report on How to Grow and Monetize Chrome Extensions • The tweet behind this report.
Chrome Extension that Steals Everything • Building a malicious Chrome extension.
Build It and They Will Come • How app stores help you get organic traffic.

📁 Related Reports

Ecosystems • Extend platforms with useful tools and services
Freemium • Lower your customer acquisition costs with a free version of your product
Competitor Risk • Index into an existing market instead of trying to create one
No-Code • Build products faster, cheaper and better without writing code
AI Agents • Gain limitless productivity with AI that makes decisions on your behalf

🙏 Thanks

Thanks to Meiko S. Patton, Daniele, Tim Jones, Stewart Townsend, Uwe Dreissigacker, Maciej Cupial, Errol Tiozon, Damian Janzi and Yarty. We had a great time jamming on this report.

✏️ Emin researched and wrote this report. Dru researched and edited this report.

📈 What else?

Trends PRO #0125 — Chrome Extensions has more insights.

What you’ll get:

17 Chrome Extensions (183% More)
13 Chrome Extension Makers (160% More)
7 Predictions (133% More)
13 Opportunities (333% More)
5 Risks (67% More)
6 Key Lessons (100% More)
6 Hot Takes (100% More)
10 Links (233% More)

With Trends Pro you’ll learn:

(📈 Pro) What Chrome extension was acquired for $4,000,000,000?
(📈 Pro) How will AI agents automate browsing?
(📈 Pro) How to validate demand for your SaaS?
(📈 Pro) How to boost your reach with influencer marketing?
(📈 Pro) How to automate your everyday tasks?
(📈 Pro) Who got sued for building malicious Chrome extensions?
(📈 Pro) How to port Chrome extensions to other browsers?
(📈 Pro) Who pivoted from a SaaS to a Chrome extension?
(📈 Pro) Who grew a Chrome extension to 450,000+ users?
(📈 Pro) How to build successful Chrome extensions?
(📈 Pro) Who made $4,000 in 7 days selling a Chrome extension?
(📈 Pro) Who grew a Chrome extension to $38,000 MRR?
And much more…

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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.

🖌️ AI Design Tools 💰 Profitable Side Projects 🤖 ChatGPT Plugins

This week’s Founder Finds includes:

🕸️ An SEO case study
🖌️ A collection of AI design tools
🤖 36 ChatGPT plugins for founders
🔑 9 key lessons for startup founders
💔 40 emotional drivers in copywriting
🧠 How to cultivate a beginner mindset
💰 How to build profitable side projects
📖 A book on overcoming creative blocks
➡️ And more…

🪶 Remember This

If it’s a good idea, you just have to suck it up, that it’s going to get stolen.

🤓 Fav Finds

Tools, tweets and more from Trends Pro Members

🖌️ AI Design Tools shared by Prabhjot Singh Lamba
A curated collection of AI design tools

💰 Side Projects to Startups shared by Royce Johnson
Pieter Levels’ framework of building profitable side projects

🕸️ Niche Site Case Study shared by Yuyu
A case study on using SEO to drive traffic to a niche website

🔧 Try This

40 Key Emotional Drivers

Use emotional drivers to nurture leads into making a desired action. These are natural motivators that each person has.

Health: vigor, endurance and longer life.
Leisure: traveling, hobbies and self development.
Business: better job, reward for merit and ‘being your own boss’.

Think of what they want to get, who they want to be or what they want to do. Then amplify that by appealing to their pride, fear, love and more.

🌟 Founder of the Week

Meiko S. Patton

“I absolutely love the Trends Pro community. I look forward to getting the email reminding me to post in the stand-ups. The one thing that can help any person or business is consistency. 99% of people start but never finish. That is not me.”

Meiko helps content creators build and grow their audiences with beehiiv newsletters.

What’s your most important habit?
After my mom died of cancer in 2008, I fell into a deep depression. There were many things that helped me cope during that time, but the one habit that changed my brain chemistry was getting up at 5:00 AM every day and going to the gym. I don’t get up that early anymore, but I still work out daily.

What are you reading right now?
The 6 Psychological Factors that May Lead to Cancer by Tom Laughlin

The secret to healing lies in our ability to live up to our full potential instead of someone else’s expectations.

What product or service do you wish existed?
After my mom died, I longed to hear her voice and see her talking to me again. It’s possible with AI now.

What product are you obsessively using right now?
To build trust with your audience, you have to consistently show up. My best way to do that is via a newsletter. That’s why I absolutely love beehiiv.

What are you bullish on?
There’s another book I am reading called, Feelings Buried Alive Never Die by Karol Truman. She says our feelings can cause us to experience happiness or pain. I am bullish on the fact that our feelings cause our circumstances in life.

What are you bearish on?
I am a writer, so that means I read a lot. Another book I’m reading is You Can’t Afford the Luxury of Negative Thought by Peter McWilliams. He says when we think of something negative and try to get rid of it in our lives, we are giving it more energy. Instead of focusing on the negative thing you want to give up, focus on the positive thing you want to enjoy.

What’s your favorite Trends Report?
🕸️ Programmatic SEO

I am currently in HackerNoon’s Writing Fellowship where I am learning all about SEO. I love the concept of programmatic SEO and I hope to use it in my future writings.

What else?
The book that I always go back to is The War of Art by Steven Pressfield. All of us here in this community are in a war to express our art. Pressfield says, “So you’re taking a few blows, that’s the price for being in the arena and not on the sidelines. Whatever it is you were meant to do and you don’t do it, you not only hurt yourself, you hurt your children, you hurt all of us, and you hurt the planet. Creative work is not a selfish act, it’s a gift to the world. Don’t cheat us of your contribution. Give us what you got!”

Exclusive Deal: Meiko is offering Trends.vc readers $100 off the first month of her Perpetual Pitching Press Kit service with the coupon code P3K_100.

💬 Join the Conversation

Here’s what Trends Pro Members are talking about…

(📈 Pro) Productization courses
(📈 Pro) Getting started with Figma
(📈 Pro) The fastest path to product launch

📘 Read This

How to Cultivate Beginner’s Mind

“Beginner’s mind” helps you boost your learning abilities, creativity and performance.

These 10 exercises that will help you get a fresh perspective on how the world works:

Flip Your Expectations: Stop assuming how things work.
Building Blocks: Break topics into smaller tasks.
Simple Questions: Ask like a 5-year-old.

🎧 Listen To

9 Key Takeaways for Startup Founders

Rob Walling and Arvid Kahl talk about founder mental health, motivations for bootstrapping, the value of in-person events, product marketing and more.

🏆 Trends Pro Member Wins

🤖 Maisha Cannon made a list of 36 ChatGPT plugins for founders

🪤 Ryan Crownholm launched his book The Hustle Trap

📝 Elie Steinbock made a tutorial on Novel.sh

✍️ Eddie Forson wrote about better note taking during user interviews

🎬 Mehmet Gonullu made a video on ChatGPT Code Interpreter

🌎 Bernardt J. Vogel wrote a worldwide macroeconomic forecast

Get Weekly Reports

Join 54,000+ founders and investors

📈 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.

Micro-Education Businesses: AI Assistants, Micro-Courses, Content-Format Fit

“Once you stop learning, you start dying.” – Albert Einstein

Get Full Access to Trends Pro

❓ What You’ll Learn

How to build micro-courses with AI prompts?
Who will offer micro-consulting services?
How to build an email course?
How to get quick insights into any topic?
How to pick the right format?
How to boost course completion rates?
How to retain information better?
What is the benefit of long books?
Why should you be a painkiller?
How to use micro-learning to teach complex topics?
How to learn anything in the first 20 hours?
What is the micro-education business model?

💎 Why It Matters

You can transform your life in hours instead of months.

🔍 Problem

You want to learn a new skill but lack time

💡 Solution

Micro-education helps you learn new skills fast.

🏁 Players

Micro-Education Examples

Landing Page Hot Tips • Rob Hope teaches how to build effective landing pages
The Collab Lab, Inc. • Maisha L. Cannon teaches AI-powered recruiting
No-Code Maker Workbook • Katt Risen teaches how to build no-code products
Innovisory Sessions • Jordan Divecha teaches creators how to build and launch businesses
Hybrain.Academy • Nick McFly teaches AI for non-tech folks
Growth Marketing 101 • Marketing Max teaches how to get more customers
Find Your Following • Arvid Kahl teaches how to build an audience on Twitter

Micro-Education Tools

Sequel • Add onboarding webinars to your website
Zuddl • Run scalable webinars with polls, chats and more
Mindsmith • Use AI to build detailed micro-courses
Readwise • Highlight, save and manage notes from the web
PDF.ai • Chat with your PDF documents

🔮 Predictions

Personal AI assistants will help us make informed decisions. They will become our personal consultants.
- Jarvis Invest helps you trade stocks.
- FP Alpha gives insights into financial planning.
- FinChat.io helps you get insights into 50,000+ public companies.
- Wally helps you learn more about investing, finance and personal budgeting.

More micro-learning platforms will use AI to build micro-courses. You will give the topic. They will build lessons and tests.
- Mindsmith lets you use guide AI to build detailed micro-courses.
- EdApp lets you build AI-powered micro-courses with a click of a button.
- TalentCards lets you prompt a topic and watch AI build a micro-course from scratch.

Full-time consultants will offer micro-consulting services. They will serve clients with lower budgets but urgent needs.
- Harry Roberts offers web performance consulting and 90-minute calls.
- Kevin C. Whelan offers long-term consulting services but has 90-minute strategy calls.

☁️ Opportunities

Do micro-consulting. Share expert advice on short calls.
- Rebecca Skeete helps with sales and marketing.
- Vanessa Paech helps to build online communities.
- Adrienne Kress helps with book writing and publishing.
- Emma Rhoades helps to build workplaces with a great culture.
- Vanessa Bolosier helps with branding, marketing and content creation.

Build an email course. Stay top of mind by getting right in your students’ inbox.
- Laurie Wang has a 7-day email course on social media marketing.
- David de Céspedes has a 7-day email course on setting goals in Notion.
- Josh Kubicki has a 6-day email course on managing finance in a law firm.

Use ChatGPT to get quick insights into any topic.
- Brian uses ChatGPT to learn JavaScript.
- Brian Morris uses ChatGPT to learn history and literature.
- ThuRein uses ChatGPT to learn React for iPad interfaces.
- Ihtesham Haider uses ChatGPT to learn Japanese, Python and more.

🏔️ Risks

Content-Format Fit • Micro-learning may have theory and tasks that barely touch the topic. It can be hard to teach backend development with a micro-course.
Low Lifetime Value • This lowers margins and makes it harder to invest in customer acquisition.

🔑 Key Lessons

Micro-learning accommodates shorter attention spans. Keeping lessons short and focused can boost the completion rate.
Micro-education is great for upskilling. You can enhance your current skills with a few focused lessons.
Spacing out topics over short lessons helps to retain information better.

🔥 Hot Takes

There’s a benefit to long books. Especially if the ideas are repetitive. You spend more time with the ideas and soak in the lessons better.
You need to pick an area that’s painful enough for people. Be a painkiller, not a vitamin.
Micro-learning is bad for reskilling. You need more than a few micro-lessons to switch careers.

😠 Haters

“It’s hard to learn a new skill in N hours.”
It depends on what you want to learn. While it can be hard to learn data science in a few hours, you can learn how to do squats in a few minutes.

“A mobile format does not work for people who get easily distracted.”
It can be wise to take on a cohort-based course if you rely on external support and accountability to keep going.

“A 3-hour course is not a micro-course.”
Compared to what? There are 50-hour online courses, 30-day email courses and 6-month cohort-based courses. While you can finish a Duolingo lesson in a few minutes, not all topics can fit this format.

“Micro-courses seem like a bad fit for what I want to teach.”
The micro-learning format might not be a good fit for teaching complex topics. Focus on one goal at a time. This course tries to teach “everything” about SEO and lasts ~46 hours. This course teaches local SEO and lasts ~2.5 hours.

🔗 Links

Building a Report on Launching and Growing Micro-Education Businesses • The Tweet behind this report.
The First 20 Hours — How to Learn Anything • How to master practical knowledge and skills.
The Micro-Education Business Model • How to turn your knowledge into a micro-education business.

📁 Related Reports

Email Courses • Deliver promised transformations in a scalable way
Digital Products • Scale your revenue without spending more time
Million-Dollar, One-Person Businesses • Find your highest point of leverage
The Creator Economy • Create, share and monetize your content
Micro-Consulting • Share short bursts of knowledge, perspective, insight and opinion

🙏 Thanks

Thanks to Meiko S. Patton, Alex Doda, Katt Risen, Uwe Dreissigacker, Simon Hell, Marcos Gorgojo, HJ Barraza, Maria Garcia Quintana, Errol Tiozon, Stewart Townsend, Bernardt J. Vogel and Eamonn Carey. We had a great time jamming on this report.

✏️ Emin researched and wrote this report. Dru researched and edited this report.

📈 What else?

Trends PRO #0124 — Micro-Education Businesses has more insights.

What you’ll get:

19 Micro-Education Examples (171% More)
14 Micro-Education Tools (180% More)
8 Predictions (167% More)
13 Opportunities (333% More)
4 Risks (100% More)
7 Key Lessons (133% More)
10 Hot Takes (233% More)
9 Links (200% More)

With Trends Pro you’ll learn:

(📈 Pro) How will teachers spread knowledge beyond classrooms?
(📈 Pro) Why will companies use micro-learning to train employees?
(📈 Pro) Why do companies build learning academies?
(📈 Pro) How to manage personal knowledge?
(📈 Pro) How to share quick solutions to common problems?
(📈 Pro) How to turn expertise into a short guide?
(📈 Pro) How to boost engagement for your online course?
(📈 Pro) How to boost customer success with onboarding?
(📈 Pro) How to cater to visual learners?
(📈 Pro) How to boost student success?
(📈 Pro) How to stand out from competitors?
(📈 Pro) What are micro-credentials?
(📈 Pro) How to boost views on YouTube videos?
(📈 Pro) How to take better notes?
(📈 Pro) How to make educational micro-videos?
(📈 Pro) How to use gamification?
And much more…

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💼 130+ Boring Businesses 🙂 The Secret to Happiness 🎮 Gamified Habit Tracking

This week’s Founder Finds includes:

✨ A Midjourney guide
🎮 A gamified productivity app
📸 An advanced graphic design tool
⌛ How to find time for side projects
💼 130+ boring businesses to invest in
🌀 How the flow state leads to happiness
🚀 A book about the struggles of founders
❓ 25 questions you should ask before starting
➡️ And more…

🪶 Remember This

You only ever grow as a human being if you’re outside your comfort zone

🤓 Fav Finds

Tools, tweets and more from Trends Pro Members

📸 Artboard Studio shared by Daniel Berggren
A graphic design tool with automation features

⌛ Finding the Time for Side Projects shared by Royce Johnson
A blog post on managing side projects with a busy schedule

🚀 Lost and Founder shared by Chuck Hardy
A book about the struggles of building a tech startup

📘 Read This

130+ Boring Businesses to Invest In

Here’s the formula for a boring business that you want to buy, build or invest in:

Stale: No fancy CRM or automation.
Old: Has been around for 5, 10, 15 years.
Weak: Its competitors are “ok”, not “great”.
Simple: Has a simple but needed business model.

Buy it, automate it and win over the competition.

🌟 Founder of the Week

Tim Jones

“I’ve been reading Trends.vc for years. I recently joined Trends Pro and I like how supportive the community is. Everybody is there to help you grow as an entrepreneur.”

Tim is building Derby City Data which offers freelance data consulting for small businesses and nonprofits.

What’s your most important habit?
Telling myself each day something that I’m thankful for. Sometimes work and life can get really overwhelming. Reminding myself about the best things in my life helps to keep me sane and motivated.

What are you reading right now?
The Country of the Blind by Andrew Leland

My dad is legally blind and recently needed to start using a cane. I wanted to know how he might be feeling without being intrusive or offensive. I hope the book will give me more insight into how I can connect with him.

What product or service do you wish existed?
A tool that increases prices after a set time or X number of purchases.

What product are you obsessively using right now?
I use the iOS app Habitica to track and maintain my habits.

What are you bullish on?
Publishers with large historical or technical archives. Publishers can license their works to AI companies to train models that are better than what we have now.

ChatGPT was trained on Common Crawl data and still gives good results. Imagine AI trained on high-quality data from The New York Times articles, O’Reilly technical books or peer-reviewed magazines.

What’s your favorite Trends Report?
🦾 AI Agents

I’m a fan of delegating work to my AI assistants.

Exclusive Deal: Tim is offering Trends.vc readers free advice on how to model your data. Not sure how to structure your tables and link them together? Tim will help you out pro bono. First come, first serve. Contact Tim via email or message him on Trends.vc to claim.

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(📈 Pro) Productization courses
(📈 Pro) Getting started with Figma
(📈 Pro) The fastest path to product launch

❔ Ask Yourself

25 Questions Before Starting

Here are 25 questions on your value proposition, user acquisition, conversion, delivery and operations.

Answer them before building a product:

What’s your pricing strategy?
How will you get your first 100 users?
Why would people return to your product?
What value will users get from your product?
How will you balance building and marketing?

👀 Watch This

The Secret to Happiness

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi studies happiness. He says money doesn’t make us happy.

What makes us happy is the “flow” that boosts our well-being, productivity and creativity. It occurs when we get involved in challenging, but doable tasks.

🏆 Trends Pro Member Wins

🎨 Shuyen Phoon launched UI Design for No-Coders

✨ Vikash Kumar Prajapati made a Midjourney guide

❤️ Dale Williams built Heart of your Strategy

🎪 Chuck Hardy is building Habium in public

⚙️ Mehmet Gonullu hosted a masterclass on business efficiency

🇪🇸 Maciej Cupial was interviewed in Spanish

🫐 Uwe Dreissigacker went viral on Sri Lankan TikTok with InvoiceBerry

🧠 David Fu unlocked Trends.vc Masterminds by reaching a 30-day standup streak

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