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

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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.

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

Get Full Access to Trends Pro

❓ 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

1. Building a Report on How to Grow and Monetize Chrome Extensions • The tweet behind this report.
2. Chrome Extension that Steals Everything • Building a malicious Chrome extension.
3. 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.

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

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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.

📈 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.

“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

1. Building a Report on Launching and Growing Micro-Education Businesses • The Tweet behind this report.
2. The First 20 Hours — How to Learn Anything • How to master practical knowledge and skills.
3. 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…
  
  

Get Weekly Reports

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📈 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.

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.

💬 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

❔ 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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🧠 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.

“The greatest asset of a company is its people.” – Jorge Paulo

Get Full Access to Trends Pro

❓ What You’ll Learn

• How to use AI to screen candidates?
• What are vertical hiring services?
• Why serve local businesses?
• How to find candidates with unique skills?
• How to attract more candidates?
• What’s the cost of a bad hire?
• How to find your niche?
• How to deal with a talent shortage?
• Why does employer brand matter?
• Who are informal recruiters?
• What is collaborative hiring?
• How to avoid being circumvented as a recruiter?
• How to solve the chicken-and-egg problem of job boards?
• What are the most common HR terms?
• What is the recruiting process of a staffing agency?
  
  

💎 Why It Matters

Recruiting is a ~$450,000,000,000 industry with a low barrier to entry and high-value sales.

🔍 Problem

Talent acquisition takes time.

💡 Solution

Recruiting businesses help you find, screen and qualify candidates fast.

🏁 Players

Placement Businesses

• Assembly Industries • Hire a full team of experts for your business
• JobRack • Hire remote talent in Eastern Europe
• RemotelyTalents • Find talent from Ukraine, Romania, Poland and more
• Movevirtual • Hire virtual assistants for design, support and marketing
• SecureVision • Add hands-on recruiters to your talent acquisition team
• The Collaborative Staffing • Full-service staffing agency
  

Recruiting Tools

• Deel • Platform for hiring remote talent in 100+ countries
• Leap Room • AI hiring assistant for tech, sales, marketing and more
• Frontend Mentor Hiring • Find junior front-end developers
• Recruit CRM • Workflow automation tool for staffing agencies
• Honeit • Turn calls and interviews into actionable talent insights
• TalentReef • Staffing tool for the hourly workforce
  
  

🔮 Predictions

• Recruiting businesses will use AI to save time finding and screening talent.
  • talent.ai uses AI to find and categorize talent by skill sets.
  • The Work In Me uses AI to lower search and placement times.
  • Turing uses AI to vet and match developers with their dream jobs.
  • Dedicare uses AI to find and screen candidates faster than competitors.

• We’ll see more vertical hiring services. They will help you find talent in specific, lower-cost locations.
  • Uplers helps to hire remote talent from India.
  • TalentQL helps to hire top tech talent from Africa.
  • Remote Talent LATAM helps you hire remote talent from Latin America.
  • RemotelyTalents helps you find talent from Ukraine, Romania, Poland and more.
  • Shepherd helps you hire full-time employees from the Philippines and Latin America.

• Staffing firms will focus on serving local businesses. Their knowledge of local communities will help them optimize for local values and culture.
  • Crown Staffing offers recruiting services to businesses in the Midwest.
  • Spherion has established relationships with local employers and communities.
  • Collaborative has a trusted reputation among local businesses in the UK’s Wigan and North West communities.
    
    

☁️ Opportunities

• Build a niche job board. Serve companies and candidates better by making design concessions to fit their unique needs.
  • DeafJobWizard shares jobs that don’t need full hearing abilities.
  • 4/day Week shares remote software jobs with 4-day workweeks.
  • WorkingNotWorking is a job board for creative talent with portfolios.
  • Y Combinator only shares jobs at its startups that you can filter by batch.
  • Women Who Code shares engineering jobs with women-friendly cultures.

• Build lead magnets to attract candidates. Offer free career tips, resume reviews, mock interviews and more.
  • ReachExt does free resume reviews for candidates.
  • Remote has guides on hiring remote talent for dozens of countries.
  • Relocate.me has a learning center with free guides for job seekers.
  • Wellfound helps candidates to know what they’re worth with the Salary Calculator.

• Build a hiring platform that uses AI to screen talent. Help recruiters save time finding, vetting and matching candidates.
  • Ceipal uses AI to find and screen candidates.
  • Arya uses AI to find, filter and engage with candidates.
  • Manatal uses AI to match candidates with jobs in seconds.
  • Globus uses AI to find, screen and engage with candidates.
  • XOR uses AI to automate talent search and interview scheduling.
    
    

🏔️ Risks

• Economic Downturns • Hiring during a recession is hard as companies cut costs.
• Bad Hire Costs • The average cost of one bad hire is $15,000. Clients can recover losses from you for placing a candidate without proper vetting.
  
  

🔑 Key Lessons

• Niching down can help you succeed. It’s easier to hire developers than to hire developers, marketers, lawyers and executives. Don’t try to boil the ocean.
• Building a vetted, high-quality talent pool can help you deal with a talent shortage. It’s easier to fill your talent pipeline with qualified candidates when you don’t have to wait for them to apply.
• It’s easier to fill a vacancy if the employer has a great brand, benefits and values.
  
  

🔥 Hot Takes

• We’ll see “informal recruiters” as companies use referral bonuses to attract talent. We’ll pay $1,000 to anyone who helps us hire Trends.vc Analysts. Paraform pays you for recruiting for startups.
• Companies will prefer productized services for common needs such as design and development.
• Staffing agencies will use collaborative hiring. They will invite the client’s team to the screening and testing process.
  
  

😠 Haters

“As a recruiter, how can I avoid being circumvented if I place a candidate?”
Japan Dev motivates clients to tell about a successful hire via late fees and ¥3000 Amazon Gift Cards. Word-of-mouth is effective too. As other recruiters discover this type of behavior, they may choose not to work with those companies and candidates.

“It’s hard to find a niche that is large enough to build a recruiting business but small enough to not be saturated.”
Unless it’s a marketplace-like business such as job boards, the recruiting space is fragmented and no recruiter can serve all the world’s needs. You can tap into most of these markets and there’s proven demand in each.

“How can I solve the chicken-and-egg problem to build a job board?”
Borrow supply from other job boards. Do things that don’t scale and hand-pick jobs. Engage with communities where talent hangs out. Do this until you have enough traffic to monetize with paid job posts.

“Offering paid career coaching to those in the same role sounds like a recipe for moral hazard. The coach can make more money when candidates switch roles often.”
It can be wise to switch coaches if you feel like the coach is not living up to your expectations.

“It’s not that easy to enter this industry.”
It depends on what you want to offer. While you may need a great reputation to do executive search, a good reputation can help you get started with simpler placements. If you’re a good React developer, chances are you can recruit another good React developer for your client.

🔗 Links

1. Looking for Bootstrapped Businesses in the Hiring Sector • The Tweet behind this report.
2. Glossary for HR Terms • List of the most common HR terms.
3. The Recruitment Process of a Staffing Agency • Guide on finding and vetting candidates.
   
   

📁 Related Reports

• ​​​​​Lead Generation • Find potential clients with high lifetime value.
• Agencies • Help clients solve problems without hiring and managing large teams.
• Consulting • Consulting helps you learn more and earn more.
• Personal Brands • Good personal brand gives you pricing power and opportunities.
• Micro-Consulting • Turn years of experience into a short call.
  
  

🙏 Thanks

Thanks to Elie Steinbock, Sumant Yerramilly, Stewart Townsend and Maisha Cannon. 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 #0123 — Recruiting Businesses has more insights.

What you’ll get:

• 18 Placement Business Examples (200% More)
• 18 Recruiting Tools (200% More)
• 8 Predictions (167% More)
• 15 Opportunities (400% More)
• 5 Risks (150% More)
• 11 Key Lessons (267% More)
• 6 Hot Takes (100% More)
• 12 Links (300% More)

With Trends Pro you’ll learn:

• (📈 Pro) How to follow foreign laws when hiring remotely?
• (📈 Pro) Which recruiting companies offer premade teams instead of individuals?
• (📈 Pro) How to monetize your work experience?
• (📈 Pro) Which recruiting companies offer top talent curation services?
• (📈 Pro) Why build a marketplace with hand-picked jobs?
• (📈 Pro) How to get insights into candidates’ hard and soft skills?
• (📈 Pro) What are fractional HR services?
• (📈 Pro) How to measure the success of your hiring strategies?
• (📈 Pro) What do candidates seek in a staffing agency?
• (📈 Pro) What can save you from paying for bad hires?
• (📈 Pro) Who offered to pay $100,000 for referring a candidate?
• (📈 Pro) What are alternative ways to spot talent?
• (📈 Pro) How can AI lead to discrimination?
• (📈 Pro) What will companies focus on instead of resumes?
• (📈 Pro) How to boost the candidate-job fit rate?
• (📈 Pro) How to build a job board over the weekend?
• (📈 Pro) How to interview candidates?
• (📈 Pro) How to find candidates on LinkedIn?
• (📈 Pro) What are 15 recruitment marketing strategies?
• (📈 Pro) How to hire great remote candidates?
• (📈 Pro) What are the 12 types of hiring bias?
• (📈 Pro) Who grew a 2-person recruiting business to $960,000 per year?
• And much more…
  
  

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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.

This week’s Founder Finds includes:

• An AI text-to-song tool
• How to build a 5-year plan
• A video series on the basics of AI
• A step-by-step landing page guide
• An AMA about reaching $100,000 ARR
• A reminder about taking responsibility
• An essay on the network effects of ideas
• And more…

🪶 Remember This

Believe you can and you’re halfway there.

🤓 Fav Finds

Tools, tweets and more from Trends Pro Members

🎨 Landing Page Guide shared by Royce Johnson
A step-by-step guide to building high-converting landing pages

🤖 How AI Works shared by Prabhjot Singh Lamba
A YouTube playlist of short videos to learn about the basics of AI

🎵 Suno AI shared by Stewart Townsend
An AI tool that generates songs from text prompts. Listen to some examples here

🔧 Try This

Create a 5-Year Plan That Fires You Up

Do you know what you want or will be doing in 5 years?

It’s easy to get lost in your daily routine and lose sight of goals you have for the future.

Learn how to make a 5-year plan with a long-term vision and key steps to achieving your goals.

🌟 Founder of the Week

Nik McFly

“I love Trends Pro. The reports are great and the community is awesome.”

Nik is building Hybrain.Academy. It’s an AI school for non-techies that helps them learn AI to save time and money doing personal and business tasks.

What product or service do you wish existed?
AI SaaS that helps people build good habits.

What product are you obsessively using right now?
ChatGPT. It helps me work faster.

What are you bullish on?
AI agents. These will help us remove inefficiencies.

What are you bearish on?
Nation-state. Nation-states lead to fights and bias They make it harder for people to move freely and ignore the voice of small groups.

What’s your favorite Trends Report?
🤖 ChatGPT

Because my ChatGPT online course was included! 🙂

Exclusive Deal: Nik is offering Trends.vc readers 20% off his ChatGPT Cash Cow course using the code TRENDSVC20.

💬 Join the Conversation

Here’s what Trends Pro Members are talking about…

• (📈 Pro) Using Evernote vs Notion
  
• (📈 Pro) How to find a co-founder
  
• (📈 Pro) The fastest path to product launch

📘 Read This

How Ideas Grow

Everything we do is based on narratives — stories that explain how the world works.

• AI is booming – you started building an AI startup.
• You heard carbs are bad – you started eating salads for lunch.
• You saw “true love” in a movie – you broke up because it didn’t feel right.

Narratives have network effects. When more people see that the narrative is promising, more people start using it, investing in it, talking about it and building it.

That’s how ideas grow.

🎧 Listen To

It’s Not Your Fault, But It Is Your Responsibility

Expecting nothing but good feels like a good mindset. But then life happens.

There are dogs that get sick in the middle of the night, unpleasant conversations, hard decisions and more. Most people’s reaction is to shirk.

Things are hard and scary. It’s not your fault. But it’s your responsibility to do what has to be done.

🏆 Trends Pro Member Wins

👥 Gab, Frank Jones and Jinay Shah unlocked 1:1 Founder Intros by joining daily standups

💯 Maciej Cupial hosted an AMA about Calendesk’s journey to $100,000 ARR

🎙️ Simon Daley was featured in a podcast

✒️ Dale Williams wrote about ethics in coaching

🎞️ Elie Steinbock’s YouTube channel reached 100+ subscribers

🐺 Stewart Townsend signed the first customer for Podcast Wolf

💌 Yarty reached 1,000 subscribers for FP&HEY

🚗 Prabhjot Singh Lamba built a simple car game with Spline

📝 Maisha Cannon launched a guide for recruiters

Get Weekly Reports

Join 54,000+ founders and investors

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📈 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.

“Getting information off the internet is like taking a drink from a fire hydrant.” – Mitchell Kapor

Get Full Access to Trends Pro

❓ What You’ll Learn

• How to sell sponsorships?
• How to grow your daily newsletter?
• How to build a value ladder?
• How to calculate customer acquisition costs?
• How to use AI to write daily content?
• What are daily newsletter networks?
• Why are local daily newsletters important?
• Who is building paid communities around daily newsletters?
• Who is building niche job boards around daily newsletters?
• Who sold $100,000 in sponsorships with only 10,000 subscribers?
  
  

💎 Why It Matters

You can build direct relationships with your audience at scale.

🔍 Problem

The world moves fast. It’s hard to keep up with the latest news.

💡 Solution

Daily newsletters help you stay informed on industry news and trends.

🏁 Players

Daily Newsletters

• The Daily Stoic • Short daily emails on stoic philosophy.
• Refind • The best curated articles from the web.
• Quartz Daily Brief • News from the global economy.
• TLDR • 5-minute tech news round-ups.
• TheFutureParty • Daily coverage of the entertainment industry.
• The Rundown • Breaking AI news.
  

Newsletter Tools

• beehiiv • The newsletter platform built for growth.
• Ghost • Open-source email platform for content creators.
• Passionfroot • Build a storefront that converts more sponsors. 
• BeyondWords • Converts text-based content into audio.
• Get Response • All-in-one tool for email marketing.
  
  

🔮 Predictions

• Daily newsletters will use AI to write content. AI will boost productivity by automating content curation, drafting, publishing and more.
  • AiHunt used GPT-4 to automate 99% of writing.
  • Prompt Entrepreneur writes a 1500-word daily newsletter using AI.

• Daily newsletters will grow into newsletter networks. They will become a go-to source of news for multiple industries.
  • The Daily Upside grew its reach with Patent Drop and Power Corridor.
  • TLDR started out covering tech news. Now they cover AI, Crypto and more.
  • Morning Brew started with business news. Then they expanded into professional brands.

• There will be more local daily newsletters. Readers want to stay up-to-date on news and events in their cities.
  • blogTO sends daily top news stories in Toronto.
  • The Edinburgh Guardian rounds up daily news in Edinburgh.
  • 6AM City is a group of daily newsletters that cover the local news in select American cities.
    
    

☁️ Opportunities

• Sell sponsorships. Help brands reach qualified prospects.
  • Anthony Castrio explains how a daily newsletter can earn $150,000 a year.
  • Superhuman charges $2,999 for a main ad spot and $1,499 for a featured ad. 
  • Prompt Engineering Daily offers main ads for $3,000 and classified ads for $300.
  • Marketing Max earned $100,000 with 10,000 subscribers from his e-commerce newsletter.

• Build a niche job board. Help your readers find career opportunities in the niche you cover.
  • TLDR jobs shares tech jobs.
  • Bankless curates Web3 jobs.
  • Girlboss Daily curates jobs from many industries.

• Build a paid community. Bring together like-minded people and help them learn from each other.
  • Milk Road offers a Pro version of its newsletter with deeper crypto insights.
  • Letters from an American sells access to the newsletter archive for $5 a month.
  • Stratechery Plus gives access to subscriber-only updates, interviews, podcasts and more.
  • Sinocism writes expert analyses and curates news related to China. They offer a premium subscription for subscriber-only posts and community access.
    
    

🏔️ Risks

• Burnout • It can be hard to make content every day.
• Platform Risk • Most email accounts are on Gmail. You’re subject to Google’s policies and outages.
• Data Privacy Laws • Data privacy can hurt your email deliverability.
  
  

🔑 Key Lessons

• Pick a topic that has enough content for a daily newsletter. Combine related topics if your subject is too niche.
• Build a value ladder to upsell products. Engage readers with free content before promoting your paid offer.
• Quality and consistency matter. Do not sacrifice quality for the sake of your publishing cadence.
  
  

🔥 Hot Takes

• Customer acquisition costs will rise as more newsletters enter the market. Newsletters will need to find cheaper marketing channels.
• Daily newsletters deliver bite-sized content. It will become more difficult for in-depth writing to succeed.
  
  

😠 Haters

“How are daily newsletter businesses defensible in the age of AI-generated content?”
AI-generated content is missing a unique voice and perspective. Audiences want to be entertained and connected to creators. Daily communication with readers builds loyalty and trust. 

“Monthly, weekly, now daily newsletters. Why should I clog my inbox with daily emails?”
Daily newsletters send timely information. They keep you up to date on fast-moving industries and urgent news. They save you time with a value-packed email every day.

“Daily newsletters can be biased. Who decides what content gets featured?”
The best way to handle bias is to get your news from different sources. Daily newsletters are just one source out of many.

🔗 Links

1. Looking for Daily Newsletters • The tweet behind the report. 
2. The Ultimate Guide to Email Newsletters • Learn how to grow and monetize your email newsletter.
3. 5 Essential Elements for a Great Newsletter • Learn what makes a good newsletter.
   
   

📁 Related Reports

• ​​​​​Paid Newsletters • Paid subscriptions are a revenue source for daily newsletters.
• Email Courses • Daily newsletters sell email courses to monetize their audience.
• Personal Brands • Growing a daily newsletter builds a loyal following.
• Curation as a Service • Curation is a popular content format for daily newsletters.
• The Creator Economy • Creators can capture value by making content for a niche audience.
  
  

🙏 Thanks

Thanks to Uwe Dreissigacker, Bernardt J. Vogel, Errol Tiozon, Stewart Townsend, Zarinah C., Chris Bulen, Tarek Zalt and Meiko S. Patton. We had a great time jamming on this report.

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

📈 What else?

Trends PRO #0122 — Daily Newsletters has more insights.

What you’ll get:

• 21 Daily Newsletter Examples (250% More)
• 10 Newsletter Tools (100% More)
• 8 Predictions (167% More)
• 8 Opportunities (167% More)
• 5 Risks (67% More)
• 6 Key Lessons (100% More)
• 4 Hot Takes (100% More)
• 8 Links (167% More)

With Trends Pro you’ll learn:

• (📈 Pro) Why turn daily newsletters into podcasts?
• (📈 Pro) Who is building million-dollar daily newsletters?
• (📈 Pro) How to use AI-generated images to boost reader engagement?
• (📈 Pro) How to monetize daily newsletters beyond ads?
• (📈 Pro) How to build a content engine?
• (📈 Pro) How to keep high deliverability?
• (📈 Pro) How to stand out from competitors?
• (📈 Pro) How to win readers’ attention?
• (📈 Pro) Why are daily newsletters great for experiments?
• (📈 Pro) How to boost email open rate with ChatGPT?
• And much more…
  
  

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.

This week’s Founder Finds includes:

• How to ship projects fast
• The two types of confidence
• How to price your expertise
• A talk about doing what you love
• A guide on ChatGPT Code Interpreter
• How to use the AIDA copywriting model
• A story of going from $0 to $58,000 MRR
• And more…

🪶 Remember This

If you look closely, most overnight successes took a long time.

🤓 Fav Finds

Tools, tweets and more from Trends Pro Members

⚙️ Code Interpreter Guide shared by Maisha Cannon
A blog post on the use cases of ChatGPT Code Interpreter

✍️ The AIDA Model shared by Eddie Forson
A guide to the classic copywriting formula with examples and templates

❤️ Do What You Love shared by Prabhjot Singh Lamba
The founder of Mailchimp talks about quitting your job and doing what you love

📘 Read This

The Winner’s Edge

To succeed, you must take risks. To take risks, you must have confidence.

There are 2 types of confidence.

• Phony confidence: You think you understand something that you don’t.
• Expert confidence: You know what you’re doing and what it will lead to.

If you don’t know which type of confidence you have, it’s best to assume it’s phony. This will help you make sure that you have a large margin of safety for the risks you can’t see.

🌟 Founder of the Week

Sumant Yerramilly

“My experience with Trends Pro has been great. It’s nice to see other founders go through the ups and downs together. This gives me comfort knowing that we are on this journey of entrepreneurship together.”

Sumant is building Assembly Industries. He helps founders hire vetted offshore talent and pre-made teams who are experts in sales, marketing, finance and operations. On a fractional or full-time basis.

What’s your most important habit?
HIIT workouts in the morning. It helps to clear my mind and puts me in a meditative state to help you relax before starting your day.

What are you reading right now?
Fingerprints of the Gods by Graham Hancock

I’m interested in ancient civilizations and what helped them rise and fall.

What product or service do you wish existed?
An easy meeting scheduler for groups. Calendly does a great job on one-way scheduling but if there are two or more people, it becomes hard to coordinate across time zones and calendar tools.

What product are you obsessively using right now?
I’m using VEED to share my journey on social media. I love how they keep it simple yet innovative with avatars, auto-captions and more.

What are you bullish on?
Building businesses is becoming easier. I’m bullish on using AI to unleash creativity. The rate of innovation will grow up to 400% in the next 5 years.

What are you bearish on?
The AI hype. Lots of companies are raising capital and hundreds of companies are now offering the same features around ChatGPT. Once it’s over, I wonder how many tools will be AI integrations vs standalone AI products.

What’s your favorite Trends Report?
🔁 Productized Services

It inspired me to start Assembly Industries. I realized that many businesses want to get X done for $Y price. They don’t want to go the traditional hiring route. If you can deliver high-quality talent for a flat fee, companies  will pay. In fact, they will pay a lot.

Exclusive Deal: Sumant is offering Trends.vc readers $250 off the first month of hiring an expert with Assembly Industries. To take advantage, send an email to cs@assembly-industries.com and mention Trends.vc.

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• (📈 Pro) Using Evernote vs Notion
  
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🎧 Listen To

How to Not Suck at Project Management

Ben Orenstein and Adam Wathan share the strategies they use to ship projects within the first few days and to keep them shippable until the release.

• Do Small Tasks: Do not delay quick tasks, do them now.
• Don’t Overcomplicate: Do a great version of a simple product.
• Build a Roadmap: Make your work-in-progress visible to avoid taking on too much.

❔ Ask Yourself

How Much Insight to Give Away on Your Website?

You ask this question because you don’t want others to copy you, use your advice for free or know your unique sales proposition before hopping on a call with you.

David C. Baker says that the more insight you publish for free, the less you need to invest in the sale. As you build trust, you will have fewer long sales cycles with test work and multiple meetings that eat up your time and energy.

🏆 Trends Pro Member Wins

👥 Ryan Booher unlocked 1:1 Founder Intros by joining daily standups

📈 Mac Martine shared his journey from $0 to $58,000 MRR with The SaaS Bootstrapper

🧰 Prabhjot Singh Lamba made an onboarding tutorial for Craftar

🤖 Bernardt J. Vogel wrote about training AI with synthetic data

⛰️ Katt Risen got 270 new subscribers and sold $695 in sponsorships while traveling

🤔 Eddie Forson wrote about starting with a problem, not an idea

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“Connection is the energy that fuels the soul.” – Deepak Chopra

Get Full Access to Trends Pro

❓ What You’ll Learn

• How to build AI companions?
• What do AI companions offer that human companions don’t?
• How can influencers form deeper connections with their audience?
• How to scale your micro-consulting business with AI clones?
• How to automate your business?
• How to boost your productivity?
• How can AI companions impact relationships?
  
  

💎 Why It Matters

AI Companions can give you a sense of connection when friends and family are not around.

🔍 Problem

We have a fundamental need to feel heard and understood.

💡 Solution

AI companions offer meaningful connection with personalized support when you need it.

🏁 Players

AI Companions 

• Pi • Personal AI companion for supportive conversations and advice.
• Cleo • AI companion for personal finance.
• Kai • AI companion for well-being.
• Clare • Voice-based AI coach for mental well-being.
• Melli • Voice-controlled AI companion built for the elderly.
• Polly • Assistive AI that helps people with neurological conditions. 
  

AI Companion Tools

• Replika • Customize an AI companion for friendship and romantic relationships. 
• Character • AI companions based on people and characters. 
• Forever Voices • AI studio turning influencers into virtual companions.
• Claude • AI assistant for integrating into different business models.
• Chai • Create, share and find AI companions.
  
  

🔮 Predictions

• People will become immortal. We’ll see deceased people live as AI companions.
  • Replika founder Eugenia Kuyda built Roman Bot to preserve her late friend’s memories.
  • Hossein Rahnama’s project Augmented Eternity turns a person’s digital presence into an AI chatbot.

• Influencers will make digital versions of themselves available to their fans 24/7. This will help them form deeper connections with their audiences.
  • Amouranth launched an AI clone of herself to interact with her OnlyFans audience.
  • Caryn Marjorie has a digital version of herself that people can talk to and date for $1 per minute.

• We’ll see conversational internet driven by AI companions. They will bring search results into conversations.
  • Microsoft Edge added Bing Chat that gives results to your search queries.
  • Perplexity AI is a chat-based search engine that summarizes search results.
    
    

☁️ Opportunities

• Use AI companions to scale your micro-consulting business. Reach more clients in less time.
  • Jodie Cook made a clone of herself to offer 24/7 business coaching.
  • Deepak Chopra created Digital Deepak for people to access his wellness practices.
  • Kisson Lin built a digital twin of herself that people can talk to about her company Mindverse.

• Use AI companions to automate business tasks. This can lower operational costs and boost efficiency.
  • Crisp launched MagicReply, a virtual AI assistant for customer service.
  • Drippi is an AI assistant that writes and automates cold outreach messages for Twitter DMs.
  • Wendy’s launched an AI-powered robot for delivering food from the kitchen to parking spots.

• Delegate personal tasks to AI clones to boost your productivity.
  • Hamed made an AI clone of Lex Fridman to do slide presentations for him.
  • Ellie is an AI email assistant that replies to your emails in your writer’s voice.
  • Joanna Stern made an AI clone of herself to make phone calls and get her bank details.
    
    

🏔️ Risks

• Privacy Risk • Intimate thoughts shared with AI Companions can get hacked or misused. Hackers can use conversations for social engineering. Companies can misuse conversations by selling your data to advertisers.
• Artificial Romance •  AI Companions are not alive but people fall in love with them. Unhealthy attachments can lead to mental health issues. Replika removed “Erotic Roleplay” and restored it when users were upset by the update.
  
  

🔑 Key Lessons

• Human companions have competing priorities. Your AI companion is there for you 24/7.
• You can use AI Companions to practice real-life interactions. This can improve your well-being and communication skills.
  
  

🔥 Hot Takes

• AI companions will know us better than we know ourselves. They will learn your behavioral patterns and help you make decisions based on your personality and goals.
• AI Companions will become a part of your life. You will use AI companions to efficiently do your personal and professional tasks.
  
  

😠 Haters

“The loneliness epidemic will get worse with the rise of AI companions.”
Too much of anything is harmful. Human companions aren’t always available when you need them. AI Companions fill in the gap and help to deal with loneliness. Some people have married their AI Companions. 

“AI Companions can give harmful advice.”
Sure. AI models can give bad advice. It’s wise to verify information shared by AI companions if you rely on them in your personal and professional life.

“AI Companions will take our jobs in the next few years.”
AI has already automated many jobs in various industries. Instead of competing with AI, add AI tools to your workflow.

🔗 Links

1. Get Ready for Our Report on AI Companions • The Tweet behind this report.
2. The Rise of AI Companions • A mini-documentary on AI Companions.
   
   

📁 Related Reports

• ​​​​​ChatGPT • AI companions can be built using ChatGPT.
• Voice Cloning • Build an AI companion that uses your voice. 
• Virtual Influencers • AI Companions can become virtual influencers.
• AI-Generated Content • Discover AI tools for generating image, voice and video content.
• AI Image Generators • Use AI image generators to create avatars for AI Companions.
  
  

🙏 Thanks

Thanks to Marcos Gorgojo, Prabhjot Singh Lamba and Alex Doda. We had a great time jamming on this report.

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

📈 What else?

Trends PRO #0121 — Virtual AI Companions has more insights.

What you’ll get:

• 14 AI Companion Examples (133% More)
• 13 AI Companion Tools (160% More)
• 7 Predictions (133% More)
• 7 Opportunities (133% More)
• 4 Risks (100% More)
• 3 Key Lessons (50% More)
• 4 Hot Takes (100% More)
• 8 Links (300% More)

With Trends Pro you’ll learn:

• (📈 Pro) What are 100+ AI companions for specific tasks?
• (📈 Pro) How to personalize your AI companion?
• (📈 Pro) How to build an AI bot with your data? 
• (📈 Pro) How are AI companions different from other chatbots?
• (📈 Pro) How to create unique experiences with AI companions?
• (📈 Pro) How to build a digital version of yourself?
• (📈 Pro) How can AI companions boost quality of life?
• (📈 Pro) How will AI companions blend into our lives?
• (📈 Pro) How will AI companions transform the medical industry?
• (📈 Pro) How to use AI companions for dating?
• (📈 Pro) How to preserve memories with loved ones?
• And much more…
  
  

Get Weekly Reports

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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.

📈 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.

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