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“Work with the garage door open.”

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❓ What You’ll Learn

• How to validate ideas?
• How to build an audience?
• How to get fast feedback?
• Why social accountability matters?
• How to meet new friends, mentors and investors?
• How to think about copycats?
• How to repurpose content?

💎 Why It Matters

Building in public helps you:

• Validate ideas
• Stay top-of-mind
• Get fast feedback
• Build connections with stakeholders

🔍 Problem

You need to break through noise to share your story.

💡 Solution

Make a habit of sharing struggles, wins, milestones, questions and lessons.

🏁 Players

People Building in Public

• Dru Riley • Trends.vc creator who shares progress and failuresin public.
• Arvid Kahl • Sharing lessons on bootstrapping and building in public.
• Aaron Aalto • Designer and artist building Wagmi Table.
• Sharath Kuruganty • Co-founder of Shoutout. Shares insights around no-code, community and product.
• Naya Moss • Building Frauvis. A newsletter, community and job board.
• Maciej Cupial • Building Calendesk. An online booking system.
• Zoe Chew • Shares projects on her personal site.
• Karthik Puvvada (KP) • The “Build In Public” Guy. He was offered a job with OnDeck in public.
• Justin Jackson • Building Transistor.fm. A podcast publishing platform.
• Brian Casel • Building ZipMessage. A video messaging tool for async conversations.
• Janel Loi • Building Newsletter OS. A framework to launch and run your newsletter.
• EK • Building Appbasics and RubyOnRemote
• Damon Chen • Building Testimonial, Embed, Supportman and See Ya Future.
• Brett Williams • Building a one-person, million-dollar design service – Designjoy.

🔮 Predictions

• Creators will use podcasts as a channel to build in public. See examples:
  • The Build in Public Podcast where KP interviews creators.
  • Startups for the Rest of Us where Rob Walling shares his journey building MicroConf and TinySeed.
  • The Bootstrapped Founder where Arvid Kahl opens up about the process of writing books, making courses and building PermanentLink.
  • Lunch Pail Daily where Lola talks about no-code and growing a solo business.
  • Product Journey Podcast where Noah Bragg and Ben Mann talk about the journey of building bootstrapped businesses.
  • Bootstrapped Web where Brian Casel shares his journey building ZipMessage.
  • Software Social where Colleen Schnettler and Michele Hansen jam on building Simple File Upload and Geocodio.
  • The Art of Product where Ben Orenstein and Derrick Reimer share updates on SavvyCal and Tuple.
• More companies will be built around accountability challenges.
  • Creative Companion Club is for creators.
  • 100 Days of No-Code is for builders.
  • Ship 30 for 30 is for writers.

☁️ Opportunities

• Find your tribe. Engage with subcommunities.
  • #fintwit is for finance.
  • #retwit is for real estate.
  • #100DaysOfNoCode is for builders.
• Share more than revenue. There are other ways to build in public. You can:
  • Share Lessons • Cameron keeps a thread of mistakes.
  • Share Goals • Pat Walls added his goal to his Twitter bio.
  • Build Waitlists • EK built a 50-person waitlist for Appbasics.
  • Request Help • Dru Riley asks Twitter who should he talk to for reports.
  • Share Milestones • Jacky reached ramen profitability ($5,000 MRR).
  • Reflect on Progress • Noah Bragg shared his one-year update on Potion.so.
  • Offer Help • Stripe offered to help developers building in public using their API.
  • Share your Roadmap • Filip shared a preview of an upcoming Tally release.
  • Show New Features • Brian Casel reveals new ZipMessage features on Twitter.
  • Share Struggles • Danny shared the process behind shutting down Rareblocks.
• Join a challenge. Social accountability works.
  • 12 startups in 12 months helps you launch a startup every month for 12 months.
  • 100 Days of No-Code helps you bring your ideas to life in 100 days.
  • Ship 30 for 30 helps you get started writing online in 30 days.
• Repurpose content.
  • Dru Riley wrote How I built a paid community to 1,000+ members in 10 months as an essay before turning it into a Twitter thread and sharing the story on podcasts.
  • Arvid Kahl turns blog posts into tweets, threads, podcast episodes, books and courses.
  • Nathan Barry turned his iconic blog post into a Twitter thread.

🏔️ Risks

• Person > Persona • Don’t lose yourself while building in public. It’s easy to become obsessed with crafting narratives. Building in public is performative but find balance.
• Copycats • Sharing success and strategies will lead to copycats. Feature parity is possible in SaaS. While creators and communities are categories of one.
• Competitors • Oversharing can allow incumbents to frontrun your roadmap. Buffer, one of the most open companies, throws caution to the wind and shares their full roadmap.

🔑 Key Lessons

• Building in public has benefits beyond reaching customers. You can:
  • Recruit team members
  • Get fast feedback
  • Meet new friends
  • Find evangelists
  • Meet mentors
  • Find investors
• Early followers become invested in your journey when you involve them by asking for feedback and sharing struggles. See the Endowment Effect.
• Building in public works because transparency is scarce. We value authenticity and vulnerability. As Brené Brown says “Vulnerability is not winning or losing; it’s having the courage to show up and be seen when we have no control over the outcome. Vulnerability is not weakness; it’s our greatest measure of courage.”

🔥 Hot Takes

• If building in public feels like a job to you. It won’t last. Choose a strategy that you can maintain. Don’t like Twitter? No problem. Podcast or make videos.
• Building in public is performative. Embrace it. Be authentic. Tell honest stories and build connections.

😠 Haters

“What if people judge me?”
This is your ego talking. The bad news is that no one cares about you. The good news is that no one cares about you. We care about ourselves and our problems. Focus on providing value and sharing stories. Fear-Setting can also help you overcome stage fright.

“I don’t have any followers. No one’s listening.”
Don’t try to boil the ocean. Join small communities and connect with people one-on-one. Highlight others’ work. Dickie Bush gained early followers by appreciating others.

“Building in Public? This sounds like Bragging in Public.”
If you only share wins, this is bragging. And inauthentic. Share the ups and the downs.

🔗 Links

• Who should I talk to about building in public? • The tweet behind this report.
• Origins of Building in Public• Twitter tries to figure out where building in public started.
• Building in Public: 20 Examples & a How-To Guide • A comprehensive guide including the types of content to share.

📁 Related Reports

• Open Startups • Open dashboards help you continuously share.
• Audience-First Products • Build trust before you build products.
• Personal Brands • Personal brands have higher affinity than business brands.
• Presales • Building in public can lead to presales.
• Influencer Marketing • Building trust helps you become your own influencer.

🙏 Thanks

Thanks Arvid Kahl, Ashwin, Aaron Aalto, Nyssa Cromwell, Brian Casel, Maciej Cupial, Sharath Kuruganty, Fausto Sá Teles, EK, Katt Risen, Shashank and Prabhjot Singh Lamba. We had a great time jamming on this report.

📈 What else?

Trends PRO #0084 — Build in Public has more insights.

What you’ll get:

• 33 People Building in Public (135% More)
• 4 Predictions (100% More)
• 11 Opportunities (175% More)
• 6 Risks (100% More)
• 6 Key Lessons (100% More)
• 5 Hot Takes (150% More)
• 10 Links (233% More)

With Trends Pro you’ll learn:

• (📈 Pro) How to tell great stories?
• (📈 Pro) How to earn as you learn?
• (📈 Pro) How to grow your luck surface area?
• (📈 Pro) Which founder sold his company in 5 hours by building in public?
• (📈 Pro) Who reached ramen profitability by building in public?
• (📈 Pro) Who are the pioneers of building in public?
• (📈 Pro) Which new industries are building in public?

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“Think about what a user is going to type.”

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❓ What You’ll Learn

• What is programmatic SEO?
• How to acquire customers?
• What is the foundation of SEO?
• How to monetize search traffic?
• Which no-code stack to use for Programmatic SEO?
• How to deal with platform risk?
• How to crowdsource content?

💎 Why It Matters

You need to cost-effectively acquire customers.

🔍 Problem

Writing editorial content is slow, expensive and hard to scale.

💡 Solution

Programmatic SEO helps you build thousands of pages for high-intent, low-volume keywords. 

Tripadvisor ranks for best {thing to do} in {city}
• Best walking tours in Lisbon
• Best restaurants in Atlanta
• Best parks in Edmonton

🏁 Players

Programmatic SEO Examples 

• Failory • Resources and interviews for startup founders.
• MentorCruise • Find programming, marketing and product management mentors.
• Legislate • Get employment, property and freelance legal contracts. 
• Zapier • Targets long-tail keywords around integrating apps. 
• G2 • Software comparison and review site.
• Canva • Design products using templates. 
• moveBuddha • Showcases popular moving routes by city. 
• Tripadvisor • Targets ‘best {thing} in {city}’ keywords.
• Payscale • Targets ‘{job title} salary’ keywords.
• Airtable • Offers use case specific templates.
• DelightChat • Ranks for ‘6 best {use case}’ apps for Shopify
• Product Hunt • Builds a related products page for each product.
• Wise • Runs a programmatic SEO strategy around exchange rates.
• Yelp • Shows lists of businesses in cities around the world. 

Programmatic SEO Tools

• Ahrefs • Find low-competition keywords.
• ScrapingBee • API-based web scraping tool.
• Simplescraper • Scrape websites and build APIs.
• Data Fetcher • Import data into Airtable.
• Webflow • Build dynamic pages based on templates.
• Placid • Generate images in bulk. 
• Airtable • Store data for page templates.
• WordPress • The most popular website builder.
• Notion • Build docs that can be published as websites. 
• ScrapeHero • Scrape website data.

🔮 Predictions

• No-code tools will become the main method to build pages.
  • Delight Chat built a Shopify App directory in one week.
  • Failory built a directory of 350+ pitch decks with Webflow. 
• Companies will use AI-writing tools to “write” content. The line between editorial and programmatic content is blurring.
  • Legislate uses AI writing tools to generate post introductions.
  • Failory uses AI writing tools for section descriptions when testing project ideas. 
• Low-volume keywords will become more competitive. No-codetools make it easier to implement programmatic SEO strategies. Leading to more competition.

☁️ Opportunities

• Use no-code tools to store data and build pages.
  • Capture data with Simplescraper or Data Fetcher
  • Move data into a CMS such as Airtable with Zapier, Make or Craftar
  • Build templates with Webflow or Softr
• Build directory-style sites and capture suggestions from visitors.
  • No Code List • Accepts submissions for no-code tools.
  • Startup Stash • Lets you list products for entrepreneurs. 
• Build a portfolio of projects. Failory targets the same audience with several projects:
  • Pitch Decks • A collection of 350+ pitch decks.
  • Startup Cemetery • 120+ startups that shut down.
  • Failed Startups • 70+ categories of 400+ failed startups. 
  • Unicorns • List of 1,000+ unicorn companies and their most recent valuations.
• Create content with AI writing tools. Serbay employs a proofreader to check results.
  • Jasper is an AI writing assistant.
  • CopyAI helps you write copy in seconds.
  • Longshot provides a set of tools like Rephraser.
  • Peppertype has trained on over 100K+ of content.
  • Rytr includes use case specific best practices and templates.
• Decide how to monetize your search traffic:
  • Sell Ads | See Failory and Zillow
  • Aggregate Listings | See Product Hunt
  • Build a Marketplace | See MentorCruise
  • Become an Affiliate | See The Points Guy
  • Build a SaaS | See Zapier, Legislate and Canva
  • Sell Leads | See moveBuddha, Thumbtack and Dental Departures
• Build a vertical search engine. Answer common questions.
  • IMDB | Actors’ names
  • EquityZen | Pre-IPO stock data
  • Tripadvisor | Things to do in your city
  • Yahoo Finance | Public stock price data
  • ZoomInfo | Contacts and roles in companies
  • Truework | Income verification for a companies

🏔️ Risks

• Platform Risk• Avoid single points of failure. Depending on traffic from one channel (Google Search) puts your business at risk.
• Thin Content• Serve enough valuable content on each page. 

🔥 Hot Take

• Editorial content will continue to work best for high-volume keywords. It’s worth the effort. Programmatic SEO is an efficient approach for long-tail keywords. Dominic Monn works with an agency to write long-form content alongside generated pages.

🔑 Key Lessons

• Keyword research is the foundation of effective SEO. Including Programmatic SEO.
• Long-tail keywords have less traffic but high-intent visitors.

😠 Haters

“This sounds technical. I need to learn how to code.”
We shared a no-code “recipe” for Programmatic SEO in the opportunities section.

“This sounds spammy.”
Zapier, Failory and Legislate use these strategies effectively. Ian Nuttall says, “…the goal for me isn’t just 100,000 pages. It’s to provide value on those 100,000 pages.” 

🔗 Links

• Who should I talk to about Programmatic SEO? • The tweet behind this report. 
• Creating a Programmatic SEO Operation with No-Code • See how Failory automates content creation with no-code tools. 
• How To Create 300 Landing Pages in a Week • A step-by-step guide with a case study.

📁 Related Reports

• Marketing Funnels • Getting search traffic is one step in a marketing funnel. 
• No-Code • No-code tools are used to capture, transform and display data.
• Growth Tools • “Engineering as marketing” projects have programmatic SEO elements. 
• Data as a Service • Combine APIs to provide value to visitors. See NomadList. 
• AI-Generated Content • The line between editorial and programmatic content is blurring.

🙏 Thanks

Thanks Charles Brecque, Nico Cerdeira, Shayla Price, Ahmet Soybelli, Dominic Monn, Stewart Townsend, Kevin Galang, Serbay Arda Ayzit, Ashwin, John Bardos, Maciej Cupial, Jason Pancake, Holger Sindbaek, Sam Hickmann, Kevin Dam and Marcos Ciarrocchi. We had a great time jamming on this report.

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

📈 What else?

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What you’ll get:

• 35 Programmatic SEO Examples (150% More)
• 23 Programmatic SEO Tools (130% More)
• 6 Predictions (100% More)
• 13 Opportunities (160% More)
• 4 Risks (100% More)
• 4 Key Lessons (100% More)
• 11 Links (266% More)
• 14-minute audio episode with exclusive Programmatic SEO  stories, insights and opportunities.

With Trends Pro you’ll learn:

• (📈 Pro) What are SEO best practices?
• (📈 Pro) Which company grew to $6 billion with an SEO-driven strategy?
• (📈 Pro) How to turn web visitors into email subscribers?
• (📈 Pro) How can SaaS companies build proprietary acquisition channels?
• (📈 Pro) What are doorway pages?
• (📈 Pro) How to get more backlinks?
• (📈 Pro) How to leverage user-generated content?
• (📈 Pro) Why 65% of Google Searches don’t lead to clicks?
• (📈 Pro) How to automatically build new pages?

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“Software is eating software.”

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❓ What You’ll Learn

• Who’s building a no-code agency?
• What are 8 examples of web3, no-code tools?
• How to show your work?
• How to automate tasks and save time?
• Why will no-code tools lead to more million-dollar, one-person businesses?
• What are 8 examples of no-code communities?
• Why is no-code a gateway drug to code?

💎 Why It Matters

No-Code makes building products more accessible

🔍 Problem

Duplicating work wastes time, money and energy

💡 Solution 

No-code tools help you automate work and build products faster, cheaper and better.

Without writing code.

🏁 Players

No-Code Tools

• Zapier • Connect apps and automate workflows
• WordPress • Build websites and blogs
• Shopify • Build ecommerce sites
• Webflow • Build websites
• Bubble • Build web apps
• Bildr • Web3 tools, templates and building blocks
• Juicebox • Funding for people and projects
• Aragon • Build a DAO

Apps

• Lanva • Create shareable videos
• Teal • Manage the job application process
• Dividend Finance • Finance solar and home improvement projects
• Virtual Ghost Writer • Resolve writer’s block

Who to Follow

• Ben Tossell • Makerpad
• KP • Build in Public
• Naya Moss • Frauvis
• Max Haining • 100 Days of No-Code
• Lola • ​​Lunch Pail Labs
• Janel • NewsletterOS
• Samuel Thompson • Proven Ventures
• Doc Williams • Build with Me
• Yves Jean • Kodou
• Curtis Cummings • On Deck

🔮 Predictions

• No-Code tools will give individuals more leverage. This leads to smaller firms and more million-dollar, one-person businesses. Newsletter writers, podcast hosts and course creators benefit from no-code tools.
• No-Code tools will make web3 building more accessible.
  • Aragon helps you start DAOs
  • Juicebox helps you fund projects
  • Fractional helps you fractionalize NFTs
  • MintGate helps you sell token-gated content
  • NFTX helps you build liquidity pools for NFTs
  • Bildr will help you build sites to launch and mint NFTs
  • Thirdweb helps you build smart contracts without coding
  • Nifty Generator helps you build generative art NFT collections
• The types of products that you can build with no-code tools will expand. Blogs, online stores and marketplaces are table stakes. SaaS, mobile apps, games, cryptocurrencies and DAOs are becoming easier to build.

☁️ Opportunities

• Build a portfolio of work to break into no-code. Show proof of work to land a job or clients for your agency.
  • KP built no-code projects before becoming a program director for On Deck.
  • Héctor Reyes built and sold Coda templates before joining the Coda team.
  • Lola documents her no-code journey on the Lunch Pail Labs podcast.
  • Doc Williams makes no-code tutorials.

• Join a no-code community. Meet peers, build habits and discover opportunities. See:
  • 100 Days of No-Code
  • No Code Founders
  • On Deck No-Code
  • No Code MBA
  • NoCode.Tech
  • NoCodery
  • Makerpad
  • Nucode

• Automate tasks to save time and build no-code skills. Ask: “What are my routine, boring tasks?” Zapier, IFTTT and Integromat have thousands of integrations. Need ideas?
  • Automatically share Instagram posts to Twitter
  • Get alerts when new leads come in
  • Track Shopify orders in Slack

• Start a no-code agency. Time-to-revenue for services is shorter than products. See Minimum Studio, 8020, Lunch Pail Labs and Finsweet. Build the first version of your product with a no-code tool. No-Code helps you validate ideas faster and cheaper. Alex is building a video editing app with Bubble.

🏔️ Risks

• Platform Risk • What if a no-code tool shuts down, changes policies or gets acquired? Unlike open-source frameworks (such as Ruby on Rails and React), most no-code tools are closed-source.
• Missing Concepts • No-Coders may not understand database design at first. This can lead to technical debt. Or is it non-technical debt?

🔑 Key Lessons

• You don’t have to understand how everything works to use it. Most developers have not built an operating system or programming language. Yet they use them. You can use no-code tools without understanding every aspect.
• No-Code gives you a competitive advantage. Why recreate the wheel? No-code apps are easier to build and maintain.
• No-Code is a gateway drug to code. Building end-to-end products with no-code tools helps you become comfortable with code.

🔥 Hot Takes

• The no-code movement will create more developers. Not less. No-code is on-ramp for those initially intimidated by code.
• The best developers focus on outcomes. They don’t have not-invented-here syndrome. They embrace no-code tools, keep things DRY and understand opportunity costs.

😠 Haters

“There’s code under the hood. Why is it called no-code?”
There’s code. But you can build things without writing code.


“No-Code apps can’t scale.”
Most can. The need to scale is a good problem to have.
Most products don’t get that far. Solve it when you get there.

🔗 Links

• Who should I talk to about no-code? • The tweet behind this report.
• The No-Code Movement • See how no-code affects your ability to bootstrap.
• Building the Future of No-Code • On the possibilities of no-code and crypto.

📁 Related Reports

• The Creator Economy • Lower transaction costs lead to smaller firms.
• Low-Code • Low-Code tools reduce repetition along with No-Code.
• Competitor Risk • No-Code tools make it easier to reach feature parity. 
• Million-Dollar, One-Person Businesses • Individuals have more leverage than ever. 
• Paid Newsletters • No-code democratized publishing.

🙏 Thanks

Thanks Stewart Townsend, Prabhjot Singh Lamba, Ash, Dan Parry, Max Haining, Chris Strobl, Will Dyess, Philip Lakin, Yves Jean and Nile Frater. We had a great time jamming on this report.

📈 What else?

Trends PRO #0078 — No-Code has more insights.

What you’ll get:

• 30 No-Code Tools (275% More)
• 8 Apps (100% More)
• 28 People to Follow (180% More)
• 10 Predictions (233% More)
• 12 Opportunities (140% More)
• 6 Key Lessons (100% More)
• 4 Hot Takes (100% More)
• 10 Links (233% More)
• 12-minute audio episode with exclusive No-Code stories, insights and opportunities.

With Trends Pro you’ll learn:

• (📈 Pro) How to build a no-code productized service?
• (📈 Pro) Which no-code tools are used to make games?
• (📈 Pro) How to use no-code tools to generate leads?
• (📈 Pro) How to get no-code versions of popular apps like Upwork and Product Hunt?
• (📈 Pro) How to build a marketplace with no-code tools?
• (📈 Pro) How do no-code tools help The Creator Economy?
• (📈 Pro) Why are technical moats fading?
• (📈 Pro) How does no-code affect fundraising?

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“The most precious resource we have is time.”

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❓ What You’ll Learn

• What is the FIRE movement?
• What is the 4% rule?
• Who reached a six-figure net worth by 25 years old?
• How to simplify saving and investing?
• What is Fat FIRE?
• Why does an inner scorecard matter?
• Who retired at 39 years old with $660,000 in investments?
• Where does the 4% rule come from?
• What’s the gap?

💎 Why It Matters

Time is your most valuable resource.

🔍 Problem

We spend most of our lives working with hopes to reach financial independence in our 60s. 

We may be financially wealthy but time poor by then.

💡 Solution

FIRE (Financial Independence Retire Early) is about living intentionally. 

Financial independence helps you focus on non-financial forms of wealth. 
Such as time, health and relationships.

To reach FIRE:

1. Find out how much you need to live
2. Multiply your projected annual expenses by 25
3. This is your financial independence number
4. Set your savings rate
5. Automate investing

The “25x rule” (or 4% rule) is based on the Trinity Study. Focused on a mix of stocks and bonds. 

🏁 Players

Examples

• Roshida • A lawyer took time off to travel with $660,000 in investments. Then retired to Mexico City at 39 years old. 
• Amy • She went from waitressing to becoming a social media manager. She reached a six-figure net worth by 25. Amy is aiming for 7 figures by 36. 
• Lynn • A nurse reached financial independence and describes her state as “work optional.” She decided to continue working. 
• Amon and Christina • This couple had a combined income of less than $100,000/year. They retired at 39 and 41. They now live in Portugal with two kids.  
• Bianca • This flight attendant made less than six-figures a year with children and reached financial independence.

Notable Figures

• Scott Rieckens • Author of Playing with FIRE
• Brad Barrett • Co-founder of ChooseFI
• Rich & Regular • Financial independence lessons for the Black community
• Vicki Robin • Co-author of Your Money or Your Life
• Paula Pant • Founder of Afford Anything

🔮 Predictions

• Remote work will help some reach FI sooner by separating where we work from where we live. You can boost your quality of life while lowering expenses. Work in New York City and live in Mexico City. Until wages globally normalize. Arbitrages eventually fade. 
• Active investing will become more popular as passive investing gains traction. Index investing and robo-advisors such as Wealthfront are well-known. The more people zig, the more profitable it becomes to zag. With real estate, micro private equity and more.

☁️ Opportunities

• Know your why. This group shared their “whys” at CampFI. Grant found his “why” post-FI. A northstar helps you through tough times and sacrifices.
• Trial your post-FI life. The sharing economy (Airbnb and Turo) makes this easier. Planning a life of travel, jiu-jitsu or surfing post-FI? Why wait to try these experiences?
• Set an aggressive savings rate. Saving 10% of your income lets you take 1 day off for every 9 days that you work. Saving 50% lets you take 1 day off for each day that you work. This is before compound interest accelerates this.
• Set milestones to stay motivated. An emergency fund reduces stress. So does a mini-retirement fund. FIRE has levels. See LeanFIRE, FIRE and FatFIRE. 

🏔️ Risks

• Status Games • Keeping up with the Joneses’. Have an inner scorecard to reach FI. Status games are a race to the bottom. 
• High-Interest Debt • Debt can work for you or against you. High-interest debt may lead to net losses in wealth even if you invest.

🔑 Key Lessons

• Time is our most valuable resource. It’s nonrenewable. 
• Simplify savings to make the journey sustainable. Don’t enjoy budgeting? Set an aggressive savings rate, automate investments and spend the rest. 

😠 Haters

“This takes too long.”
Time will pass whether or not you’re financially independent. Or stressing about money. You can cut years or decades off your FI journey by making more, saving more and cutting expenses. 

“I don’t want to cut expenses.”
You don’t have to. Focus on making more, saving more and setting an aggressive savings rate. There’s FatFIRE. Which focuses on making and saving more. Instead of only cutting expenses. There’s no wrong FI number. Your number is your number. 

“This is only for people who make lots of money.”
There are examples of those who reached FI with modest incomes. A high income can help. Making more is in your control. Earn more if you prefer to hold this belief. 

“Money isn’t everything.”
There are other forms of wealth. These types of wealth are easier to optimize for once you reach financial independence.

“I don’t want to retire.”
Most who reach FI (financial independence) don’t RE (retire early). They have optionality. They can take breaks. Or quit. They can do what they want to do. Not what they have to do. 

🔗 Links

• Who should I talk to about the FIRE movement? • The tweet behind this report. 
• Playing with FIRE • A narrative-driven book on the FIRE movement and those behind it.
• Welcome to the FI Community • On the 4% rule of thumb, saving rates and “the gap.”

📁 Related Reports

• Remote Work • Separating where we work from where we live can make FI more feasible.
• Million-Dollar, One-Person Businesses • High-skill individuals can save aggressively without compromising quality of life.  
• Micro Private Equity • An active form of investing.
• DeFi • Crypto affects return expectations of younger generations.
• Alternative Assets • A look beyond traditional asset classes and the 4% rule.

🙏 Thanks

Thanks to Stewart Townsend (Podcast Hawk), Jeremy Abraham (Spiffy), Brad Barrett (ChooseFI), Scott Rieckens (Playing with FIRE), Miles Beckler, Ashwin (Trends.vc), Yarty Kim (A4E), Michael Pearson-Adams (MPA Fine Art), Sean Hua, Shayla Price (PrimoStats), Mike Privette (Return on Security), Edward Mcenrue, Evangeline Gersich (Bungalow), Christophe Williams (Cedar Labs), Mark Podolsky (The Land Geek), Robbe Richman (The Culture Blueprint), Domen Kert (500 Startups) and Roald Larsen (Untaylored). We had a great time jamming on this report.

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“First time founders are obsessed with product.
Second time founders are obsessed with distribution.”
— @justinkan

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❓ What You’ll Learn

• What’s product-led growth?
• How does bottom-up SaaS work?
• How to boost realized value?
• How to uncover user intent?
• How to optimize time-to-value?
• How to simplify onboarding?
• How to help users self-educate?

💎 Why It Matters

Distribution matters more than product.

🔍 Problem

Sales-led models limit adoption.

💡 Solution

Build a product that sells itself. 

Let users try before they buy.

🏁 Players

• Canva • Graphic design tool
• Slack • Communication platform
• Notion • All-in-one workspace
• Userlist • Email marketing automation for SaaS
• Tally • Form generator
• Shoutout • Social proof aggregator
• Less Annoying CRM • CRM for small businesses
• Transistor.fm • Podcast hosting service
• Testimonial.to • Video testimonial tool

🔮 Predictions

• SaaS companies will focus on SMBs and serve enterprise customers through agencies. Shopify and Webflow highlight trusted partners who provide implementation services. Allowing them to focus on (scalable) software. Without touching (unscalable) services.
• End users will gain more power in large organizations. Most developer tools are bottom-up SaaS. Slack broke into organizations without permission from C-Suites. 
• Product-led growth models will be applied outside of SaaS. Think Netflix, Spotify and Codeacademy. Lower lifetime values necessitate a product-led approach. 

☁️ Opportunities

• Use onboarding surveys to uncover intent. What “job” is your product being hired to do? Customize experiences based on user goals. If I want to use your graphic design tool to make posters. Drop me into an editor with a sample poster instead of a blank canvas.
• Optimize time-to-value. Once you know a user’s objective, measure whether they reach it and how long it takes. Here are 5 ways to improve user activation.
• Help users realize value received. Brave shows you time saved. MailerLite shows you emails sent. Stripe shows money made. Sync received value with realized value.
• Apply product-led lessons to non-SaaS businesses.
  • Communities • Trends Pro has an onboarding survey
  • Agencies • Neil Patel uses UberSuggest to attract clients
  • Marketplaces • Airbnb attracts hosts with an income prediction tool

🔑 Key Lessons

• Product-led growth goes beyond freemium and free trials. Sales, support and development should focus on acquisition, conversion and revenue expansion. 
• Remove unnecessary steps from onboarding.
• Help users self-educate. Invest in documentation.

😠 Haters

“I’ll lose enterprise accounts without salespeople.”

Product-led growth and sales aren’t mutually exclusive. See Zoom, Slack and AWS.

“My product is too complex for product-led growth.”

If this is true. Ok. If not, you’ll find out. You can disrupt yourself. Or get disrupted.

“Product-led growth isn’t new.”

No-Code isn’t new. Charter Cities aren’t new. Remote Work isn’t new. Few things are. Customer acquisition costs are rising. Code is being commoditized. Companies are competing on distribution more than product. This is why companies are obsessed with product-led growth.

​​🔗 Links

1. Product-Led Growth • A primer on product-led growth from Wes Bush. 
2. The Essence of Product-Led Growth • Things to consider when deciding between product-led and sales-led models.
3. Product-Led Growth Framework Masterclass • Learn to eliminate unnecessary steps.

📁 Related Reports

• No-Code • See more companies like Softr, Tally and Zapier.
• Ecosystems • SaaS companies are becoming platforms. 
• Growth Tools • Attract ideal users with free tools. 
• Referral Programs • Leverage current users to reach new users. 
• Micro-SaaS • Low lifetime values necessitate product-led models. 

🙏 Thanks

Thanks to Tyler King (Less Annoying CRM), Stewart Townsend (Channel asService), Jeremy Abraham (Spiffy), Ilya Sterin (Medidata Solutions), Deepanker Dua (Rerouting), Ben Alexander (PMG), Natwar Maheshwari (Engineering Brew), Uwe Dreissigacker (InvoiceBerry), Shashank (Omdena), Ray Deck (Sustained Ventures) and Yarty Kim (Bourne Fighter). We had a great time jamming on this report.

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“You are what you do, not what you say you’ll do.”

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❓ What You’ll Learn

• Which $30M ARR company came from a digital agency?
• Who earns $100,000+ per month running the same playbook for clients?
• What are the upsides of running an agency?
• How to build recurring revenue?
• How to get inbound leads?
• Which agencies switched from services to SaaS?

💎 Why It Matters

Agencies help entrepreneurs earn income faster than other business models with less risk. You may also find valuable problems to solve at scale with SaaS. Or earn equity in clients.

🔍 Problem

Companies have short-term needs, lack internal skills, need to scale fast or fill a fractional role such as CFO or CTO.

💡 Solution

Agencies help companies solve these problems without hiring and managing large teams. 

🏁 Players

No-Code

• 8020 • Move faster without code.
• 021 • Get your MVP built in 30 days.
• People First • No-code design studio.
• Ideable • Build the right product faster.
• Idea Link • No-code websites and apps.
• RapidDev • Software development agency.
• Minimum.run • Validate hypotheses without code.
• Optemization • 10x your remote team’s productivity.
• Reboot • Turn your vision into products people love.
• Websterpeace • No-code projects for your favorite brands.
• Airdev • Build faster and launch products that people want.
• 9x • Tools and automations to move your business forward.
• TheFlow • Launch your Webflow site, Shopify store or no-code project. 

Marketing

• AKvertise • Social media agency.
• Major Tom • Full-service marketing agency. 
• Digitalina • Generate leads from social media.
• Tetriz • Get more leads with sales automation.
• Optdcom • Data-driven digital marketing agency.
• Contentus • Content strategy and original content.
• Leadbird • Dedicated business development team.
• Rain Factory • Marketing for growing online brands. 
• Content Whale • 42 types of content writing services.
• iPullRank • Content strategy and enterprise SEO agency.
• Delverise • Digital product and growth strategy solutions.
• Fantom • Helps SaaS companies scale with paid advertising.
• Stodzy • Helps local healthcare businesses get more patients.
• Digital Voices • Influencer marketing campaigns with YouTube creators.

Storytelling

• Lemonly • Get help explaining your story. 
• Scribe • Get help writing, publishing and marketing your book. 
• Venture Narrative • Helps founders write narratives to inspire employees and attract customers.

Operations

• ZenPilot • Operations experts for marketing agencies.
• Luhhu • Automate processes to save time and money.
• Automate Labs • Streamline and automate your company operations.
• Themelocation • White-label WordPress development and maintenance support.

🔮 Predictions

• Agency owners will go from services to SaaS. See Bildr, Memberspace, Mailchimp and Basecamp. All were agencies before valuable problems were found and solved at scale.
• Platforms will try to attract agencies to their ecosystems. See partner programs (Shopify Plus Partners), certifications (AWS) and affiliate programs (Quickbooks). Platforms can improve their ecosystems while maintaining high margins.

☁️ Opportunities

• Show your work. Your portfolio lowers doubt about whether you can do the job. You build authority as you share. Eddie Lobanovskiy gained 200,000+ followers by posting his work on Dribbble.
• Build reusable systems and assets to become more efficient. Agencies sell on value and become more efficient over time. Jeff Lerner earns $100,000+ per month running the same playbook for local personal injury attorneys. Stodzy has a similar model.
• Find valuable problems to solve with high-leverage business models.
  • Moz emerged from an SEO agency. 
  • Spiffy emerged from a marketing agency. 
  • Bildr emerged from a development agency.
  • Drrac went from cloning websites to selling courses. 
  • IDEO CoLab Ventures emerged from a design agency. 
  • Everything Marketplaces emerged from a development agency. 
  • Procreate emerged from a digital agency. Now they’re at $30M ARR.
  • Lemlist emerged from a lead generation agency. Now they’re at $1M ARR.
• Use inbound marketing to build your top of funnel. Shane Young’s 100,000-subscriber YouTube channel guides clients to PowerApps911. Brent Weaver gets 5-15 qualified leads from each talk he gives. Dan Runcie has a free newsletter and consults. Pick a channel and focus.
• Build a value ladder. Create do-it-yourself, done-with-you and done-for-you offers. Flavio has a blog (free), books ($), courses ($$) and bootcamps ($$$). Prospects will trust you more when you’ve made and delivered on promises before. Books and courses also have zero marginal costs.  

🔑 Key Lessons

• Agencies have less risk (and reward) than SaaS companies. They also have higher customer concentration and marginal costs. But it’s a good place to start. 
• Common paths to agency ownership include working at an agency, being an expert employee, working for a platform such as Webflow or outsourcing from day one. 
• Agencies have high lifetime values and can justify doing sales that don’t scale. Sending personalized messages, doing spec work and answering 1-on-1 questions.

😠 Haters

“This business model sucks.”
Agencies are far from perfect. But may be underestimated. Productized services are valuable and sellable businesses. Agency owners can find valuable problems to solve with digital products, SaaS and marketplaces. Some take equity in clients.

“Location-adjusted wages won’t last? What about timezones and culture?”
Premiums can be captured based on timezone and cultural preferences. Cultural understanding matters more when writing copy versus code. Some teams are timezone agnostic. 

📁 Related Reports

• Productized Services • How to build a valuable and sellable service business.
• Lead Generation • How to generate leads for your agency.
• Value-Based Pricing • Why value-based pricing matters and what to watch out for. 
• Digital Products • Build authority and income with zero marginal costs. 
• Online Courses • How to use courses as part of your value ladder. 
• Remote Work • On the future and opportunities of remote work. 

🔗 Links

• Built to Sell • A business novel on an agency owner who built systems and sold his business. 
• Systems for Growing Your Digital Agency • Standardize your sales process. 
• Ensuring Stability for Digital Agencies • Build recurring revenue streams. 

🙏 Thanks

Thanks to Matt Varughese (8020), Rick Segal (CRAAG Angel Group), Jeremy Abraham (Spiffy), Vishal Srivastava (Trainedge), Elom (Delverise), Natwar Maheshwari (Engineering Brew), Simon Daley (CodeSwaps), Kimsia Sim (GreenDeploy), Paul Martin (MusicAndBlockchain.com), Chikodi Chima (Moonshot), Vincent Haywood (Vhdigital), Lu Doan (Agent Shield), Ray Deck (Sustained Ventures), Emmanuel Vivier (HUB Institute), Ken Rossi (Liquid New York), Jose Torres (Lexia), Serbay Arda Ayzit (Contentus) and Thomas Jacquesson (Tweet Hunter). We had a great time jamming on this report.

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With Trends Pro you’ll learn:

• (📈 Pro) How can agencies offer more services without hiring more people?
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• (📈 Pro) Why scaling up might not be the best for agencies?
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• and a lot more…
  

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❓ What You’ll Learn

• What are social tokens?
• How are social tokens earned?
• How are social tokens used?
• What’s the history of social tokens?
• Which apps help you manage social tokens?
• What are financial and cultural on-ramps to crypto?
• Can social tokens survive their creators?

💎 Why It Matters

Social tokens give brands and fans deeper alignment.

Shared interests become shared outcomes.

🔍 Problem

Communities have shallow alignment. 

💡 Solution

Social tokens are digital assets backed by the reputation of individuals, brands and communities. 

Alignment is emotional and financial.

🏁 Players

Social Tokens

• $JOW | Jeremiah Owyang
• $BOO | Bomani X
• $DOC | Dr. Sohaib Imtiaz
• $RAC | RAC 
• $FF | Forefront
• $WHALE | WhaleShark
• $FWB | Trevor McFedries
• $STANZ | Nathan Stanz
• $PTM | Portugal. The Man
• $MONTY | Scott Monty

Platforms

• Rally | Helps creators, artists and community leaders launch creator coins
• Fyooz | Helps creators launch “Star Tokens”
• Roll | Helps creators mint social tokens

Tools

• Collab.Land | Tokenized community tools
• Bonfire | Tools for token drops and member rewards
• MintGate | Create token-gated content
• SourceCred | Measure and reward value creation

🔮 Predictions

• Activist investors will do things to realize long and short positions on social tokens. Elon added Bitcoin to Tesla’s balance sheet and announced that they’ll accept Bitcoin (before backpedaling). Hedge funds start rumors to realize short positions. We have crypto and TradFi (traditional finance) examples. This will bleed into social tokens. 
• Creator coins will turn into community coins. Members will take it upon themselves to add value to networks. Social tokens will cross this chasm or perish with creators. 
• Social tokens will be a competitive advantage for communities. Tokens will lead to more aligned groups. Incentives are underestimated. 
• Social token manager will become a common title. Cooper Turley runs a talent agency. Jess Sloss runs SeedClub, an incubator. New form factors lead to new roles. Like DAO politicians. 

☁️ Opportunities

• Build use cases for your social token. Examples include:
  • Exclusive access to goods and services ($TAPE)
  • Token-gated access to communities ($FWB)
  • Discounts on goods and services (Riddle)
  • Access to advisory services ($BLAP)
  • Token-powered jukeboxes ($BOO)
  • Signed copies of books ($JAFFE)
  • Podcast appearances ($JOW)
  • Access to group calls ($JOW)
  • Voting rights ($COBRA)
  • DM responses ($DOC)
• Build ways for others to earn tokens. Examples include:
  • Quizzes
  • Referral programs
  • Retroactive airdrops
  • Paying DAO employees in tokens
  • Rewarding community engagement 
• Build tools and infrastructure like Bonfire, Collab.Land and MintGate. Other ideas:
  • Data as a Service firm that finds fast-growing creators and communities
  • Social Token CRM to track users and experiences across tools
  • Token-gated access to in-person events
• Build a service for social tokens. Can Cooper represent everyone? Can Jess incubate every social token? No. We’ll need more domain experts as the space grows.

🔑 Key Lessons

• Social tokens are a cultural on-ramp to crypto. Alongside NFTs. Financial and cultural doors lead to the same place. No-code is a gateway drug to code. Creator coins are a gateway drug to crypto. 
• Art economics vs product economics. Beeple sold a $69m NFT. Could he have sold $69m worth of books, games or clothes? Yet he sold $69m of status. Art economics can turn 1000 true fans (and a few whales) into tens of millions of dollars. Instead of tens of thousands. With leaderboards, social tokens may inherit properties of both worlds.

😠 Haters

“What happens when creators pass away?”
Social tokens can outlive creators if they cross the chasm from creator to community coins. 

“Emotional and financial alignment comes from stocks too.”
How early can you invest? Can you have a material impact on public companies? Do you feel connected to other shareholders?

“Social tokens ‘over financialize’ social exchanges. Some things should not be turned into market exchanges.” 
Whether you’re right or wrong, this is our new normal. You can try to ignore it, learn to cope or leverage it. Creative destruction leads to good, bad and productivity gains. 

“What about the mental health of creators when coin values drop?”
Communities can help shoulder the burden if they cross the chasm. Public CEOs deal with this now. Granted, we have thousands of public companies compared to (potentially) millions of tokens. The law of large numbers is bound to lead to horror stories. 

“This is a fad.”
We have many billion-dollar (and soon) trillion-dollar cryptocurrencies. Launched by solo founders and small teams. Each has its own culture, community and roadmap. Sound familiar? 

“This is just like ICOs.”
Most social tokens have use cases. Roll and Rally also use vesting to discourage pump and dump schemes. 

📁 Related Reports

• Personal Brands • Social tokens are backed by personal brands. Social capital is staked for financial capital.
• Audience-First Products • Social tokens are audience-first products.
• NFTs • The first major cultural on-ramp to crypto.
• Drop Culture • See how status and scarcity affect perceived value. 
• DAOs • A look at collective decision-making. 
• DeFi • A financial on-ramp to crypto. 
• Paid Communities • Price is more than money. Filters keep community signal high. 
• Million-Dollar, One-Person Businesses • On highly leveraged people. 
• Gamification • Game mechanics help you understand how to manage token supply.
• Alternative Assets • See what else lives outside of mainstream asset classes like stocks, bonds and real estate. 
• Profit-Sharing • On aligning incentives. And what to avoid. 
• No-Code • Leverage moves to marketing when code is commoditized. 
• Internet Challenges • Reward members for bringing value to the network.
• Crowdsourcing • Encourage community-created utility. 
• Open Startups • Exhaust data attracts employees and customers. And investors. 
• Charter Cities • We may be more aligned with those across the world than those across the street.

🔗 Links

• Who should I talk to about social tokens? • The tweet behind this report. 
• Social Tokens: Year in Review • A look at the past and future of social tokens. 
• How He Made The World’s Most Successful Social Token • A tokenized NFT collection turned into a community.

🙏 Thanks

Thanks to Stewart Townsend (Channel as a Service), Matt Alston (Bonfire), Ethan Jones (Tools for MGMT), Jess Sloss (SeedClub), Jeremiah Owyang ($JOW), Jo-Ann Hamilton (RareBirds), Aadil Razvi (Demand Curve), Linda Xie (Scalar Capital), AJ Washington (Phlote), Vishal Srivastava (Trainedge), Gabe Quintela (KeepCool.co) and Edward Mcenrue (True Fit). We had a great time jamming on this report.

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What you’ll get:

• 30 Social Tokens (200% More)
• 6 Token Platforms (100% More)
• 9 Token Tools (125% More)
• 9 Predictions (125% More)
• 8 Opportunities (100% More)
• 4 Key Lessons (100% More)
• 11 Links (266% More)
• 16 Related Reports (📈 Trends Pro Exclusive)
• 28-minute audio episode with exclusive Social Tokens stories, insights and opportunities.

With Trends Pro you’ll learn:

• (📈 Pro) What are cause coins?
• (📈 Pro) What are bonding curves?
• (📈 Pro) How are bots used to profit from social tokens?
• (📈 Pro) How to find hidden value?
• (📈 Pro) Why will power shift from platforms to creators?
• (📈 Pro) Who runs an NFT-gated conference?
• (📈 Pro) Who sells bespoke goods and services for social tokens?
• (📈 Pro) How does securities law treat social tokens?
• and a lot more…

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❓ What You’ll Learn

• What’s a managed marketplace?
• What’s marketplace liquidity?
• How do managed marketplaces add value?
• What are the top B2B and BC2 managed marketplaces?
• How will AI affect managed marketplaces?
  

💎 Why It Matters

Marketplaces are one of the most powerful business models. They’re hard to build and hard to disrupt once liquidity is reached.

 🔍 Problem

Connecting buyers and sellers may not be enough for a transaction to take place. 
Friction, distrust and uncertainty often remain.

💡 Solution

Managed marketplaces do more than connect buyers and sellers. They foster transactions with services such as: 

• Curation • Toptal connects you to the top 3% of designers, developers, data scientists and more. 
• Ratings • Airbnb and Uber use two-way rating systems to churn bad supply and demand. This builds trust at scale. 
• Escrow • Remodelmate collects payments from buyers and releases payments to contractors based on project milestones. 
• Enrichment • ThredUP adds metadata to items such as size, brand, condition and more. Each detail brings transparency and value to transactions. 
• Authentication • GOAT and StockX authenticate items to prevent counterfeiting. 
• Inventory Risk • OpenDoor buys homes from sellers in days. Then resells them.
• Insurance • Turo provides up to $750,000 of liability insurance for rentals.
• Standardization • Thumbtack quizzes buyers to get project details. This saves time in providing estimates.
• Reporting • Municibid helps municipalities follow reporting requirements around selling government property. 

🏁 Players

• B2C
  • Slice • Online ordering for pizzerias
  • Remodelmate • A marketplace for home renovations 
  • Preply • Find or become a language tutor
• B2B
  • MicroAcquire • Buy and sell SaaS companies 
  • AppSumo • Lifetime deals on B2B software
  • BuySellAds • Connecting brands with publishers to place ads
  • FundStory • Find non-dilutive financing options
  • MentorPass • Matches mentors with mentees to launch and scale businesses
  • Found – Find Salesforce developers
  • Lemon.io • Find developers fast
  • Propulsion Lab • Work with no-code developers to build internal tools
    

🔮 Predictions

• AI will supplant supply
  • Uber drivers will be replaced by self-driving cars
  • Rev transcribers will be replaced by speech-to-text AI
  • Scripted copywriters will be replaced by AI-generated copywriting tools
• Marketplaces will start as communities. Swapstack built a community to help Substack writers cross-promote. Then turned to connecting writers with brands.
• There will be more vertical marketplaces. Chrono24 is a vertical version of StockX, which is more managed than Ebay.

☁️ Opportunities

• Solve the chicken and egg problem
  • Doing things that don’t scale is the first step to build a marketplace. Andrew from MicroAcquire made countless calls to get the flywheel spinning. 
  • Use growth tools to build one or more sides of your marketplace. See SaaS-enabled marketplaces like Slice. Groupon began as a blog. 
  • Go community-first. Swapstack built a community of writers before connecting them with brands. 
  • Provide a service to one or more sides of your marketplace. Interviewing.io builds supply by giving engineers mock interviews. 
  • Steal the chicken. Vampire attacks “steal” supply. Airbnb lured hosts from Craigslist. Thumbtack lured contractors.
• Build your marketplace with no-code tools like Sharetribe and Bubble. Code is not the hard part of building a marketplace. Building liquidity is. 
• Start in the “white-hot” center. Find the killer app category. Amazon launched with books. Brick and mortar stores are limited by space. Amazon sells long-tail titles.
• Unbundle incumbents. Airbnb unbundled Craigslist. Zeus is unbundling Airbnb. 
• Simulate liquidity. Compress activity into one category (Amazon with books), time frame (Nifty Gateway with drops) or location (Uber in SF). Don’t try to boil the ocean. 

🔑 Key Lessons

• Marketplaces are energy-intensive endeavors. It takes a lot to start the flywheel.
• “Managed” is a spectrum. Some marketplaces are more managed than others. 
• Networks are networks are networks. There are throughlines between marketplaces, communities, currencies, languages and religions. They all have network effects. 
• Managed marketplaces go beyond matching buyers and sellers. They assume risk to remove friction.
• Managed marketplaces are paid for increased risk and complexity. The more “managed” a marketplace, the higher the take rate.

😠 Haters

“It seems like every marketplace is managed.”
Most are. To some degree.

“Some of these managed marketplaces don’t scale and aren’t investable.”
Contrary to the name, Trends.vc doesn’t cater to VCs. If you don’t need investors, great for you. That’s one less stakeholder type. But many marketplaces mentioned above are billion-dollar companies. Many are scalable and investable. The audio edition talks about this. 

“OpenDoor is a reseller. Not a marketplace.”
This is a valid point. We can also throw thredUP in this category. Both take enough inventory risk to call their “marketplace status” into question.

“Vampire attacks are immoral.”
Perhaps. But they’re everywhere. Willful ignorance is dangerous.

📁 Related Reports

• Micro-Marketplaces – See marketplaces from another angle. 
• Growth Tools – More ways to solve the chicken and egg problem. 
• Audience-First Products – Even more ways to solve the chicken and egg problem. 
• DAOs – Examples of decentralized networks. 
• DeFi – See the primitives that will replace centralized marketplaces. 
• No-Code – More ideas to guide your no-code marketplace journey. 
• Paid Communities – Marketplaces and communities have lots of throughlines.
• Micro-SaaS – Focus powers micro-SaaS and vertical marketplaces. 
• Referral Programs – Get early users to help you grow by understanding incentives. 

🔗 Links

1. Who runs a managed marketplace? • The tweet behind this report. 
2. Hierarchy of Marketplaces • How to kickstart a marketplace, build liquidity and dominate. 
3. Unbundling Craigslist • A map of more than 70 vertical marketplaces unbundling Craigslist.

🙏 Thanks

Thanks to Greg Berry (Municibid), Max Maeder (FoundHQ), Jake Singer (Swapstack), Philip Lakin (Propulsion Lab), Andrew Gazdecki (MicroAcquire), Kenny Hanson (MentorPass), Chikodi Chima (Moonshot), Rick Segal (CRAAG Angel Group), Stewart Townsend (Channel as a Service), Jacob Lim and Alexandre Durand-Chabert (Airparty). We had a great time jamming on this report. 

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• 19-minute audio episode with exclusive managed marketplace stories, insights and opportunities.

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• (📈 Pro) How are Airbnb and Uber churning bad supply and demand at scale?
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“But magic is neither good nor evil. It is a tool, like a knife.”

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❓ What You’ll Learn

• What is AI-Generated Content?
• Who used AI to design and sell $1,000+ logos?
• How to clone your voice, image and writing style?
• Why will AI lead to more million-dollar, one-person businesses?
• Who’s selling algorithmic art for more than $180,000,000?
• What are virtual influencers?

💎 Why It Matters

AI-generated content is being used for good and evil.
To create conflict, incite violence and deceive. 
To entertain, design and increase productivity. 
AI is amoral. It amplifies intent.

🔍 Problem

Humans are predictably irrational. We are built to replicate. Not to reason. 

💡 Solution

AI-generated content takes us from the era of limited to infinite leverage. 
Making connections that we miss, learning faster and improving over time.

🏁 Players

Images

• DALL·E • Create images from text 
• Designs.ai • Create logos
• This Person Does Not Exist • Generate faces 

Voice

• Overdub • Clone voices
• Replika • An AI companion 
• Replica • AI voice actors

Video

• Rosebud AI • Create virtual characters
• Alethea • AI-generated avatars
• Synthesia • Create videos without actors 
• Reface • Create face swap videos

Text

• GPT-3 • An advanced language model
• IdeasAI • AI-generated startup ideas 
• Shortly • Complete your thoughts
• Frase.io • Create content briefs and answer questions

🔮 Predictions

• Production costs will drop. Watch David Beckham “speak” nine languages.
• Actors and artists will perform posthumously. New songs and films can be made with training data. “Immortality” boosts the value of estates as alternative assets.
• Tools like Synthesia will lead to more million-dollar, one-person businesses. The need to master (or understand) underlying technologies is reduced. Leading to smaller firms.
• Pirated personalities will be used to endorse products, narrate books and more. 

☁️ Opportunities

• Sell AI-assisted services. Or copy Nikolay Ironov. An AI designer that made $1,000+ per logo.
• Scale yourself. Record your voice, face or writing style. Be everywhere.
  • Read text in your voice.
  • Put yourself in movies.
  • Let AI write in your style. 
• Be a fast follower to a fragmented market. Writesonic, Conversion.ai, Snazzy AI, Copysmith, Copy.ai, Headlime and more are commercializing GPT-3 for copywriting. 
• Sell algorithmic art. Beeple sold a piece for $69,346,250. CryptoPunks have sold for more than $180,000,000. The latter is from Larva Labs.

🔑 Key Lessons

• Media is being democratized. If no-code makes you a developer. AI-generated content makes you a producer.
• Code, low-code and no-code give you limited leverage. They require direction. AI-generated content gives you unlimited leverage. 
• Humans are predictably irrational. For good reason. Evolution doesn’t reward rationality. It rewards replication. Irrationality isn’t surprising. It’s expected.

😠 Haters

“Photoshop has been around for years. So what?”
Doctored images fool us. Higher-fidelity fakes are more convincing.

“People’s likenesses will be abused.”
That’s the path we’re on. Create to combat it. What’s the blue check version of video? Will we “NFTfy” everything to prove authenticity?

“What about biases in AI?”
Twitter took Tay.ai from chill to racist in one day. AI is a sponge for society’s ills. 

“Deep fake detection algorithms will protect us.”
Deep fakes will improve with detection efforts. GANs model an arms race. Sensity, a deep fake detection platform, is a test layer. Pass and it’s ready to release. 

📁 Related Reports

• Personal Brands • Virtual influencers are discussed here. 
• Million-Dollar, One-Person Businesses • AI-generated content speeds up the division of labor and leverage.
• NFTs • CryptoPunks and CryptoKitties are algorithmically-generated empires. 

🔗 Links

1. A Student Used GPT-3 to Write Fake Blog Posts • An early story showing the power of GPT-3.
2. A Russian AI ‘Graphic Designer’ Fooled the World… for a Year • How an AI “designer” charged $1,000+ for logos. 
3. We Recreated Joe Rogan’s Voice Using Artificial Intelligence • A look at what’s possible with voice cloning. Popular personalities will be pirated. 

🙏 Thanks

Thanks to Stewart Townsend (Channel as a Service), Uwe Dreissigacker (InvoiceBerry), Shashank, Lwany, Logan Johnson, Abhishek Verma (samkhya.ai), Emmanuel Simon (IdeaGarden), Sam Schrup (TextRetailer), Neeraj Hirani, Lu Doan (Not a Community), Vishal Srivastava (Trainedge), Yolanda Stephens (WomenToDone), John Bardos (IdeaEconomy.net), Daniel Wulf (Wurst Circle), Paul Martin (Lyrico) and Christophe Williams (Cedar Labs). We had a great time jamming on this report. 

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• (📈 Pro) How are deceased relatives “reading” books?
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❓ What You’ll Learn

• What are charter cities?
• Who has relocation incentive programs?
• Will charter cities increase inequality, discrimination and gentrification?
• How are charter cities and remote work related?
• What would economists change if they ran the world?
• Why does governance matter?

💎 Why It Matters

What separated East and West Germany? Zhuhai, Shenzhen, Shantou and Xiamen from China? What separates North and South Korea?

Governance.

Bad laws lead to poverty.

🔍 Problem

Poor governance works. For a few.

Benefits are concentrated. Costs dispersed. 

💡 Solution

Charter cities are new cities with better laws.

They go by many names: Special economic zones (Dubai Internet City), special administrative regions (Hong Kong) and countries (Singapore).

As Tyler Cowen says: “There are a lot more charter cities than we think. It’s just that the successful ones stop looking like charter cities.”

🏁 Players

Charter Cities

• Nkwashi • A university-anchored city under construction in Zambia. 
• Próspera • A semi-autonomous zone on the island of Roatán. Built in partnership with Honduras. 
• Talent City • Located in Nigeria. It’s meant to be “…free of complex socio-political or economically protectionist considerations.”

Special Economic Zones

• Shenzhen • Located near Hong Kong. China’s first special economic zone.
• Mariel • A port located near Havana. 
• Centenary City • A planned city in Nigeria meant to rival Dubai and Singapore. 
• Tanjung Lesung • Located in Indonesia. Focused on tourism. 
• China–Belarus Industrial Park • Focused on high-tech manufacturing. 

Special Administrative Regions

• Hong Kong • The former British Colony transferred to China in 1997. 
• Macau • A former Portuguese colony with a separate governing system from mainland China. 
• Sinuiju • A region of North Korea experimenting with a market economy.
• Yogyakarta • The only recognized monarchy within the government of Indonesia.

Organizations

• Charter Cities Institute • A nonprofit aimed at improving the ecosystem for charter cities.
• Creator Towns • An initiative to grow small towns by leveraging the digital economy. 
• Plumia • Billed as the first country on the internet. 
• Bluebook Cities • A group aimed at building cloud-first cities. Also behind Praxis. 

🔮 Predictions

• Remote work will lower switching costs between cities. Where we work and live are being decoupled. We’ll optimize for lifestyle and physical networks over offices. 
• Cities will compete for citizens. Miami’s Mayor makes a show of it. Governance options lead to more competition between jurisdictions.
• Relocation incentive programs will become more aggressive. See the remote work report with 25+ relocation incentive programs. 

☁️ Opportunities

• Fight as few battles as possible. Consider relocating before building a new city.
• Decide what to test. How much political autonomy do you need to:
  • Ban cars
  • Lower taxes
  • Legalize drugs
  • Reform education
  • Use ranked-choice voting
  • Institute an open container law
  • Legalize certain medical procedures
• Start with problems, not policies. Don’t fetishize charter cities or seasteading. Think from first-principles.
• Cheaply try ideas. Test governance models in cruise ships, DAOs, virtual worlds and temporary autonomous zones like Black Rock City (Burning Man).

🔑 Key Lessons

• Experiments have positive expected returns. Most fail but some have asymmetric upside. We need more than 195 experiments.
• Environment matters. We’ve seen natural experiments where culture, geography and other variables are controlled. Governance tips the scale.
• Evolution needs variation and selection to work. We need more governance options and the ability to vote with our feet.

😠 Haters

“Lots of charter cities have failed.”
“There are a lot more charter cities than we think. It’s just that the successful ones stop looking like charter cities.” The same goes for no-code tools like WordPress. We move goalposts.

“Charter cities will be unequal.”
We don’t need charter cities for that. “Economic development specializes functions, differentiates abilities, and makes men unequally valuable to their group.” —Will Durrant

“Charter cities will discriminate.”
We don’t need charter cities for that either. Teams behind relocation incentive programs run competitive screening processes to decide who receives thousands of dollars to relocate. 

“This will lead to gentrification.”
Most organizations focus on greenfield cities. Those who don’t could argue that unshared upside, not gentrification, is the issue.

“East and West Germany. SEZs in China. The difference was a market economy. That’s low-hanging fruit. Now what?”
I asked lots of people: “What would you change about your city?” Everyone had answers. 

“What about seasteading?”
We covered it. Costs need to drop, political issues need resolutions, there’s a quality of life question and practical things like wave breaks. 

📁 Related Reports

• Paid Communities • The first stage of a cloud-first city.
• Decentralized Autonomous Organizations (DAOs) • A guide to unstoppable networks.
• Remote Work • Jobs won’t tie us to cities. We’ll be able to optimize for lifestyle design.

🔗 Links

1. What would the world look like if economists were in charge? • A list of changes economists would make from legalizing drugs to removing the minimum wage.
2. Building the Network State • We’ve ceded power to Gods, nation-states and now networks.
3. Citizens Vote With Their Feet • On the importance of choice.

🙏 Thanks

Thanks to Katelyn Donnelly (Avalanche VC), Yolanda Stephens (WomenToDone), Anthony Castrio (Indie Worldwide), Chris, Natwar Maheshwari (Mailchimp), Michael Houck (Launch House), Yashar Nejati, Edmund Amoye (I Want This to Exist), Logan Johnson, Vic and Tom Bonin. We had a great time jamming on this report. 

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