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“The standard pace is for chumps.” – Kimo

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❓ What You’ll Learn

• How to find cost-effective ways to grow?
• How to build a low-cost referral program?
• How to increase your odds of virality?
• How to reduce switching costs?
• How to build backlinks?
• How to lower customer acquisition costs?
• How to get existing users to invite new users?

💎 Why It Matters

Marketing channels become competitive over time.

🔍 Problem

Traditional marketing channels are expensive.  
Google Ads cost per click range from $0.20 to $1,000.00+ depending on the keyword choice.

💡 Solution

Find cost-effective ways to get attention and convert customers.

🏁 Players

Growth Hacking Examples

• Intercom • Adds “We run on intercom” to chat windows.
• Robinhood • Offered higher spots on waitlist to users for more referrals.
• CD Baby • Sent offbeat confirmation emails to customers. 
• Dropbox • Grew 3,900% by offering free storage for each converted referral.
• Hotmail • Signed every email with “P.S. I Love You”.
• Barclay Prime • Sold $100 cheesesteak. Attracting press around the country.
• Paypal • Gave a referral bonus to users and merchants.
• Uber • Gave early adopters free rides.

Growth Hackers

• Sean Ellis • Co-author of Hacking Growth
• Nir Eyal • Author of Hooked
• Ryan Holiday • Author of Growth Hacker Marketing
• Tiffany Desilva • Founder of Flowjo
• Wes Bush • CEO of ProductLed
• Jonah Berger • Author of Contagious
• Dan Benoni • Co-Founder of Growth.Design

Growth Hacking Tools

• Hotjar • Understand user behavior
• Zapier • Automate workflows
• Ghostery • Find out which tools websites are using 
• Wistia • Host videos and optimize user engagement
• Ahrefs • Get traffic value and ranking of competitors
• CrazyEgg • Survey, split test and understand user behavior
• Unbounce • Hone your landing page through A/B testing

🔮 Predictions

• More apps will use collaboration-focused featuresto spur growth.
  • Uber’s fare split feature converts new users through requiring app sign-up to pay.
  • Docusign hooks new users through continuous collaboration on document signing.
• Growth tools will become a popular way to reach prospective customers and gain mindshare.
  • Ahrefs invested $60,000,000 in their creator friendly search engine Yep. 
  • AppSumo generated $30,000 after building TidyCal as a side project in 20 days.
• Top brands will partner on rare drops.
  • Balenciaga worked with Adidas on a spring collection.
  • Apple collaborated with Hermès on a limited edition Apple watch.
  • Puma worked with Nipsey Hussle’s team on their TMC collection.
  • Spotify partnered with Starbucks to offer free premium memberships.
  • Spatial Labs partnered with Pantone to design their LNQ Wearables and more.
• Brands will increasingly use pricing to trigger word-of-mouth marketing.
  • Barclay Prime’s $100 cheesesteak became a national story.
  • Nipsey Hussle sold 1,000 copies of Crenshaw for $100 a piece in 1 night.

☁️ Opportunities

• Offer free credits to users for referrals.
  • Homage gives $20 credit to you and each friend you refer.
  • Plant Therapy offers $10 off to you and each friend you refer.
  • Uber began sponsoring events and offering participants free rides. 
  • Airbnb offered up to $35 in travel credit for each successful referral.
  • Dropbox grew 3900% by offering free storage for each converted referral. 
  • Skillshare offered 2 free months to students who signed up via referral links.
  • Fiverr gave members 10% in platform credit for each completed referral order. 
• Tag your products to trigger virality. This works well with freemium plans. Turning free users into promoters.
  • Mint gave VIP access to their app in exchange for placement of their badge on a website.
  • Product Hunt lets makers embed their badges to share milestones. Ex: Trends.vc
  • Hotmail added a signature to every email and gained 1 million users in 6 months.
  • React Native’s documentation embeds Expo code widgets for real-time learning.
  • Calendly gives you a way to embed a calendar for visitors to request meetings.
  • Headway adds a “Powered By” tag at the bottom of changelogs.
  • Testimonial adds a badge at the bottom of embedded sections.
  • Facebook offers profile badges to embed on personal websites.
  • Carrd displays “Made with Carrd” pages that you create.
• Use the invite-only playbookto create scarcity and drive word-of-mouth.
  • Clubhouse released as an invite-only app.
  • Hey offered two invite codes for each new member to share.
  • Facebook only gave access to Harvard students upon launch.
  • Gmail started with a 1,000 user limit and required an invite to join.
  • Dispo started with a 10,000 user cap and required an invite to test.
  • The Gathering Spot is a private, member-only restaurant and networking space for entrepreneurs and celebrities.
• Book guest spots on podcasts to spread the word about what you’re building and get backlinks. You can piggyback on existing audiences.
  • Iddris Sandu spoke with Coindesk TV about LNQ.
  • Luis von Ahn spoke with CNBC Make It about DuoLingo’s growth.
  • Courtland Allen shared the Indie Hackers story on Will Kwan’s show.
  • NPR’s How I Built This hosted Stewart Butterfield to discuss Slack’s journey.
  • Scott Hanselman hosted Brandon Tory for the journey behind Little Hackers.
  • Dru Riley explained the success behind Trends.vc in 15 minutes on Indie Bites.
• Pay users directly. Customer acquisition costs may be lower by paying users. Instead of intermediaries.
  • Bluehost pays $65 per qualified referral.
  • Slide gave $20 off foreach new sign-up.
  • Tornado offers $10-$1,000 as a sign-up bonus.
  • Acorns pays $5 to you and each friend you refer.
  • 1729 teaches concepts and offers crypto for completed tasks.
  • PayPal paid $60,000,000+ in referral incentives to gain new members.
  • Robinhood offers a free stock to you and each new member you refer.

🏔️ Risks

• Too Many Channels • Limit the number of experiments that you run at once. Chasing too many channels at the same time leads to context switching and can lower your chance of success. 
• Working in Silos • Open the floor for every team member while brainstorming growth hacks. Winning ideas can come from outside of marketing. An engineer at Pinterest optimized subject lines by 10% through automated tests.

🔑 Key Lessons

• Most prospects see through gimmicks. Put your customers first.
• Building a product is half of the battle. Figuring out who needs your product and how to reach them is the other half.

🔥 Hot Takes

• Companies will spend more time and resources on organic strategies like growth tools.
• More companies will manipulate demand by limiting access. Raya, the private celebrity dating app requires an application and a referral. 

😠 Haters

“These companies make growth hacking seem easy. How do these examples translate to other companies?” 
You’ll need to decide what makes sense for you. These are models. Try them and keep doing what works.

“Scraping seems illegal. Isn’t this an unethical growth tactic?”
If the data is public it’s yours, according to the US Supreme Court. You may decide to avoid web scraping. Competitors may decide that this is not off limits.

“Growth is great. But what if you’re pouring water into a leaky bucket? What about retention?”
Growth hacking should include experiments around retention. If you’re losing more users than you’re gaining. You’re not growing. 

🔗 Links

• Who should we talk to about growth hacking? • The tweet behind this report. 
• 3 Stages of Growth Hacking • A talk by Sean Ellis.
• Growth Hacker Marketing Review • A review of Ryan Holiday’s book.

📁 Related Reports

• Growth Tools • Build utilities to attract prospective customers. 
• Drop Culture • You can tweak supply to spur demand. 
• Referral Programs • Incentivize others to help you grow.
• Lead Generation • Get qualified leads. 
• Build in Public • Share your journey and gain advocates. 

🙏 Thanks

Thanks to Krish, Paul Martin, Stewart Townsend, Uwe Dreissigacker, Vishal Srivastava, Maciej Cupial, Ron Immink, Jwalant Patel, Yarty Kim, Theo Ohene, Anke Corbin and Ken. We had a great time jamming on this report.
✏️ Devin researched and wrote this report. Dru researched and edited this report.

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• 4 Risks (100% More)
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• 11 Links (266% More)

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View on OpenSea

“The biggest competition in SaaS is a spreadsheet.” — Ross Simmonds

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❓ What You’ll Learn

• How to presell to validate demand?
• What are growth systems?
• How to index into existing markets?
• How to use personalization to convert leads?
• How SaaS analytics can help you boost revenue?
• Why narrow your target audience?
• How will open-source SaaS impact B2B SaaS?
• What’s feature parity?

💎 Why It Matters

B2B SaaS gives you a simple, secure and accessible way to solve business problems.

🔍 Problem

You can solve internal challenges:

• internally by building tools and hiring
• externally by outsourcing the problem

Building your own tools can distract you from your core competency.

💡 Solution

B2B SaaS helps you focus on your core competency. 

While reaping the benefits of improvements made by teams dedicated to specific problems.

🏁 Players

B2B SaaS

• Make • Build and automate workflows
• InvoiceBerry • Online invoicing for small businesses
• Gusto • Payroll, benefits and HR management
• Hive • Manage tasks, workflows and team’s work
• Lanva • Social video editing app. 
• ClickUp • Manage tasks, docs, chat, goals and more
• Plausible • Open-source privacy-friendly web analytics
• Podcast Hawk • Podcast guest booking software. 
• Writesonic • AI-driven content creation
• Folderly • AI-Based platform to improve email deliverability.
• Craftar • Build APIs with No-Code
• Budibase • Low-code internal app builder
• LiveAgent • All-in-one platform for live customer support
• SavvyCal • Experience-focused Calendly alternative

Communities

• Trends.vc • Community of entrepreneurs discovering new markets and ideas 
• MicroConf • A community and event series for bootstrapped SaaS founders
• Indie Hackers • Real stories, advice, and revenue numbers from indie makers
• The Indiependent • A community for founders where you get kicked for inactivity
• MegaMaker • A community for bootstrappers
• 100DaysOfNoCode • Lessons, stories and activities for no-code founders

Funds

• TinySeed • An accelerator for bootstrapped SaaS founders
• SureSwift Capital • Buys and grows businesses of independent founders
• Calm Company Fund • Capital, mentorship and community for B2B SaaS
• Dura Software • Invests in hyper-niche software
• Lighter Capital • Invests in companies with $15,000+ MRR
• Calm Capital • Invests in profitable businesses
• LTV SaaS Fund • Focuses on profitable and privately held SaaS companies

🔮 Predictions

• B2B SaaS companies will index into existing markets instead of trying to create new categories.
  • Plausible reached $500,000 ARR in 3 years with an analytics tool.
  • ConvertCalculator has 15,000 users and $24,000 MRR. 
  • Checkout Page is a side-project that processed $2,000,000 in payments.
  • Paperform reached $2,000,000 ARR. Tally reached $10,000 MRR in less than a year in a crowded market of form builders. The latter has 30,000 users and sits at $17,000 MRR.
• Companies will use open-source SaaS to avoid platform risk and vendor lock-in.
  • Baserow • No-code database, Airtable alternative.
  • Fider • Feedback management tool, alternative to Canny.
  • Chatwoot • Customer engagement platform, Intercom and Zapier alternative.
• Businesses will use personalization to nurture leads and convert customers at high-intent moments. Live video sales reps is the second most upvoted idea on Kernal.
  • ConvertKit uses surveys to change onboarding paths.
  • Candu lets you serve different content to different users.
  • Helium lets you talk to web visitors as they land on a page.
  • Bonjoro lets you send transactional personal videos to your customers.
• Businesses will use SaaS analytics to improve customer experiences. Data-driven roadmaps and pricing will help reduce churn and maximize revenue.
  • Chargebee allows you to run billing experiments with real-time insights.
  • Chartmogul helps you measure, understand, and grow your recurring revenue.
  • Mixpanel helps you convert, engage and retain users with user behavior analytics.

☁️ Opportunities

• Don’t waste time, money and energy trying to create new markets. Solve existing pain points. Not those you wish existed.
  • Upvoty • Feedback management tool, grew to $20,000 MRR.
  • Potion • Notion to website converter, grew to $4,000+ MRR.
  • Headlime • AI-powered marketing copy generator, grew to $20,000 MRR and was sold for $1,000,000+ in 8 months.
• Focus on a specific job-to-be-done. Design simple, powerful features.
  • ShareThis lets you add share buttons to your website.
  • Hugo helps you manage notes and tasks for your meetings.
  • SavvyCal is a calendar scheduling tool that generates $20,000+ MRR.
  • Hyperping helps you monitor uptime and manage incidents. It has ~$7,000 MRR now.
  • Friendly offers privacy-first marketing automation and web analytics. It’s close to $13,000 MRR now.
• Narrow your target audience. Vertical SaaS targets niche industries and customers. Niching down helps you stand out from competition, clearly communicate your value and find customers.
  • The Agent Nest • Social media marketing for real estate that reached $10,000 MRR.
  • Aplano • Employee management and time tracking for shiftworkers that reached $450,000 ARR.
  • Zenmaid • Scheduling, automation and reporting for maid service that reached $1,500,000 ARR.
• Presell to validate demand. A landing page, mockup or screenshots will do. Don’t waste time building something nobody wants.
  • Ch Daniel got $1,000 in presales.
  • Alex Pethick received $4,000 in presales for Lanva.
  • Brian Casel got $3,000 in preorders with wireframes.
  • Aazar Shad reached $560 MRR with Ecomply after 3 webinars.
  • Danny Postma got $16,000 in presales in 48 hours for Headlime.
  • Kalo Yankulov says Encharge got ~$4,000 in pre-sales with content marketing.

🏔️ Risks

• Feature parity • No-code and low-code tools make it easier to reach feature parity. This is a two-way problem. It increases competitor risk. You can catch up with competitors. They can also catch up to you. Competition lowers margins.
• Low Lifetime Value • This makes it hard to invest in customer acquisition. Paired with other expenses it can lead to negative cash flow and the Valley of Death.
• Platform Risk • Building on other platforms subjects you to their product roadmap, outages and fees. Changes to Notion API broke Super.

🔑 Key Lessons

• Micro-SaaS does not mean low revenue. “Micro” means a specific niche, target audience or set of features. Hubstaff started as a time tracker for field and remote teams. It grew to 75,000 users and $3,800,000 ARR.
• Growth systems > growth hacks. Growth hacks are designed for fast, low-cost user acquisition. Growth systems focus on long-term marketing strategies.

🔥 Hot Takes

• The largest SaaS categories will be commoditized by Monetized Open-Source alternatives. Rocket.Chat and n8n are open-source alternatives to Intercom and Zapier. This is counter-positioning. It’s unlikely the latter will open source. 
• You need lots of customers, a high customer lifetime value or both to build a great B2B SaaS business. A company without one of these is in a death zone. 
• Feature parity is a weakness of SaaS. This leads to commoditization and lower margins. Low prices and complementary services become your key differentiators.

😠 Haters

“Markets are crowded. How do I stand out?”
There’s a marketing strategy for every taste. AJ from Carrd says a massive market has room for many solutions. Canny got to $1,000,000 ARR in the crowded market of user feedback management. Ruth and Eric built and grew Reconvert to $120,000 MRR, competing with 750+ Shopify cross-sell and up-sell apps.

“Sales will always have a place in B2B SaaS. Self-serve does not always work.”
You’re right. Especially when selling to governments and large organizations such as hospitals. Self-serve, product-led models are increasingly effective with high lifetime value customers. 

“Lifetime deals seem risky. What if I shut the product down?”
Lifetime refers to the lifetime of your product, not your lifetime. It’s more like a “pay-once-and-use-forever” deal. Despite associated risks, some SaaS companies choose lifetime deals over subscriptions. Infinity ran a lifetime deal before official launch and decided to keep their pricing that way forever.

“Using open-source tools means self-hosting and taking on other responsibilities.”
There’s no free lunch. That’s the price of agency. Open source alternatives often offer hosted versions as well.

🔗 Links

• Who should we talk to about B2B SaaS? • The tweet behind this report.
• The Stair Step Approach to Bootstrapping • A model from Rob Walling on increasing the odds of success by “stair stepping.”
• B2B SaaS Marketing Guide • SaaS-centric marketing guide.

📁 Related Reports

• Micro-SaaS • Solve specific problem for specific audience
• Competitor Risk • Indexing into crowded markets
• Product-Led Growth • Build a product that sells itself
• Value-Based Pricing • Get the right pricing
• Programmatic SEO • Acquire high-intent customers

🙏 Thanks

Thanks to Rob Walling, Reza Saeedi, Stewart Townsend, Prabhjot Singh, Uwe Dreissigacker, Tarun Muvvala, Soma Mandal, Kimsia Sim, Darren Travel, Ben Alexander, Ab Advany, Yun, Niklas Nielsen and Vladislav Podolyako. We had a great time jamming on this report.

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

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• 36 B2B SaaS Examples (157% More)
• 23 Communities (283% More)
• 23 B2B SaaS Funds (228% More)
• 15 Predictions (275% More)
• 16 Opportunities (300% More)
• 6 Risks (100% More)
• 4 Key Lessons (100% More)
• 6 Hot Takes (100% More)
• 15 Links (400% More)

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• (📈 Pro) What’s the difference between passive and active SaaS?
• (📈 Pro) What are 8 examples of B2B SaaS lifetime deals that generated up to $800,000?
• (📈 Pro) What is software-with-a-service?
• (📈 Pro) How to hyper niche?
• (📈 Pro) How to add value with APIs and integrations?
• (📈 Pro) Where to buy SaaS apps?
• (📈 Pro) How to reduce churn with customization?
• (📈 Pro) What are 5 examples of white-label SaaS?
• (📈 Pro) Why build your SaaS in public?
• (📈 Pro) How to leverage existing ecosystems to grow your SaaS?
• (📈 Pro) And much more…

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View on OpenSea

“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?

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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)
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• 10 Links (233% More)

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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?
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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?

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• 30 No-Code Tools (275% More)
• 8 Apps (100% More)
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• 4 Hot Takes (100% More)
• 10 Links (233% More)
• 12-minute audio episode with exclusive No-Code stories, insights and opportunities.

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• (📈 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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📈 What else?

Trends PRO #0075 — The FIRE Movement has more insights.

What you’ll get:

• 15 Examples (200% More)
• 12 Notable Figures (140% More)
• 4 Predictions (100% More)
• 8 Opportunities (100% More)
• 5 Risks (150% More)
• 4 Key Lessons (100% More)
• 11 Links (266% More)

With Trends Pro you’ll learn:

• (📈 Pro) Which engineer retired at 33?
• (📈 Pro) Who reached FIRE with 5 kids?
• (📈 Pro) How can geoarbitrage help you reach FIRE?
• (📈 Pro) Which single mother reached FIRE by 46?
• (📈 Pro) Why do some question the 4% rule?
• (📈 Pro) Which high school dropout reached FI before 40?
• (📈 Pro) How to use real estate to reach FI sooner?
• (📈 Pro) Why does financial literacy matter?
• (📈 Pro) Why should you automate saving and investing?
• and much more…

“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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❓ 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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❓ 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 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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