“All curation grows until it requires search, and all search grows until it requires curation.” — Benedict Evans
❓ What You’ll Learn
- What’s curated commerce?
- What’s programmatic curation?
- How to find high-value B2B use cases?
- How to build directories with no-code tools?
- What’s your most valuable resource?
- What are community curation platforms?
- How to accelerate your learning process?
💎 Why It Matters
You need help finding signal in noise.
🔍 Problem
It’s hard to sift through content and make good decisions without Information Overload.
💡 Solution
Curation as a Service saves you time, money and energy.
🏁 Players
Curators
- Rob Hope • Curates design and dev resources.
- Janel Loi • Shares tools and learning resources.
- David Senra • Picks biographies to study and share lessons from.
- Danielle L. Vermeer • Focuses on circular fashion and Web3.
- Sari Azout • Building a community-curated search engine.
- James Clear • Sharing short ideas, questions and quotes.
- Dru Riley • Picks topics and explores throughlines, tactics and strategies.
Directories
- Cold Email Templates • A collection of 250+ cold email templates from Hunter.
- Startup Stash • Directory of tools and resources for startups and entrepreneurs.
- Love Curated • A network of inspiration websites.
- Community OS • Resources on building communities.
- Landing Page Checklist • Landing page builders, tools, and resources.
- Founder Resources • Content and templates for your startup.
- Video Tool Stack • Video tools for creator economy.
Newsletters
- Trends.vc • New markets and ideas.
- Farnam Street • Timeless lessons to help you think better.
- The 3-2-1 Newsletter • 3 short ideas, 2 quotes and 1 question.
- TLDR • Byte sized news in startups, tech and programming.
- Flow State • Recommends two hours of non-verbal music every weekday.
- Refind • 7 links from around the web each day.
- Sprezza • Exploring independent menswear.
🔮 Predictions
- Community-curation platforms will help crowdsource research.
- Curated commerce will help brands stand out in commoditized markets.
- Butcher Box is a meat delivery service with curated boxes.
- Craft Beer Club membership offers 12 beers each month.
- Thingtesting helps you find new DTC brands.
- Bakersons sells curated dog goods.
- Indie Hackers will increasingly launch curated digital products.
- SaaSFrame generated ~$14,000 with SaaS marketing inspiration resources.
- Xavier Coiffard made $25,000 with Spread the World and UserBooster.
- Patricia Mou reached $5,000 ARR in one week with Rabbit Holes.
- Ana Bibikova made ~$1,000 in 1 day with Marketing Playbook.
- Sudharshan made $3,000 in 2 weeks with Community List.
- GrowthList generated $10,000 with growth tactics.
- Quentin Villard made $5,000 with TIMS.
☁️ Opportunities
- Use no-code tools to build directories.
- Startup Cemetery is built on Webflow.
- LetterHunt and Toolmeup are built on Airtable.
- Side Hustle Stack and MindVault are built on Notion.
- Build curated products for high-value B2B use cases.
- Crunchbase is a private-company data platform.
- Nexis is a collection of business news and resources.
- Newsletter Spy is a database of 100,000+ newsletters.
- PR Database lists 4,000+ business and tech journalists.
- Factiva is a collection of global news and company data.
- Listen Notes sells podcast API access to enterprise customers.
- Angel Match lists 90,000+ angel investors and venture capitalists.
- Use programmatic curation to build products.
- Qrator uses Craftar to find and share the best of Hacker News.
- GummySearch scrapes Reddit to help you find ideas and leads.
- Exploding Topics uses keyword research to find fast-growing topics.
- Curate resources to use as growth tools.
🏔️ Risks
- Uniformity • As curation becomes more popular, the value of differentiation (even for its own sake) goes up.
- Bias • By definition, curation is biased. Beware of blindspots. Reference multiple curators if you rely on curation.
🔑 Key Lessons
- Time is your most valuable asset. Unlike money, it’s nonrenewable.
- The more creators we have, the more curators we need. The value of curation increases with options.
🔥 Hot Takes
- Automated curation will not replace human curators. Despite Skyscanner’s powerful algorithms, Jack’s Flight Club has 1,500,000+ members and ~$800,000 in revenue.
- Curation is most effective when done by personal brands. See Oprah’s Favorite Things.
😠 Haters
“Curation is biased.”
This is a feature. Not a bug. Curators exercise judgment in what to include and exclude. Those who follow curators should take this into account. Consult multiple sources to reduce blindspots.
“Everyone has free access to quality information.”
The value of curation lies in accuracy, ease of access and trust. Most information can be found for “free” but time is our most valuable resource.
“I’m not an expert.”
That’s even better. Curation helps you document and accelerate your learning process. You can help newcomers without the curse of knowledge.
🔗 Links
- Who should we talk to about Curation as a Service? • The tweet behind this report.
- Case for Curation as a Service • Jeremy Brown on Curation as a Service and CaaS which he coined in 2014.
- The GAP by Ira Glass • A timeless piece on taste and patience.
📁 Related Reports
- Digital Products • Curated resources are packaged and sold as digital products.
- No-Code • No-Code tools help you build directories fast.
- Personal Brands • Curated content is backed by personal brands.
- The Creator Economy • Creators and curators are the heart of this movement.
- Data as a Service • Programmatic curation is behind premium databases.
🙏 Thanks
Thanks to Emin Yagubov, Gina De La Rosa, Soma Mandal, Sari Azout, Samantha Patil, Breno Ferreira, Yarty Kim, Tom Arbuthnot, Darren Travel, Abhishek Verma, Sean Hua, Rick Marti, Rahul Prakash, Ross Kinkade, Dan Flatt , Jamil Abreu and Shayla Price. We had a great time jamming on this report.
📈 What else?
Trends PRO #0087 — Curation as a Service has more insights.
What you’ll get:
- 15 Curators (114% More)
- 16 Directories (128% More)
- 21 Newsletters (200% More)
- 6 Predictions (100% More)
- 9 Opportunities (125% More)
- 4 Risks (100% More)
- 4 Key Lessons (100% More)
- 4 Hot Takes (100% More)
- 10 Links (233% More)
Get Weekly Reports
Join 65,000+ founders and investors
📈 Unlock Pro Reports, 1:1 Intros and Masterminds
Become a Trends Pro Member and join 1,200+ founders enjoying…
🧠 Founder Mastermind Groups • To share goals, progress and solve problems together, each group is made up of 6 members who meet for 1 hour each Monday.
📈 100+ Trends Pro Reports • To make sense of new markets, ideas and business models, check out our research reports.
💬 1:1 Founder Intros • Make new friends, share lessons and find ways to help each other. Keep life interesting by meeting new founders each week.
🧍 Daily Standups • Stay productive and accountable with daily, async standups. Unlock access to 1:1 chats, masterminds and more by building standup streaks.
💲 100k+ Startup Discounts • Get access to $100k+ in startup discounts on AWS, Twilio, Webflow, ClickUp and more.
