I'm Dru Riley, I've spent 3,000+ hours researching markets and published 70+ reports. AMA 👇

@paulgosnell I had the idea for a few months before the first report went out. I brought it up in a mastermind group organized by @thisiskp_. @edmundamoye was excited enough about it that I decided to give it a try. In terms of a plan, the only plan was to continue doing it. At the time, I didn't know how it would make money. But it felt like something I could do forever. The other things I tried, had "obvious" routes to monetization but were hard to stick with. This was the inspiration for this tweet: https://twitter.com/trends_vc/st... If you want more info on the journey. Courtland (@csallen) and I talked about this in an Indie Hackers episode: https://www.indiehackers.com/pod...

@dru_riley not sure yet, but perhaps we could do something later with https://skilledup.life - don't know what it might be yet We started with 1. Helping startup with volunteers 2. Now experimenting with building teams 3. Might take few years - but build startups

@manojranaweera Are you interested in a community, newsletter or both for SkilledUp?

@manojranaweera Thanks Manoj 🙌 Appreciate the support and recommendation

@swaycopy The timeline between ideation and the newsletter hitting your inbox can be anywhere from 2 weeks to 2 years. Before the first report went out, I had a list of 50+ topics. Still working through some of these. While some topics, like DeFi, jumped the line as soon as someone (@aadilrazvi in this case) suggested it. The major steps? The process has evolved a lot. Here's the latest version: - Post to our "Next Up" channel in the Trends Pro Community - Post a question to Twitter - Schedule report reviews (conversations with domain experts) - Research the topic (books, podcasts, essays, videos, etc) - Make a first draft - Go through the draft via scheduled report reviews - Revise the draft based on those conversations - Record the audio report for Trends Pro Members - Make a final draft - Generate the NFT for the report - Send the report to Trends Pro Members - Send the free version of the report to free subscribers Hope this helps!

@artyomkarapetov The main strategy is/was threads on Twitter. TLDR: Turning reports into Twitter threads and tagging companies and people mentioned. Twitter still works but our main growth strategy is hard to attribute. It's word of mouth.

@dru_riley Awesome, thanks @dru_riley ! Best of luck, love your newsletter.

@ivan_zografski Perhaps both. We launched an NFT collection a few weeks ago: https://opensea.io/collection/me... The owner of each NFT becomes a Lifetime Trends Pro Member. Vajresh (SuperLayer Labs) collected our first NFT. I'm 30-50% sure we'll become a DAO. Implementation details are pending. Currently prioritizing other efforts. I just shared our current priorities in a quarterly update to email subscribers.

@ivan_zografski Good question

@whentheresawill Short answer: Yep! I've seen folks apply the Trends.vc model to specific verticals. Our Meta-Trends series (focused on things that don't change) will reveal why we've decided to stay general.

@stefan_smiljkovic Hey Stefan. Our style is more qualitative than quantitative, so this may have limited use. We may reach a point where the research process can be encoded. But we're far out. Here's an example: https://trends.vc/trends-0071-nfts/

@dru_riley Thanks for response. Yes, I am aware that even the data gather automatically, need to be sorted, cleaned, and just threw out there. Btw, have in mind this when I tried to bid on one of NFT

@hakon_verespej Thanks Hakon. Compounding takes time and we don't reap the rewards if we constantly switch goals. My philosophy on starting new projects is that we should build what we can stick with. It's summarized in this tweet: https://twitter.com/trends_vc/st... On traction, I had more doubts than feelings of certainty. It helped that I learned a lot from each report. Before there was a positive external feedback loop (traction), there was a positive internal feedback loop (learning). The first shot at monetizing Trends.vc completely failed. The next shot, even with a few sales under our belt, left me certain that it would work. But it was after months of doubt. Covered this in a "3 years. No Income." essay: https://druriley.com/3-years-no-... (Note: I need to fix SSL)

@5harath It's hard to overstate the impact. We just crossed 350 daily standups. I've joined each one and been transformed by the people I've met (online and in-person), the need to lead by example and every so often, have tough conversations. Community-building has been more challenging (and rewarding) than writing the reports.

@product_at_producthunt Without question, our daily standups.

@dru_riley Do you use the typical standup flow (yesterday, today, blockers) or something else? I'm guessing you're doing this remote, so how do you facilitate this (zoom, slackbot, something else)?

@product_at_producthunt Exactly. We use this format and share updates asynchronously in our community. On Mondays, we have masterminds (of no more than 6 people per group) with an icebreaker question and a similar format. We also have Trends Tribes meetups on Mondays led by @stewart_townsend. These are 3 random, 12-minute, 1-1 matches between members to catch up synchronously. We use Gatheround for Trends Tribe although it's been buggy lately. Looking for alternatives.

@price2spy Great question. Specifically around least successful. Most successful: Turning reports into Twitter threads Least successful: Perhaps Reddit/Hacker News. Though I suspect that we didn't through enough resources at these channels to get them to work.

@ali_inay1 Most requests that we get for topics are things that have been covered 1,000 times by others. They want our perspective on topics. With the exception of NFTs, DAOs, Social Tokens, most things we've covered have been covered a lot by others. We bring a no-fluff, high-signal POV to topics. Hopefully 🙂

@wilhelmr 👋 Hey Wilhelm. At the risk of answering a question with a question: Would a Trends Prediction Engine solve a problem for you? How are you solving it now?

@dru_riley Good Q! My take is that, as much as I get value from your trend treports, they are of use at the time of publishing. From a market-analysis standpoint it'd come in handy to have something ad-hoc. From an startup investment scout perspective, even more. But in reality, the phrase "I'll know it when I see it" comes to mind. It could be life changing, or not.

@wilhelmr Thanks for clarifying that! "From an startup investment scout perspective, even more." This makes sense for investment scouts. Someone mentioned the same target market in a mastermind earlier today. To highlight who Trends.vc is for, we'll improve our storytelling and share the vision more widely. We're geared towards entrepreneurs rather than investors. Investors are leveraging reports but we don't optimize for them.

@tyler_speegle Similar to our answer to @artyomkarapetov. Our main growth method was Twitter threads. If you're interested in the community side of things. You can check out this thread specific to the question of getting to 1k+ paid members: https://twitter.com/DruRly/statu...

@senin Our community consists of Trends Pro Members. They've joined at that point. We discuss the idea of magnets and moats here: https://twitter.com/DruRly/statu... Basically lead magnets applied to community-building. On nurturing a community. The best tip I have is to focus on building rituals. We explain it more in this tweet: https://twitter.com/DruRly/statu... We have daily rituals (Trends Standups) and weekly rituals (Trends Tribe and Trends Masterminds).

@dru_riley thank you for replying !

@bjorn_gustavson What have you learned about yourself during this time? - I can solve almost any problem but shouldn't try. I learned to let some fires burn. - I care more about freedom than status. What advice would you give your younger self? - Do more comfort challenges. Things that make you nervous and/or uncomfortable and may fail but have asymmetric upsides. You'll win or learn.