What's up, everyone? This is Cortland from IndieHackers.com, and you're listening to
the IndieHackers podcast.
On this show, I talk to the founders of profitable internet businesses, and I try to get a sense
of what it's like to be in their shoes. How did they get to where they are today? How
did they make decisions, both with their companies and in their personal lives? And what exactly
makes their businesses tick?
And the goal here, as always, is so that the rest of us can learn from their examples and
go on to build our own profitable internet businesses.
If you've been enjoying the show and you want an easy way to support it, please leave
a review on iTunes. It's probably the best way to help others find the show, and I really
appreciate it.
In today's episode, I sat down with longtime Indie Hacker, Drew Riley. Drew is the creator
behind Trends.VC, a newsletter where he shares the latest trends in tech, business, and startups.
It's super popular, I'm subscribed along with many others, and he's doing tens of thousands
of dollars a month in revenue from his newsletter. But it took Drew quite a while to get here.
In fact, it took him multiple years after quitting his job to get to the point where
he started this email newsletter. And many months after that, to get to the point where
he was actually charging money and growing his subscription base.
So I think it was a lot to learn from Drew about perseverance and just figuring out the
right idea to work on. Enjoy the episode.
You made one of the more interesting posts that I've seen on Indie Hackers. I think in
part because your story resonated with me. And when you were talking about how you had
quit your job in 2017, and you're very transparent, you said you would work for three years, you
saved up 250k, which is a ridiculous amount of money. And you just live for three years
off your savings, building projects, trying to be an Indie Hacker, and not making literally
a single dime in that entire time until I think May of this year with Trends.VC. What
was that like working for so many years and not finding any success?
I wasn't working the whole time. I was traveling, I picked up jujitsu, did some improv. You
said something in your comment on that post that really resonated, and I think about it
at least once a week, about how time, I guess our urgency matches the amount of time that
we have. And as I was running out of money, I got really serious. I was learning and building,
but not with a sense of urgency until I'm like, okay, I can see the end of the tunnel
and it's back to working for the man if I don't figure something out.
Yeah, so it was a really short post that didn't leave room for a lot of nuance. So I wasn't
working trying to make something happen the whole time. I have projects here and there,
but towards the end of 2019, up until Trends started, there were probably six projects
back to back, just trying to build the airplane as I was falling down.
Yeah, on your personal website, you've got, I think, 12 different projects that you've
worked on over the years. And there's a huge variety. Some of them are Hackathon, some
of them are SaaS products that you built. More recently, there's a lot of newsletters
and content businesses. But it's pretty clear, you've been trying a lot of stuff. And I think
this idea that work expands to fill the time allotted, it's true on so many levels. It's
true individually with a particular task that you've been assigned or trying to do for work.
If you think it's going to take a day, but you give yourself a week, it'll take a week.
But I think it's also true with life goals. If you're like, I want to be an indie hacker
and make a lot of money, or be my own boss, and you've got three years of runway, or in
my case, I'd like a year of runway, it's probably going to take you that long to get serious.
And what I did was I spent like, also six months just learning and traveling and doing
fun stuff. And then eventually it was like, oh, shit, I don't have very much runway left.
What was it that convinced you to basically stop just doing improv and to just see you
and start working on projects that you thought can make money?
It was just running out of money and time. It was really time. That's how I see money
in a lot of ways. I just look at it in terms of freedom and time. What does it buy me?
And I was selling my second place. And with that money, I would have been good for maybe
like a year, two years max. And I didn't want to run it up until the last minute. So it's
just like, it would be nice if I could do a smooth transition that's not really hectic.
And that's what ended up happening with TrendsVC, where I still have a good amount of savings.
But I could pull from that or pull from TrendsVC, which is a nice position to be in.
So tell us about TrendsVC. Specifically, how much money is it making? When did you start
it? And what is it?
Yeah, so last month, it made just shy of $24,000 for August. All of it isn't recurring, but
a lot of it is from like annual subscriptions. So TrendsVC is a series of weekly reports
on new markets and ideas. And it follows like a format of like problem solution, players,
predictions, opportunities. There's a Hater section that a lot of people like, and more
research. And it just helps people find like emerging opportunities.
Yeah, I love the Hater section. And we'll get into like the whole format of how you
structure this sort of weekly report. But it goes out over email. You posted a ton of
them on Indie Hackers. That's how I first got turned on to them. I think you started
with number four and number five. And every week you release a new one and post it on
Indie Hackers and tons of people would read and comment. And I think what's remarkable
is you said, you know, in August, you did $24,000 in revenue. In March, I think you
had done $0 in revenue. In April, I think you've done $0 in revenue. You've been able
to grow this thing at like a rocket ship pace. What do you think is the difference between
all the other things you've worked on before trends, those other 11 projects and trends
itself that allowed it to do so well?
Yeah, I think it's like a sweet spot of what I enjoy what I'm good at. And like what other
people like what they need or what they like. Someone asked me recently like, Oh, like,
you know, how did you find your voice? And I told them like, I think I always had this
voice. But I could like switch and work on another project. And if it just didn't fit
what the market needed, it wouldn't work out. Like I can take the same voice that I have
and try to solve a problem that other you know, if they don't if it doesn't exist, it's
not just going to magically work. So it was like the fitting of all three of those together.
Yeah, it's the elusive product market founder fit, where it doesn't matter if you're good
at something if no one else cares about that thing, like exactly what you want all day.
I think it was I think it was an evolved tweeted about art being something that you do for
yourself and business doing it being something that you do for others. And like the ultimate
artist is the only person who really cares what they're doing. And it doesn't matter.
It's a filling for them. But like, that's a recipe for disaster and business because
no one's going to pay you for something just because you get off on doing it like they
need to benefit they need to have value somehow. Right? Yep. So let's go back to the beginning
then, because I want to go over some of the history of these projects that you've worked
on. Maybe the best place to start is why did you quit your job? I mean, obviously, if you're
able to save up 250k, you're doing really well for yourself, you're making a lot of
money, you're a software engineer, why leave that behind and decide to take this little
money retirement that you did. I feel like I was always planning for my escape, whether
it was like the first job, I'm located in Atlanta, like my first job out of college
in Atlanta, or the last one, which I quit in 2017. I was always like saving money, preparing
for an escape. And it wasn't a smooth transition between each, like I would always like quit
took a few months off. It just happens that like the last time this happened, it was three
years and not a few months. And with the last job, it was it was like super comfortable.
The work was interesting, love my co workers. It was just like almost too comfortable. Like
I was super specialized. And I'm just like, man, like I miss design a little bit. I miss,
you know, thinking about marketing, I miss all of these other angles. And it was just
like super comfortable. And I feel like, you know, if I would have stayed, I could have
like stayed and probably been okay for like life in like four or five years, not like
a super rich life. But like my burn rate was low, like I could have made it happen. But
yeah, I feel like if I would have stayed for you know, three, four or five more years,
I may have never left. And I had a lot of like, you know, lunches with like, people
as I was leaving, and they were just like, man, like I admire what you're doing. Like
I plan to do that three or four years ago, and they just never made the jump. And now
they feel stuck, you know, it's pretty crazy how if you take any sort of leap in your life,
and you tell others that you're doing it, how many people say, Oh, I wish I could do
that. If you decide you want to leave your job, a lot of co workers be like, well, you're
so brave, that's so cool. It's so inspiring. Or even me, I just left on this road trip.
And I just like informed people who I thought should know just because you know, they're
friends, they should know where I am. And the percentage of people who are like, Oh,
I wish I could just drop everything and leave. It's this weird dream that so many people
have and then very few people actually take. What is it about you that made you so comfortable
leaving the comfortable life?
It probably goes back to like my first job in Atlanta. And I felt like coming out of
college, if someone would have given me a shot in like a software development role,
that's all I needed. Like I would have been able to like, this is now the new bottom,
like this is the base and I could always fall back on that base. So I feel like that skillset
just gave me optionality. Like I know I could get back to this point, if not better. And
that was freeing in a way.
Yeah, it's a good thing about being a software engineer. It's like there's always jobs. Worst
case scenario, like you're not going to be on the street, like you're just going to go
back to being a software engineer. It's a pretty good right, right. I would love to
just paint the picture. I'm super courageous. But that was it. It felt like hished in a
way, you know.
Yeah. Well, what was the first thing that you worked on? You know, you said you spent
a lot of time having fun. What was the very first project where you're like, you know
what, I'm going to actually try to start building something on my own.
I won't even be able to remember like the very first because at first it was just like
I miss building and I'm just sort of building for fun where I will work on things that I
wouldn't have worked on towards the end of, you know, 2019 when it's crunch time. I don't
remember that early back. I remember what I put a lot of work into. And there was something
right before TransVC, which was called SAS report. And it would do like competitive analysis
for SAS companies. So if someone changed their pricing page and it was a competitor, like
you'll get an alert, it sort of bleeds into I'm not sure if we'll talk about it. But one
of those like parts that I just feel like it's something that I enjoy doing here where
I sort of ran out of steam, even though I saw potential pivots, I just like ran out
of steam on that project. Maybe it could have worked. Maybe it was doomed to fail. I don't
know. But it was like SAS report. And it just took a lot out of me to the point where switching
to at one point, TransVC and SAS report were running at the same time. And I picked up
TransVC because it felt like something I could do forever in a way. Like there's no end game
is sort of an infinite game. And the previous project just was not that I felt like I would
be comfortable selling this, you know, there was just an end in mind working on that. Whereas
there's really no end in mind with TransVC. Yeah, you got to do something that you enjoy
working on, but it's not always easy to like predict what you're gonna enjoy working on
until you start doing it. And you're like, Oh, this is a slog. I hate this. And I think
one of the most common things for people like you and me, like we're both software engineers.
Usually when we decide to start projects, we think about, okay, what can I code? I like
coding coding is fun. Like you said, like there's some muscles you want to deflect your design
muscles and all sorts of other things. And you actually did work on some coding projects
on your website. Like you had a Chrome extension that you build and you had like some sort
of Twitter sentiment analysis thing to tell businesses like who's tweeting about them
and what they're saying. And even have like a Ruby CLI thing for installing Ruby gems.
And all of that seemed to be like your older projects, which for me is kind of the same,
like all of my older stuff was all like pure code, me just coding stuff and hoping like,
you know, I'm gonna put this on autopilot up on AWS or something and people are gonna
sign up for it and it's just gonna pay the bills every month. And I don't have to write
what caused you to switch from doing all of those code related projects to sort of the
newer stuff where you're doing trends at VC and you had this like SAS report and you've
done a bunch of other newsletters and stuff to where it's not code. It's you sitting down
every day, researching and writing stuff.
Yeah, I don't think it was very strategic. It was just about like, I went through this
like identity shift towards the end of like 2019 or early 2020. If you sort of just hit
on it, like even picking up SAS report, I'm like, Oh, this is technically interesting
solving this problem. And I had to put that down because I feel like as engineers, like
we think, you know, like this is cool. If it's, you know, complex or all of these, it's
just like no, like solve a problem. They don't care about like how the pipes work or how,
you know, the code looks. And there was this identity shift, I'll say within the past year,
year and a half, where it's just like I had to put a founder hat on and take a developer
hat off in a way. So I think that's what opened me up to exploring content where it's just
like, I'm just looking for valuable problems to solve, you know?
Yeah, no one cares what goes into your project. No one cares like how you're building it or
what new technology you're going to use. And like, you might care and be super excited
about that. If you're a founder, and you're just thinking about every day, what you're
super excited about, then again, I think that's, that's art. And art's good. Don't get me wrong.
Like everyone should probably have something artistic in their life. But like, if you got
to pay the bills, you probably should be focusing on what other people want, which is not an
easy mindset shift to have.
Yeah, yeah. I will say with trends, you see it sort of like it solves my own problem in
a way of these are things that I was curious about. And I noticed that like, I'm probably
one of those people where I need to solve my own problem. And it gives me like a deeper
level of empathy, versus some people, they're just like pure capitalists. And it's just
like, you know, golden teddy bears are selling and they'll just go out and start hawking
golden teddy bears. I don't know, like, I'm just there has to be some type of emotional
connection for me.
Yeah, what would you say motivates you? I mean, you're not a pure capitalist, you need
to be kind of interested. But if you look out a few years, like, where do you want to
be? What do you think is going to keep you going with trends?
Yeah, I think like independence motivates me a lot, just like control of my time. And
that probably links back to why I made the jump to from quitting the job. Yeah, just
like independence controlling my time, a sense of purpose. That's probably what it boils
down to.
I want to talk a little bit about this transition from from code to basically these newsletter
products. Let's say I could go back in time to like late 2019. That was when you kind
of made that transition, you started writing this book, what would you say are the lessons
that you had learned by that point? Like if I had interviewed you then and said, what
have you learned about building companies coming up with ideas and being an indie actor?
What were those lessons?
I sort of dumped all of those lessons in something called 100 rules to live by there was like
a business section. So it's like I have a really aggressive like garbage collection.
I try not to like keep too much stuff in my head. But I remember like what I was learning
at that time. At that time, I was making the transition and it was still tough from like
engineer to founder. For those three years, like I learned a lot about like myself and
how I work best and how to get myself to do things because it's one thing when like your
boss or your co workers are like depending on you. But now everything is on you. No one
will like care if you didn't get your commitments done for that day. And I felt like this each
time I quit my job of like I have months or you know, eventually years to just I just
got to know myself better and like how I best work. And I think that helped a lot. And it
almost I would love if like someone had an idea about how to fast forward that process.
But for me, it was just going through and having all of this time to myself to just
figure out how I work best.
So you spend years learning how you work best. Eventually, your bank accounts run and I can
only imagine much lower than it was when you first took off work. And you start doing things
that are more focused on what customers want. You start writing and providing data and you're
trying to balance Okay, what do I like doing? And what do actually other people care about
what resonates with them. So your product, I think you launched in November or September
of last year B2B sass marketing playbook. That was like the first thing that I saw you
posting a ton about on any hackers made a product page, you're posting these updates.
And I think the idea was that you were going to write this book, and you're going to publish
one chapter at a time of the book, like every week or every month, you publish another chapter,
and you get people to subscribe to a mailing list and actually, I guess read your book.
What was the idea behind that? Like, why did you come up with that idea? Do you have a
business model in mind? And how did you get it off the ground?
Yeah, think how I came up with the ideas. I just I feel like I have like this different
way of seeing the world or I'd like see certain aspects of things that other people may not
necessarily see. And that was just like one way to like get it out of my system didn't
have a business model around it. One mistake I made with that is that, like that project
had like a definite in right at some point, you're going to run out of chapters and the
book is going to be complete. And then what it doesn't continue to compound past that
point. And I didn't really like appreciate that until being halfway through. But yeah,
it was probably just trying to get something out of my system of like, you know, like,
is everyone seeing this? And if you look at it, there's just like, you know, companies
is almost like the training ground for trends we see in terms of like comparative analysis
and like lateral thinking where I'm looking at like, you know, comparing, you know, superhuman
to like, you know, it has elements of Tesla here. And like, you know, all of these like
seemingly unconnected things connecting them and putting them together.
Yeah, some of your posts were talking about getting subscribers. And you're so excited
in the very beginning, like your first update, you're like, I've already got a subscriber,
I've got, you know, 12 subscribers, I'm getting like two or three per day. And then the very
last update that you posted about the marketing playbook is like, growth is slowed. It's kind
of flat line. I'm used to getting more people. And I think at that point, you would you would
publish like four or five chapters, but on your website, you eventually got to all 10.
So it's like you finish the book, and you're just like done with it. And then you had another
post where you launched another thing. What made you decide that you wanted to keep doing
newsletters and doing content, even though your first sort of marketing playbook slowed
to a crawl? And what's something that you're interested in doing?
Yeah, I think it just came back to like problems of thinking about like problems being solved
where I didn't see a line between like, cold media, or if we add some other category, it's
just like, like, what what problem do like, I care enough about that I think I can stick
with for a while. And if it doesn't involve cold, cool, if it does, cool, but just like
really prioritizing like the problem and what I think I can stick with as opposed to like
the medium or the skill set required.
Well, you started all these different newsletters that I guess you thought you could stick with
it strong stack, SaaS report and eventually trends.VC. Did you have a business model in
mind for trends when you started it?
No, it was interesting because it was like it was a hard decision because like I always
have a list of like ideas in mind, like I keep a journal and I always have a list of
ideas and this was the one thing I didn't know, like how it would make money. But I
was just coming off of SaaS report, which was previously strong stack. And it's just
like I had this idea for how it would make money and I just ran out of steam in terms
of like pivots and working on the problem. So I'm just like, let's just try something
different. Yes, time is running out. But like, let's just try something different. I remember
the moment where I'm just like, okay, I'm going to try to like paint newsletter route
to monetize this. But leading up to that point, I'm like, you know, maybe this is just a networking
tool to like meet people and then eventually like invest or you know, build a fund or something
like that. But it was I think report number 11 with the paid newsletter. And I was just
like writing about so many examples back to back to back of people monetizing this. And
I feel like the more examples you have, the easier it is to do something. And it was just
like that became my reality for a week around just surrounded by all of these stories. And
it's just like I can do this, you know, to give me a sense of what your life was like
back then. Because a lot of people are in this phase, or maybe they quit their jobs.
So they're working on the side of their job. And they're trying to like, figure out what
ideas worth working on. And they're also like, validating those ideas and trying them out
and quitting. What was your day to day like? Were you working on multiple things at the
same time? You're doing a lot of research for new ideas? What does your life look like?
At the time, I was just looking for a way to blow off steam for SAS report of like,
it was just a struggle. I wasn't getting a lot of traction. Everybody had ideas about
what you could do with it. But it just seemed like it really like no one would be pissed
off if it didn't exist. So I was working on that. And I just needed a way to like release
steam. This was something that yeah, I didn't know how like, I would make money doing it.
But I like lost track of time working on it. And that was like TransVC. So both were running
at the same time. And I would go from, you know, working on SAS report, struggling, being
in a terrible move to TransVC sort of like being my plate, like it just felt like play
to me. I remember I had a conversation one night with KP, who we talked about in the
pre interview. And I was just like, man, like I'm just I'm going through like I have this
route that I think I think this thing can make money. I think it can work. I don't know
how this is going to work, but I enjoy this. And eventually I just you know, actually it
was after we met in Mexico City that on the flight back, I was just like, I'm just going
to cut it off, cut stop doing SAS report and try to figure this thing out.
So this is like newsletter number four or five that you're trying in like a six month
period. I mean, there's something we didn't even cover. Yeah, Twitter accounts for them.
I think it was like a product update product examples. And you did so many different things.
And it's fascinating to me because it's like you just decided to just go hard on this content
thing. And what's cool about it is you just got so much done. I mean, I think most people
would like try one content thing and then it fails and they quit. Or maybe they get
two done in like six months, you had like five or six of them. And they're all like
kind of similar and you're iterating. How did you get so much work done? You know, were
you working 12 hours a day? Do you have like some sort of crazy productivity habits and
tricks? Like how did you how are you so prolific?
Yeah, it doesn't feel like I'm that productive, like being I guess me but I do like I use
an app called habit list. And I've used it for I don't know how long but I just try to
pay a lot of attention to like how I designed my life, whether it's around meditation or
reading or how many hours I put into work and I just try to build streaks over time.
And it's easy because I was just telling a friend last night like it's easy to lose track
of progress day to day but also do weekly reviews. And when you look back over the last
week, it's like, okay, I did get a lot done. So maybe I don't appreciate those things enough.
I'm just like a fish in water and that's my reality. So if it looks like that from the
outside, it probably goes to like this app habit list.
You're like the exact opposite of me. I am. I'm the last person to have like any sort
of routines or habit tracker set up. Like I kind of roll out of bed and I think wouldn't
it be nice if I had daily habit, you know, wouldn't it be nice if I had like this exact
set of routines that I go through. And then I just do whatever I feel like doing.
Some of the times it works out really well and sometimes it doesn't. But I think I'm
pretty lucky to have basically a role where usually the things that I want to do are the
things that I have to do. And I think if you're not aligned in that way, then it really does
help to have some sort of thing to force yourself to do what you need to do.
What do you think are your most important habits that you track?
Definitely meditation is like number one, just because I feel like every other habit
came from that. It helps lower anxiety. It just gives me perspective for like not to
be reactive in conversations when something happens. And then if I don't like meditate
that day, things get crazy. So that's number one. I have a habit called like comfort challenge
where I have to do something like new or something that makes me uncomfortable. And it's sort
of like if you think of explore and exploit, this is the explore part where it just forces
me out of habits in a way. It forces me out of my comfort zone, out of a routine. And
a lot of things like that's how I picked up Chujitsu. Like it was a comfort challenge
to even go in there. And like I remember before I left the house, I'm like, do people get
hurt? And like in the forums, they're like, yeah, you get hurt. And I just had to like
shut all of that out and go, I'm going to change my life. So so many things have come
from that. I think those are like two most important habits.
The only habits that I really have are sort of socially motivated habits. So for me, I
find it pretty difficult to just sit down and look at a to do list and be like, because
this says this thing, I'm going to do this thing at this time. But it's a lot easier
for me to keep obligations. Like if I have something on my calendar with another person,
like my brother and I, for example, every day, we'll just spend an hour and we'll schedule
the beginning of the day, you know, 7pm, we're gonna spend an hour, we're gonna learn about
this topic. And there's no wriggling out of it. It's not like when the time comes, if
I don't feel like it, I don't do it. It's like an obligation to another person. And
I know that I'm going to learn about, you know, crypto today, or I'm gonna learn about
my read some Amazon shareholder letters or whatever it is that we're doing. And I felt
like those are the only ways for me to be consistently productive over time. And looking
at a lot of founders who go from working a job like you're working, where they have all
these social obligations, they have co workers and bosses, and they have a family that they
need to feed. And suddenly they quit. And they're just kind of off spending in the world. And
like, it's hard for me to get things done day to day. And it's easy for people to underestimate
the degree to which like obligations to other people can really be a backbone to you being
consistently productive. So I wonder how much of a role that plays in your life? You know,
is it all just you by yourself willing yourself to get up every day and do these kinds of
things? Or do you have the sense that you're obligated to others and that you need to produce
to get your stuff done?
Yeah, I really relate to what you said almost feel like like social accountability is too
effective, where sometimes like, I'll stick with things just because like I committed
to them, even though like the strategy may have changed, or like, yeah, now there are
new options that make more sense. So like I have this thing where it's just like I try
to avoid I don't think it's good, but I try to avoid like social accountability, just
just because I know how effective it is.
Yeah, it's almost too effective. But anyway, you've got all these newsletters are working
on, you're doing a lot of them at the same time. And then eventually you hit on trends.
And it's apparent to me that it wasn't obvious to you when you first started trends that
this was a standout idea, that it was going to be better than all your other ideas, because
you're still working on other ideas at the same time. What was going through your head
when you were the very first trends newsletter, which I believe was about cloud kitchens?
I was just like happy to explore it's almost like an excuse to like explore my own curiosity.
So I was just happy to get that out of my system. Like I learned a lot doing it. It
was nervous. I was nervous like putting it out there. I think I just like for the first
four or five there, I didn't collect email addresses, I would just put them on Twitter.
I was nervous like posting it and putting it out there because the format was different.
It was short. Someone recently asked me like what assumption has to be true for like trends
VC to work out. And I'm like, it's already true. But the assumption was that people appreciate
like shorter content. And that was you know, it was different. And that turned out to be
true. And I'm grateful for that. But a lot of nervousness and also just I guess joy around
having an excuse now I have to you know, put this deliverable out there. Now this is my
excuse to go learn something. Why were you nervous? I mean, you'd release so many different
products before it's not the first thing you put online. You didn't fact we did a bunch
of stuff and had people subscribing. What about trends made it so much more nerve wracking
than the other things you're working on? I don't think this is just me. But like, I
still get nervous. Like before any report goes out. It's just like, how will people
receive this? And I also think that's why when you asked about habits, why comfort challenges
are so important to me, because they sort of conditioned me to like condition that out
of me. And even though it's there, like by definition, it has to make me uncomfortable
for me to do it. And for me to get credit, like for something to be a comfort challenge.
But yeah, you just don't know how it's going to be received. And I don't know if it'll
come up. But like even the haters section is a way to like hedge against that of like,
let me still man everything here. And it just turned out to like be more than that. And
people like kind of see it as a source of entertainment, even if they don't care about
the topic that we.
So yeah, let's talk about the format for one of these trends emails. So you've got them
all online and go to like trends at VC slash no trends issue 01. I like your naming convention,
by the way, like your first email number 0001, which I don't have a podcast as well. And
the beginning of the email, you say this is the problem, right? Traditional websites will
lose in the delivery game, unless they optimize, right? And you have a bunch of different sections
that analyze this whole trend, you say, here are the major players, here are your predictions
for what's gonna happen in the future, here are opportunities that maybe other founders
and indie hackers can take advantage of. And then you've got your haters section, which
is kind of like predicting what people might say against you, like, you know, Drew, you're
stupid, actually, here's, here's the reality. And so you kind of put that in quotes, and
then you respond to it. So like you're like, you're saying kind of hedging and making sure
that like, hey, you might be nervous about how this is going to be taken. But like, you're
proving to people that you've thought about it. And you're sort of, you know, addressing
some of these objections in advance, or I think is which I think is brilliant, because
the internet could be kind of a brutal place. If you put something out, like people will
kind of thoughtlessly just tear down. So you're sort of addressing them. And you've got links
for further reading. So people can like, kind of look at what I assume is all the research
that you did to put together the entire issue. How long did it take you to hit on this format
and how much work went into just writing this one email?
Yeah, so like, that's just the base, like format has evolved since then. But I don't
know, like maybe 30, 20, 30 hours, like went into that report. And as like the formats
evolved to, you know, now there's like solution. And sometimes there's like terms, if I feel
like we have to define what we're talking about, there's like a key lesson section,
there are like trends, pro notes, which you know, we to we go in and out, which are like
many essays. But yeah, I'll say about like 20 to 30 hours went into that report. And
the format for that report is just how I think and as it's evolved, it just came from like
conversations that I had with readers of, you know, the solution part came from like
a conversation I had with someone, I think those links were just like the title of the
page. But eventually, I started summarizing links after conversations with readers. It's
just evolved from there.
How did you decide that your first topic would be cloud kitchens?
It just been top of mind for so long. Like I just needed an excuse to like put the work
in and then like organize my thoughts and like put it out there because I feel like
I used to just like read and like, you know, learn voraciously. But I feel like the other
half of learning doesn't really come. It doesn't come unless you try to like teach it to someone.
And I used to like not appreciate the writing or like the writing part of it is still like
challenging. But I like it. I like it because this is where I learned the other half like
trying to clarify this, I expose my own ignorance in a lot of ways or like if I can't explain
it simply, then I don't understand it. It's cliche, but it's true.
Yeah, the best way to learn is to teach another cliche. That's also very true. And a lot of
people get nervous just like you did. Just like I did when I was launching indie hackers
where you're trying to teach people something or you're trying to say like, Hey, I know
how this works. Here's my report on it. Because you're starting questioning your own knowledge.
Like, well, do I really know how this works? And there are certainly people out there on
Earth who know way more than me about this. In fact, that's what I'm learning from. So
that qualifies me to put this information out there. But you just got to accept the
fact that there's lots of people who know significantly less than you do, especially
if you're putting 20 or 30 hours a week into just researching this, like most of your subscribers
have put zero hours a week into researching cloud kitchens. And so, you know, it's still
going to be useful for them and entertaining for them and educational.
Yeah, yeah.
So what was the result after you put 30 hours into researching this? And then I don't know
how many hours into writing it up, you know, you tweeted it out, you posted it on your website,
what happened?
The people closest to me. So they like they just reacted. I remember I had the idea for
a few months and I was in I'm part of a mastermind called zero to one makers. And I just like
we we do weekly updates, our weekly updates were done. And I threw the idea out there
like deep framework based research. And like the room was pretty neutral. There's this
guy Edmund, that was like, you should definitely do that. So that was Friday, the report came
out Monday. And what I realized after posting it on Twitter is that no one really understood
like what it would look like or what I mean, because their reaction, like they're just
like, oh, like this is cool, but this isn't what I thought you were explaining. So that
was a good feeling. Like it felt like it exceeded expectations in a way. And that was that
like for the first four or five, six, like I said, there was no like email collection.
So I'm not able to gauge like how many people are interested enough to like opt in the future
reports. I just wasn't collecting that big mistake.
Yeah, what made you decide not to collect it? Because you'd launched so many different
emails, really, like related products in the past, like I assume you have almost like a
miniature playbook for like, here's how you do an email newsletter. Here's how you write
your study research.
Yeah, at that time, I wouldn't say I had a playbook. Now I feel like I do to go back
to your point of like, I feel like success teaches us in some ways. But then like if
I had a playbook, I wouldn't have like not collected emails. But um, yeah, I don't I
don't know why I didn't do it. Another mistake, it was like on my personal site. And I remember
when I moved it off of my personal site, like I just, it's hard to like quantify, but like
the reactions changed. That's the only way I could put it like it started being received
differently, like when it was on its own domain. But that's something I would have done earlier
if I had like a playbook or knew more about what I was doing at the time, because it was
just all failures. It feels like with trends, we see like something happened that never
happened before with any of these projects of like, I've closed a full loop. And it's
it's hard for me to express.
Okay, so let's keep going through the history then. And maybe we'll cover some of like what
action is in this playbook. Step one, eventually started collecting email addresses. And as
you said, you put it on your own domain, which I think, you know, instead of being Drew Riley's
email list, now it has its own professional brand, it's trends, you also started posting
them on indie hackers around episode or issue number five or six, because I think your very
first post on any hackers, you'd already done a bunch of them. I was like, Oh, what's this?
What changed once you put an email collection form on there? How many people were signing
up? And how did you feel about the project once you saw that people actually were gonna
subscribe?
Yeah, we're still slow going at first, like, if I go back to the beginning, like maybe
the first week, there were like seven, seven or eight subscribers. And the next week, maybe
they were like 30 or 40. And then it got featured by this guy, Michael Gil, who's in our mastermind
as well, that runs no co coffee. And it was the like, it made me the most nervous of like,
not the product hunt stuff that recently happened. But one week, I think it went from like 70
to 400. So from a multiple perspective, I was really nervous to like send that next
report out. And then from there, like it would just, you know, keep going up. But it was
definitely like slow going at first, even once, you know, a few reports were out and
I was collecting emails. It wasn't like super crazy in the beginning.
Did you have any sort of like strategy for how you're going to get more people to subscribe
to it? Did you have like a Twitter playbook or an SEO playbook?
Yeah, from a Twitter perspective, I still feel like like tweet threads are underrated.
What I would do is like break the report down and into tweets, like just a big tweet storm.
And then I would go back and forth between like one week I would tag people the next
week I wouldn't tag people. And it was actually Rosie from Indie Hackers that told me like,
you need to go back to tagging people. And you know, those are like pretty hit or miss.
But that's the thing about tweet storms. Like you can't necessarily, well, I can't predict
the success of them. But if you just you consistently do them, some things will hit. And like a
week that you know, would go well, maybe there's like 1000 or 2000 subscribers that would mostly
it seems come from Twitter. And then, you know, some weeks are more like duds. That
was a big, a big thing, a big tactic using tweet storms to grow.
And then at some point, you actually started making money from this. So like these first
trends emails, maybe you're tweeting about them, maybe your friends and colleagues are
tweeting about them and you're getting subscribers, but you're still making $0. You're still,
you know, three years into your many retirement and just watch your backyard decline. When
did you decide that, hey, you know, trends should have some sort of price tag? And how
did you decide what the business model should be?
Yeah, it was the I think report number 11 paid newsletters of just seeing so many examples
of people do this. I was like, I'm gonna give it a shot. And even the strategy that I used
at first, it just it just failed where I in the previous in the week leading up to when
I was going to try to monetize, I was like, Hey, you can preorder the next report. Here
goes the topic. And I think like 102 people viewed it and no one bought it. So that following
week, I can't remember whether I charged for the next but the topic changed. I can't remember
whether I charged for that report. But I was basically like that didn't work out no one
bought so instead of going like biweekly, where you're going to get a free report charge,
I ended up doing something that people close to me told me to do up until that point, where
they were like, you know, just like break the report down and like make half of it free
make the other half paid and I didn't want to do that because I felt like the reports
were already short. But it's ended up working. I just ended up doing like more research to
like keep the length pretty much the same. And that's when I think the work like expanded
but also like that's what allowed it to take off in terms of making money.
Why do you think that business model worked better than the sort of, you know, summer
free summer paid model that you experimented with at first and nobody bought?
I wish I knew because that was one reason like I remember being in slack. We have the
slack for my mastermind. And there were like five people against me where I'm just like,
like, can you show me any example where someone is like doing this model and they're successful?
And like, I got no responses. So I still don't know anyone that's like following like this
model of like, you can buy single reports and then, you know, they're like annual subscriptions.
But now there's no monthly. I wish I knew I don't know why it worked.
I mean, I've seen some examples of podcasts and newsletters and things were like, you're
reading or God, I wish I remember what show was I was listening to the show and it was
a great interview. And then music started playing like, for the rest of this episode,
like subscribe here, blah, blah. And I was so mad. I was like, I've ended this episode
and you're just going to cut me off like this and get me to pay. And then I literally just
online and paid because they already like hooked me in and I wanted more as opposed
to I think sometimes just someone's like, Hey, you know, this one's free, but the next
one is paid. Like I don't care about the next one because I haven't gotten absorbed in the
story or haven't like seen how good it could be. So I'm not shocked that your new business
model where you decided to make half of it free and half of it paid is the one that actually
worked.
Yeah, I think you're right. And even though it's like not narrative based or you know,
telling a story, there's still this like this open loop that's left open if you don't like
you know, purchase and close it. So I think that's a great point.
So at first you basically made issue number, I think 11 or 12 half free half paid. How
many people actually paid for it?
A lot. So at that point, like reports were like three books, which I think I just again,
like I was just came out the gate. I'm like, after coming off like a failure, I'm like,
how do I lower the bar success? And I think like 30 people bought that report that day
for $3. And that day, like four or five people were like, how can I just subscribe instead
of you know, buying the reports each week. And I rolled out a way to subscribe. And nobody
bought that day. Like I just messaged those people back, but nobody bought and I'm saying
it because he's made it public. But like somehow Patrick Campbell found this link. And he was
the first person to subscribe. And I'm glad he was because like I've been following him
for at least a year up until that point. So I just like I was just on cloud nine for like
a week after that happened, that he was like the first person ever subscribed. And again,
like I never sent him the link. I don't know how he found it. And it may have been like
on Twitter, like a thread or something that I was responding to someone else. But yeah,
30 people bought it and then rolled out subscriptions that same day.
It's a pretty good feeling, huh? Yeah, yeah, definitely better than the week before. So
at that point, I mean, I think you were still working on other projects. In addition to
trends like what what convinced you that like trends was the way to go. And that this is
what you wanted to focus on primarily because I think you know, I've seen you talk about
online how you might shut down other projects and that trends is really your focus. What
was the turning point there?
I probably had the feeling after like even though I think I think we're talking about
product examples, even though like a lot of people relatively like it had more initial
traction than even trends we see had. But I just felt like I felt like I could do trends
VC longer and like get more compounding in later stages. And I think that was a big part
of that decision where it's just like what game can I play for longer and it just felt
like trends VC was it.
Yeah, Harry Dry runs marketing examples.com, which is very similar to your other website
slash newsletter product examples. And what's really cool about those example type things
is they're usually stories are there, you know, examples obviously of other people succeeding,
which is really cool. And similar to what I did with indie hackers at first words like
okay, spotlight on this entrepreneur, what are they doing that's working for them, but
also kind of hard to monetize, because not that many people are really feel like they're
getting a ton of like value that they can make money from when they read the story of
like one person versus when you're doing with trends, it's like you're covering entire industries
like you do a trend on paid newsletters, a trend on lead generation, a trend on gamification.
And anyone who's like actually trying to build a company in that industry, you're trying
to build a business in that industry, that's invaluable information for them. Like you've
done so much research and compiled it all into one place. I think it's just really easy
to understand like how someone could take that and make money from it versus you know,
one individual example or one story was like that's interesting and intriguing and I want
to share it. But like, am I going to pay for like one story about one company? I'm not
sure.
Yeah, yeah, I've never thought about it that way. I know some people they still ask for
like individual deep dives, but that's not as interesting to me as like comparisons like
within the industry and you may see it a lot but I even like compare seemingly unrelated
verticals to this vertical like that that type of comparative analysis is I just find
it more interesting to go back to the fit of yeah.
Yeah, and I think just broadly this whole sort of model of curating information for
people is really underrated. I've been talking about this for three or four years. I mean,
I was inspired by Peter levels who did this with nomad list. He's like, hey, a lot of
people want to travel and it's a ridiculous amount of work to go find information on all
the cities on earth and figure out which one's the best to travel to you. Like what if I
just did that research for you and then kept it updated and charged for access. Right.
Build a community on top of it and the hackers is the same thing like let me do a bunch of
research on a bunch of different founders and companies and put it all together so that
you can learn in one place that happen to go everywhere and trends seems the same to
me if I really wanted to like come up with a business idea or figure out what's going
on in an industry. I don't want to track everything down online like I can just go to your trend
report find it all in one place and like you've actually, you know, taken the time to curate
it intelligently with the readers in mind and so I think just being able to save people
a lot of time and that way like understanding what people are spending time on and saving
them time is so underrated and all these different like curating businesses look different.
You know, like they don't, you wouldn't guess that like trends is any relation to any hackers
is any relation to nomad list is any relation to like all these other curating websites
but like the kind of the same idea over and over again, just for different niches and
different problems that they solve. Yeah, I love those like, again, seemingly unrelated
things when you draw like you see the through line like that's the type of stuff I enjoy.
So one of the things that you mentioned that is funny because I was really worried about
this at the beginning of indie hackers, I was worried, I'm going to run out of people
to interview like how many software engineer bootstrappers really are there. And after
like, you know, four or five months, it's like, okay, that's silly. It's like, and there's
more starting to do this every month and then I interview every month. So I'm never gonna
run out you with trends. I mean, you've got what you're up to like 30 different trends
that you've identified now. Why weren't you worried that you would run out and what's
your process like for researching these trends in the first place?
Yeah, like I wasn't worried from the beginning that I would run out just because like you
asked about cloud kitchens, why was that the first? Like that was just the tip of the iceberg
of I wanted to explore all of these things, but I felt like I needed an excuse to do it
and like the report was a deliverable. And since then, like even with cloud kitchens,
there were like trends spun out of that. And it feels like each time like I research one,
like three or four more come from that. And I just added to this list of things to explore
in terms of research is that same list of, you know, sometimes something is already there
and I'll just go add notes, you know, here goes a player I found or here's an interview
I listened to where they mentioned this or, you know, here's an opportunity that I just
randomly thought about in this space. So by the time that I actually start looking into
that trend, I'll like just copy all of this stuff from this report, dump it into like
a WordPress document and start like researching from there. I'll find more resources. So like
podcasts, videos, text, sometimes books. And it's just like intense research for a couple
of days. And then a crazy amount of like revising. There are like, I can't remember which report
it was recently, but I cut like 13,000 words out just to make it like less than 1000 words.
So there's a lot of like work that goes into and like reworking texts to make it like super
short and simple that I think that was the riskiest part of like, I don't personally
enjoy like extremely like fluffy like long form content. I didn't know like how many
other people saw the world that way. And they just seem to appreciate it. Look how readable
the reports are.
Yeah, it's, it's cool because you've just sort of built like a learning machine for
yourself. I've talked about this in previous episodes where if you have some sort of activity
that's attached to your job, like in order for you to do trends, you literally have to
research that's not an option. There's no option not to research. It's just like there's
no way you could do one of these without researching, right. And so it's not something that you
have to be personally motivated to do. It's not something that you need a bunch of tricks
to do. It is literally your job. And as a result of that, you're just going to learn
a ridiculous amount of stuff. And it's cool like, you know, for example, the fact that
you decided to start charging for your newsletter after you did a trend on paid newsletters,
right? Like that learning for your job helped you actually do your job better and turn this
from like a project into an actual business.
Has there ever been like a trend that you've uncovered where you're like, Oh, I don't want
to share this with anyone else, right? This seems like amazing and lucrative. And I want
to keep this trend to myself.
It was within that report you just talked about about paid newsletters of like the opportunity
being so good. I think that was the first and only time that I ever held something back.
Maybe a lot of people still don't know about it. But it was like confirmed of like there
were, I guess rumors around like how much Ben Thompson was making. And then someone
like sent me a screenshot, not of like the revenue, but of how like, if you reverse engineer
this, this is confirmed. I'm just like, man, like, do I do I do I say something? So that
may have been the first and only time I ever held something back, which kind of leads me
to a conversation we had in another post on indie hackers about like these subscription
media companies versus SaaS companies. And just subscription media is like your total
addressable market just as larger, like traditionally, like they're faster to get revenue. And they
still don't preclude you from going into like SaaS. So there are sort of these like, I don't
know secrets that it feels like some of us are sitting on.
Yeah, and I think this whole paid media sort of especially paid newsletters trend. I've
been talking about it a lot on any hackers. So people who are listening in are surely
aware of it. But by this point, maybe they're tired of me talking about it. But I still
think it's it's underrated. It reminds me of Bitcoin in like 2014 2015. I knew so many
people who are talking about it, and investing in it, and predicting like it was gonna be
the biggest thing. And at that point, I was like, I keep hearing about Bitcoin. It's like,
it's just so oversaturated. And I didn't even want to get into it. Because I felt like I
was late to the game. You know, you just like don't want to be starting off behind. I'm
like, let me find something new to care about. And it's funny, because it's like, well, I'm
an early adopter. And my friends are early adopters. And so I'm part of this echo chamber
where like, I think something's played out. But that's because I'm hanging around people
who are like on to different trends, like five, six years before anyone else even cares.
And I wonder if that's the case with with paid newsletters, like a lot of us who are
indie hackers, or involved in tech, like we all know what sub stack is. And we all know
who Ben Thompson is. And we all know about like these paid newsletters. But like, does
the average, you know, citizen of the world really know about this? Like, do we feel like
this thing might be oversaturated or might be too late to get into when the reality is,
most people don't know about it. And like the biggest future for it is yet to come.
Yeah, you say you like say this every week sort of related is this point I keep making
every week about everything being commoditized, except for trust and attention. And it's like,
I'm just gonna keep hammering that point until I feel like more people get it. But that's
an advantage that like, subscription media, paid media subscription newsletters have of
like, now you have this trust, you have this attention. You know, I feel like code is being
commoditized with no code. Manufacturing, you have on demand manufacturing, where you
take like a white label manufacturer, like printful, some people have more success, some
people have less success using that business. But it's because like, people have less and
more trust and you know, different audiences are like work different amounts. And it just
seems like in terms of value extraction, value add, like most of the value is shifting towards
like who has the trust who has the attention.
What do you think is so important about trust and attention when you say that those aren't
being commoditized? Like what does that mean to you?
They're scarce, it can't be copied, right? Like if someone ideas are commoditized, like
as soon as it's out there, it's like, oh, that's a great idea. I'm gonna do it. Or once
someone figures like a new form factor out of like, to solve this problem, this app needs
to work this way. Like that can be easily copied, maybe even with no code, or maybe
it's even a template that I can find on zero code or something. But trust can't be copied,
you know, so I think that's what makes it like scarce. That's what makes it valuable.
And trust for you in particular means people knowing who you drew are, and liking your
style and your personality, and effort that you bring, which can't be copied because nobody
else's is drew Riley.
Yeah, and that's for like a personal brand. But for a corporate brand, like Apple or Nike,
like, you know, you could make better shoes than Nike, but they'll still have the trust
like it's it gives them defensibility. So I think it applies to like personal and corporate
brands.
So what do you see trends as I know you said it was on your personal website, and now it's
like its own brand that doesn't necessarily say drew Riley, is that a good corporate brain
for you? And if so, like, how do you build trust?
Yeah, I think there there is a difference between like trends we see and me, but I think
that like, they're very tied and that like, it's in my voice, and it's hard to separate
those. But like, if I just go out for drinks, like I might go out for drinks tonight with
my friends, like they're not getting like trends VC drew, they're just getting drew
drew. So I think it was a hill and a few other people where they just like they talk about
like, you know, sticking to your talking points on like Twitter and stuff like people aren't
interested in like what you have for lunch. And, you know, like you went to the park to
like with your kids for picking it cool, they don't care about that. Like talk about crypto
talk about no code. So I sort of like stick to like those aspects of me and trends VC.
But you know that, yeah, that's what the world wants. Like the people want like your talking
points, they don't necessarily want all of you in a way.
Yeah, Twitter is like one of the more interesting social networks that way, at least tech Twitter,
because everyone on every social network puts forward some sort of front, you know, sort
of curating their life and it's Instagram, it might be like, here's how much fun I'm
having. Or, you know, Twitter is kind of like, here's my work self, right? Here's all I know
about work, etc. Here's all I know about like marketing or trends or being an indie hacker.
And like, you're right. I mean, that's what people want from you. It's kind of how you
build a following and like you could probably be your full self somewhere else. But if you
give people not necessarily what they want, or you give them like kind of two different
faces of you, like some people will like that. But it's much harder than giving them, you
know, the face of you that they actually clearly want because they're subscribing to your newsletter
and paying for this every week. So like that's kind of what they want from Drew.
Yeah, it's sort of a game that like I play of like, I see people with like, you know,
they're well known, but just like, why aren't they're like following on Twitter like bigger
and you look at the thread or their timeline, it's like super random. And I think that like,
you know, they're not sticking to the talking points of, you know, credit to them for not
playing that game. But you know, if you want a bigger following is sort of a game to be
played. Yeah. And for you, I think the following matters a lot because you do a lot of distribution
on Twitter, like you've got these amazing Twitter threads that will cover your trends.
And so if that's your channel, like you probably need to play that game. And if it's not your
channel, maybe you can just post about like making pizza or whatever it is that you're
doing.
Right, right, right.
So how do you think about competition, you know, with this theme of trying to avoid being
commoditized, trying to build a brand and build trust? And how do you think about the
fact that like there exists another newsletter called Trends? I didn't know about the fact
that there are other people who might be getting into the paid newsletter games who want to
take away some of your market and do kind of what you're doing.
Yeah, I don't think about competition. Like I don't think there's any like direct competition
in terms of like we all have micro monopolies of like they can't do what I do. I can't do
what they do. There's a perception that like this is a zero sum industry. And I'm talking
about like paid newsletters as a whole. But it's just like, you know, Ben Thompson has
his voice, his perspective, his point of view. And it's not just like, oh, like he's a business
strategy writer, like no, he's been Thompson. If something happens, like there will be no
other Ben Thompson. If something happens, there will be no other trends VC. And there
are people who gravitate towards that. So I just see this whole space of like, you're
either selling like news, which is a commodity, you're selling insights, which probably just
comes from like this unique perspective that you have, or you're selling signal, which
is probably the best position to be in. Because this thing like you can say some crazy stuff
that doesn't even make sense. But now all of a sudden, it's valuable because who said
it, you see that a lot too. But it's a nice position to be in of like just having the
value of what you said attached, you know, to the person who said it. And I think that
like insights can be copied, they can be stolen. But the source can't be stolen, the results
can be copied, but the source can't be copied if that makes sense.
It makes total sense. And I think when I look at trends, part of me wishes you put more
of yourself into it. I'm like, I want a picture of Drew on this page somewhere I want to know
this is Drew. Because as you get bigger, I think like, you know, one of your big advantages
is that you you've been so active as an indie hacker, you're part of these mastermind groups
are active on Twitter, you add an amazing product launch in part because everybody knows
who you are. But also as you grow, you start to reach new people who don't know who you
are, like, who is this guy? I have no idea. Like, you don't necessarily have goodwill
towards you. And you know, maybe that grows on them over time as they read your stuff.
But do you think about injecting more of your personality and who you are as a person into
your newsletter? Or do you want the content to sort of speak for itself?
Yeah, I just took a note down, as you said that to like think about that more. It's not
something that I've thought about a lot. I remember one week I removed the haters section
and people were like, that's where your personality came out. So I think at this point, I know
that people appreciate that. It's just about like, I guess how to do it more. And something
else I think about a lot is like ethics and objectivity, where even though like the haters
section may seem sassy, like sometimes like I do try my best to be like objective. And
you know, that's why I have to be really careful about like how I approach if I want to fund
of how to do a fund if I'm investing in the same companies I'm writing about. So I don't
want it to come out in a way of like just being like too biased or anything. But yeah,
it's something I'm thinking about, especially since you said it.
So what are your favorite trends? We talked about like, you know, the trends that were
the most impactful to you, the ones you wanted to keep kind of secret, because you realize
it was such a lucrative opportunity. You've done 30 trends now, which ones do you think
are like the most promising, which ones were your favorite to research and write about?
My favorite was probably startup studios, because I don't know for how long, but like,
every 10 years like leading up to that report, I wanted a startup studio just because it
sounds like this is just my idea generator, I just get like my science lab, I just get
to, you know, experiment with all of this stuff. And again, like for an entire week
being surrounded with all of these examples, all of these stories, all of these interviews,
you're just like, Oh, like these things are spun out. And there's like less compounding
that say like an Amazon or something. And it just became like less appealing to me.
But in a way, there are like elements of a startup studio within Trends VC, where I'm
able to like, you know, deal in like a completely new vertical each week. And that's enough.
But there's still like compounding between audience and you know, I'm carrying people
from like week to week, you know, some people drop off, but more people come each week.
So there are elements of that. So startup studios, paid newsletters, of course, just
because that's when I realized that like, you know, this could possibly work like this
could be a way to make money and not have to go back to work for the man. I guess the
first one like cloud kitchens just because like that was getting out there that was stepping
out there. And you asked like why it made me nervous. But the reaction after that, like,
you know, like number two made me less nervous, nervous than number one and three and so on.
I'm probably forgetting a lot. But I think those are the major points.
Startup studios is really interesting, because it is like, it just seems fun. You know, it's
like, I don't know what company I'm going to work on. So what if I made a company to
just work on a bunch of different companies, that would be cool. And they're not often
that successful, not that other companies are super successful all the time, either,
like the hit rate for many companies and the actors is pretty low. But I think there is
really something to focus like like even doctor compounding, right? If you have one newsletter
and one subscriber base, and it gets bigger every week, like that's so much easier and
more successful than having a bunch of small things that end up not amounting to very much.
And to go back to Amazon is interesting, because I talked about like trends, VC being sort
of my outlet of like my startup studio in a way. But like I once heard Amazon described
as like the company that generates companies. So it's like, they still get to like, you
know, reuse their customer base in a way or like remark it to them. But they're still
like, you know, spinning up AWS and then even within AWS other like services. So it's like
a fractal in some ways. But they're getting more compounding than say, like a D2C startup
studio that's going to like spin this out, find an EIR to like run it and you know, do
this other stuff.
I think a lot of that has to do with timing, right? It's like not like Amazon came out
of the gate. And in year number one, they're like, we're going to do 50 different things.
Like they built this extremely powerful ecommerce platform, got a ton of mindshare, like customers
love them had a ton of revenue. And then they use that to sort of spin off these alternative
businesses like AWS off the back of their infrastructure. And we've seen so many other
bigger companies do the same thing. So I worry when Andy hackers, you know, two months into
a project start doing 15 different things. And I was like, we don't have an advantage
to build on you don't have a giant mailing list to build on, etc.
Yeah, yeah, I think that's a great point.
So at some point, your revenue sort of hockey sticked with with trends at VC. I mean, you
said you're making over $20,000 last month. What are some of the biggest changes that
you've made to help your revenue grow so quickly over just the last few months? Because that's
an insane number.
Yeah, I'm thinking about like, you know, a lot of it came from product time. And even
before product time, there was like, you know, consistent growth in terms of like raw subscriber
numbers of like new daily signups. And it sounds silly in retrospect, but I didn't know
if this part would work of each week, like a report goes out. And there's like a prompt
to upgrade. So I still don't have a funnel built in where there's like an automated sequence
or anything like that. But this sort of acts as that funnel of like, each week table stakes
a report has to go out, and some percentage of the audience is going to convert. So by
growing that like base number, like the percentage of people that convert it just goes up. But
I don't have any like crazy conversion hacks or anything yet. I'm actually looking at that
like how to increase the conversion rate. But it's just like raw numbers at this point.
So let's talk about some of those numbers. You had one of the more successful product
on launches that I've ever seen. You launched in August, I think you're the number one product
on product. And all of August, which is not easy to do nowadays, product is so big. Why
did that go so well? I think it was just like stored goodwill for a lot of people that are
just like, you know, I don't feel the need to upgrade because I get so much for free.
And a lot of my friends are like, you give too much away from free. But I think it's
sort of like that social capital, like some other type of capital that isn't money was
stored up. And that when you give people like a chance to support you all of that, not all
of that, but some of that gets released. And they just like show as much support like the
comments more than like the day product of the day product that we project up the month,
just the comments and seeing like, you know, I started this company after this report was
released or like just everything that like people were saying, like, I just go back to
that and read it like whenever I'm having a bad day or whatever. But I think it was all
of that like stored goodwill in a way of giving away so much for free that just came out in
the launch.
It's kind of the genius I think of launching late. A lot of people build something new
to like, I got a launch on day one, everyone needs to see this. And it's like, well, do
you really want to blast out your thing to anyone and everyone? Like before you've iterated
on it, before you build up any goodwill, before you know if it works, before you have email
capture, before you're charging money, like shouldn't you try to grow things organically
first and then once you know things are going well, then launched. And I don't know if this
is intentional or not for you and trends, but like that's exactly what you did, right?
By the time you launched our product on it, you already knew you'd hit on a good formula,
you'd already iterated on it a bunch and improved the format, you already had like a bunch of
trends, emails people could see in the past, and you'd already built up a bunch of goodwill
by giving away stuff for free.
Yeah, I wish I could say that like, that was some like grand plan that I had, but it was
really just being nervous to like launch before that point. And I don't know like what I would
advise people to do because the longer that I went without a launch, the higher my expectations
would have like this thing better work because I waited this long. So yeah, that is an advantage.
I wish I would be able to say like it's intentional. But I do think that at least for people close
to me, it's going to like change the way they go about things and sort of like, like opening
their product in more of like a concentric circle instead of like product being like
the first stop to like launching something.
To never be your first stop. I don't think it's ever great to be your first stop. I mean,
it's kind of like the, it's like the easy sort of like, where should I launch Hacker
News product on kind of way to do things, right? It's like, when you don't really have
a growth strategy, when you're not sure how you can repeatably get more customers, that's
off on the first answer that comes to mind. And so I think it should probably be the last
thing that you do. Because not only anything is really worth working on if you don't have
some way to repeatably get customers. And so like, if that's the real challenge, like
you should probably front load that and figure that out. And only then, you know, spend your
time trying to blast it out to everybody once you've confirmed like, hey, there is a repeatable
way to keep getting people in the door for this particular thing I'm working on.
Yeah, that's actually what I'm writing about this week of like audience first products,
you know, instead of going to like a Hacker News or a product hunt, having like an audience
that you've been forced to understand, and how knowing how to reach them, building that
up, you know, instead of going for this launch with this hype hangover that's eventually
going to happen.
Now tell us about that. What does it mean to have an audience first product?
Yeah, I just think of it as like, you know, you're building trust with your audience before
you even have a product. So that might come in the form of like a blog, a newsletter,
a podcast, a personal brand, having that ready before you have a product ready, you understand,
you know, what problems, what struggles they have, you have people willing to give you
feedback, you know, they may be more like generous and like more lenient in terms of
like if your product doesn't work, even if they don't need the product, they may be willing
to help you spread the word like to go back to having good will stored, you're forced
to deliver value to build an audience, you're also forced to understand your future customers
or, you know, your audience through this. So it's like a forcing function in a way.
And I think what's interesting about this audience first product idea is that you can
actually do both at the same time. You can build something that generates an audience
and you can build something that generates a revenue.
I've seen that a lot.
And they can both be the exact same thing. Like one doesn't have to necessarily come
before the other. And you've done this with trends, right? Trends is just one product.
It's one newsletter. And early on, it helped you build an audience and now it's making
you tens of thousands of dollars a month. And I did the same thing with Indie Hackers.
It was a collection of interviews, it was a blog, and it was free. And my Twitter audience
went from like 400 people to tens of thousands. And then later on, I added like sponsorships,
but not that much later, I think three weeks after I launched it, I was making money from
it. So you don't necessarily have to do two different things. And I'm curious in your
report, how many of these companies are going to be doing like one audience building and
revenue generating product?
I think you made a great point. Like, I heard a story from Dan Schipper of like super organizers
was supposed to just be his way to build an audience before he released productivity software.
And he was just like, no, like, I can just turn this into a paid subscription. That's
his way to monetize. Who knows if he continues walking down that path and like release, you
know, take the software route. But you know, to your point, like, that's a great route
to take.
Yeah. What do you think is the difference between something that builds an audience
that people can charge money for and something that builds an audience that like is forever
going to be free, but maybe just results in more people following you or subscribing?
I'm not sure what's the answer to that. Because like my mind goes to whether you know, it's
like utility based or education based, but I can find examples of both working. It sort
of reminds me of the conversation around like newsletter fatigue right now of I feel like
like that's mostly BS, it just forces quality up and it probably just comes down to quality,
whether it's about utility or entertainment, people have to get like enough value out of
it to justify, you know, justify charging.
Yeah. And that's what I like about trends. I mean, it's pure value, right? Like I can
use it, I could use trends to actually improve ND hackers as a business. Like what's in the
act to be writing about? Who should I be interviewing? Well, instead of doing a ton of research myself,
I could just read trends. Andrew's gonna tell me. And I think if you have that value for
people who are actually engaged in industries that make money, you know, if you're teaching
people like, I don't know, like how to be better foodies, well, I don't know, maybe
there's not that much money in like eating food. But there's a lot of money in like building
businesses and educating people around that. So I like what you've done. And it's pretty
inspiring to see your revenue growth. So as is a tradition here, I always ask, what's
your advice for other ND hackers who are in the position that you're in just six months
ago, really, not making any money, try to figure out which idea is going to work? What
do you think they should take away from your story?
I'll just say try to find something that you can stick with. For a while. Yes, it matters.
Like the market needs to have what you have to offer. But I think that like V zero version
zero almost never survives and you have to be willing to like stick it out through pivots
through iterations. And that's hard to do if you just don't love what you're working
on.
Love what you're working on. Stick it out through pivots and iterations. Drew Riley,
thanks for coming on the show.
Thank you, Cortland.
Listeners, if you enjoyed this episode and you want an easy way to support the podcast,
you should leave a review for us on iTunes or Apple podcasts. Probably the fastest way
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much for listening and as always, I will see you next time.