I'm Dru Riley, I've spent 4,000+ hours researching business models and marketing strategies. AMA 👇

@lax_mariappan This reminds me of our report on competitor risk. There’s a mental model I use of competitor risk versus market risk. Competitor Risk: The market is proven. Incumbents are making money. Margins may be low (due to competition) but the form factor exists. You don’t have to build a new category. Market Risk: It’s not clear that there is a market for what you’re building. There are no incumbents. Note: There should still be alternatives. i.e. How are people solving this problem right now? If no one is solving the “problem” in other ways, there may be no business there. Another way to think about competitor risk vs market risk is red oceans (competitive) vs blue oceans (open). There are also purple oceans. Micro-monopolies. Injecting your personality, style or story into what you’re doing. Newsletters built on personal brands for example. The downside? Tasks within micro-monopolies may be hard to delegate and the business may be hard to sell. If you’re going into a competitive market. You’ll need to innovate somewhere to gain traction. A new go-to-market strategy? A specific target market? - See Popsy vs Super. Super came first but they don’t have a freemium plan. Popsy came later with a free forever plan. This is counter-positioning. Make it hard or impossible for incumbents to follow. Super might cannibalize current customers if they try to copy Popsy. - See any AppSumo SaaS deal. Most are copycats. It’s X with a lifetime deal. They’re not innovating on product. The product may even be worse than the incumbent. But some customers put more weight on price than quality. - ProcessKit is ProcessStreet. But for agencies. They decided to niche. This reply is already getting uncharacteristically long. But we have nuances like “death zones.” My friend has a very success bootstrapped business. But the market isn’t competitive. Why? It costs too much for bootstrapped newcomers to catch up on product development. They’ve tried and died. And the market isn’t big enough for VCs to support spending outpacing revenue for a long time. Another nuance is the worst of both worlds. You’ve created a new category. But the market tends toward fragmentation. Rather than monopoly. There are no moats. You’ve done the hard, risky work of building a new market. But the spoils will be split. Imagine the pharmaceutical industry without patents. “Is it okay to start a service or product for over saturated or highly competitive (niche) market?” The short answer is yes. It’s doable. Especially if you have a differentiated approach. But I’m a fan of long-term games. They are the most profitable. I’d first ask: What can I stick with the longest? What am I most interested in? And do that. Compounding is powerful. If you’re consistent, time does most of the work. Here’s a link to the report on competitor risk: https://trends.vc/trends-pro-005... It’s such an important concept that we made the Pro Report free.

@dru_riley Thanks Dru You got me here // What can I stick with the longest? What am I most interested in? And do that//

@lax_mariappan It is generally not recommended to start a service or product in a highly saturated or competitive market. This is because such markets are often crowded with well-established competitors who have already gained a significant share of the market. In these markets, it can be difficult for new businesses to differentiate themselves and gain a foothold. Additionally, highly saturated and competitive markets are often characterized by low profit margins and intense price competition, which can make it difficult for businesses to turn a profit.

@roman_io My go-to tools are the Himalaya podcast app and Apple Notes. My favorite medium for research is podcasts. On managing information overload, I take notes as I research. And practice force ranking. The best stuff floats to the top and the worst gets cut. I believe in the idea that “the good sh*t sticks.” i.e. If information is forgettable then it’s not that important. Of course there are exceptions. i.e. Himalaya is great because it’s the only podcast app I’ve found with episode-level search (not podcast-level). ListenNotes is also useful for search if you prefer another podcast player. We have a Trends.vc Analyst team now. Each analyst has their own research style and preferences.

@stewartfortier Habits: * Meditation. It keeps me sane. I don’t know how I would manage multiple personalities on our team or in our community without meditating for 90 minutes each morning. * Comfort Challenges. Since the start of Trends.vc I went from 1 comfort challenge a day. To 3. Then 7 a day. Now I spend anywhere from 30 minutes to 90 minutes a day doing uncomfortable things. A lot of them are related to Trends.vc. Such as asking @hnshah to launch us on Product Hunt, applying to Capital Camp (😉) or launching a community. This expands my comfort zone and makes hard conversations easier to have and hard things easier to do. Those are the tactical things. There are also mantras that I try to remember. * Focus on what you control. 90% of the time that I’m stressing. It’s because I forgot this mantra. * Commitment over emotions. I do things based on what I told you I would do. Rather than how I feel. This also means that I don’t make promises that I don’t plan to keep. * Pick what you can stick with. The core idea of comparative analysis is what I love about Trends.vc. That’s allowed me to stick with it.

@qabil "How I built a paid community to 1,000+ members in 10 months" => https://twitter.com/DruRly/statu... The thread shares everything I learned about community building. One thing that most people underestimate is the power and importance of rituals. For example, we have daily standups and weekly masterminds. Some communities have annual conferences and monthly demo days.

@cagrisarigoz The short answer is delegation and elevation. One year ago, we started the search for Trends.vc Analysts. It took 7 months to find our first analyst and it’s one of the hardest things I’ve had to do. Since I love learning, pace and motivation was less of an issue. The bigger issue was that the opportunity cost of ignoring sales, marketing, community building and operations became too high for me to spend most of my time working on reports. David Senra from Founders podcast is an example to look at. He’s been doing this for twice as long as I have. I suspect that our businesses would be more similar if we never launched a community. In a lot of ways, the community changed everything. See my response to Lax on the importance of picking something that you can stick with. Also, we can’t ignore the importance of positive feedback loops. It’s easier to keep going when you have feedback in the form of comments, revenue, etc.

@sahilypatel Ironically, Product Hunt launches. Twitter threads also help.

@xavez "How I built a paid community to 1,000+ members in 10 months" => https://twitter.com/DruRly/statu... It's spelled out above from using magnets to building rituals to customization.

@marina_djuric "...which platform would you recommend to start building a community and some best practices?: It depends on whether you're looking to build a synchronous or asynchronous experience. On the synchronous side. A lot of folks use Slack or Discord. I prefer async so someone else may be able to chime in with recommendations here. On the async side, we use Circle. I'm not sure if I would make the decision if we were starting over. Heartbeat (https://www.heartbeat.chat/) is another option for async communities. "I would like your opinion on using LinkedIn to build an open community and how you would later re-direct people to a different platform to form a closed community." I'm not a big LinkedIn user, so we'll need others to chime in for this one.

@manthan_thakar I'll drop a link to a report that we on presales. The core goals seems to be that you want to validate an idea in an energy-efficient way. One of the highest forms of validation is a pre-order. i.e. Can you describe the problem well enough to sell the solution before it exists? Instead of (or in addition to) a waitlist you could add a Gumroad button to preorder. https://trends.vc/trends-0044-pr...

@dru_riley Thanks a lot for your response. The report you shared is very helpful, appreciate it!

@5harath How do you timebox research? It's embarrassing to say but I was never good at this. I would research and edit reports until moments before reports are released. Working under deadlines has taught me that perfect is a myth. But for some reason, I still try.

@mobilemediamania Did you have an audience before starting the newsletter? I had less than 300 Twitter followers and 0 email subscribers. But an amazing mastermind group that supported reports. How often do you move around to a base location while nomading and traveling? Where have your most favorite, project friendly places been? I typically move every 1-3 months. I feel most productive in Mexico City. How has nomading opened your horizons towards ideation and trends? It prevents habit rot and mind rot. It's harder to get into routines although I'm one of the most habit-obsessed people in the world. It's less about ideation and trends and more about people and systems. After a while, you start to see the throughlines in humanity. For creators not traveling the world, what would you do to keep creative trend setting observations flowing? I highly recommend comfort challenges. I'm working on an essay around this concept now. See my response to @stewartfortier. How are you keeping track of the hours? Everything (including sleep) goes on my calendar. If something is under (or over time) I update my calendar to reflect it.

@mobilemediamania @stewartfortier @dru_riley what mastermind group supported reports and how?

@stas_voronov (Maybe because I have perfectionist tendencies) it would take me 20-30 hours a week for research.

@dru_riley Thanks!

@ayushtweetshere One way to look at this is to invert the problem and ask "How do mastermind groups die?" The most common cause of death I've seen before starting our own groups is the lack of administration or poor administration. i.e. No one is willing hold the group accountable to attendance, size, format or other standards. "...any advice or tips you may have for running mastermind groups?" Actively manage groups. Take feedback but don't lead by consensus.

@dru_riley This is very helpful, thanks Dru 🙌

@sweatc 1) How often do you update your reports? We don't update past reports but we completely revisit topics. i.e. We've done Micro Private Equity 3 times. The cadence of when we revisit past topics varies a lot. What were the most challenging things about building your community, and how did you solve them? The hardest part was writing reports while trying to build the community. Since we had a "magnet" in the form of reports, it wasn't hard to find community members. I'd done reports on paid communities before starting one. So had lots of theses. The hardest part was not burning out while writing reports and building a new community.

@marchg If you're optimizing for de-risking. Choose competitor risk over market risk. See my reply to @lax_mariappan. I'd question whether de-risking should be the first priority though.

@juurikasjaan "How did you start co-creating the reports with other (rather notable) people? Referring to the parts of "We had a great time jamming on this report." This came from talking to community members who have expertise around topics that we cover. Trends Pro Members started responding to reports and I started asking questions about upcoming topics. And, how long did you create everything solo until you had some help? ≈ 8 months before I got an assistant to schedule reports ≈ 2 years before anyone else wrote a report

@jorgevmendoza Despite the name Trends.vc, we focus on helping bootstrapped founders. One of our core values is freedom over fame. "...in the new scenario for tech industry under non hyper liquidity cicle, what are the best options for funds both for new and already running projects?" I don't know enough about funding options to give a great answer.

@thisiswenzel "Many people argue that web2 solutions offer the same product. What's your take on this?" Generally speaking, it feels like Web3 teams are trying to replace Airbnb and Uber when they should focus on blue oceans. Things that Web2 does not solve well. The products that are winning have done this. i.e. Sending money without intermediaries. Uncensorable hosting. Digital property rights. Etc. "And what would be your suggestion how to grow a web3 brand." In my experience, brand building tactics are highly context-dependent. Depending on what you are building and who you are serving, the answer would vary wilding.

@marko_rakic2 Since I don't use LinkedIn a lot, I wouldn't be the best person to answer this. "Twitter hates LinkedIn. But I'll do 130M+ impressions & $1.4M on the platform in 2022. Here's how I use LinkedIn unlike anyone else:" Here's a thread from Justin Welsh => https://twitter.com/thejustinwel...

@kaisen2350 Network effects are hard to beat. So marketplaces and social networks. This would withstand the past 2 years constraint and the next two years constraint. Even if we're looking at NFT projects in 3 years. They still employ network effects. The question becomes more interesting if we ask the same question for business models that are easy to bootstrap.