Trends.vc
Drew Riley built Trends.vc around a simple insight: entrepreneurs need better ways to stay informed about emerging markets and trends, but more importantly, they need community and rituals to process that information together. The newsletter started as a way to provide structured, deep-dive analysis of everything from crypto to DAOs to the metaverse—covering "basically every thinkable market and trend and idea."
What started as a newsletter evolved into something much bigger. Drew realized that just publishing reports wasn't enough. He introduced daily stand-ups (asynchronous posts where members share what they did yesterday, what they plan to do today, and what they need help with). These rituals unlocked other community features: Trends Tribe (random one-on-ones matched on Mondays with other community members) and masterminds after a 100-day streak. The format proved so effective that it became the core of the business model.
The daily stand-ups became the stickiest feature, creating a daily ritual that kept members coming back. Drew's personal habit of reading his "100 Rules" every morning before planning his day inspired the broader philosophy: create systems and rituals that compound over time. Pricing evolved—he initially lowered prices but found that lower prices led to more low-quality support requests. Raising prices again solved that problem, suggesting that pricing can serve as a quality filter.
One challenge: stand-up participation seems to hit a natural asymptote where the number of participants stays flat until someone drops out and new people fill the quota. The community also grapples with the tension between transparency (everything public, driving SEO) and vulnerability (private discussions require trust).
Two years after launch, Trends.vc introduced Meta Trends, a generative art NFT collection that grants lifetime access to reports and community. Each NFT's art is algorithmically generated based on the topics covered in that issue—white dots (nodes) connecting related topics in a force-directed graph. This moved the product into "web 2.5" space, allowing both credit card and crypto payments. The North Star metric remains engaged email subscribers, and Drew continues his daily ritual of reading his 100 rules before planning each day.
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