Short, bite-sized conversations with indie hackers that have started small, profitable and bootstrapped businesses. You'll learn how they come up with ideas, what they do to validate, find those first customers and make a sustainable income.

Behind the success of Trends.vc - Dru Riley, Trends

April 29, 2022 0:14:32 13.99 MB Downloads: 0

Dru Riley is the founder of Trends.vc which at its core helps people discover new ideas and markets through expertly researched reports. Trends is a bootstrapped company that makes money through it’s Trends Pro reports and community.

In 2017, Dru took on a mini-retirement, sold a second home and set out with 3-5 years of savings to strike out on his own. After launching various newsletters, products and even book he eventually landed on Trends, which didn’t actually make any money for the first few months. But just 6 short months later, he was at over $20k MRR and growing fast.

Now, Dru is working through the challenges of scaling a rapidly growing business and even hiring people to take over that juicy core. The reports. Here's a link to the Indie Hackers episode he did where he talks more about what went into that growth.

What we covered in this episode:

  • Hiring for the core competency of the business, the reports
  • What Dru’s day-to-day looks like
  • Challenges with context switching
  • Starting Trends for fun
  • The idea behind framework based research
  • The first Trends report on cloud kitchens
  • How does Dru decide on topics for Trends
  • Choosing to persevere with Trends
  • Launching a community
  • How comfort challenges led to Trends success
  • When to stop projects
  • What Dru does for fun

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