Dru Riley is the founder of Trends.vc, a community + newsletter that helps 35,000 entrepreneurs discover new markets + ideas.
Trends makes tens of thousands of dollars/month in subscription revenue + was ranked "Product of The Month" on Product Hunt.
In this conversation you'll learn about:
– the meta-trends behind what Dru writes about, the things that don't change, after studying the things that do change
– democratization, positive-sum networks + fractional ownership
– trends he's excited about including: DeFi (decentralized finance) + DAOs (decentralized autonomous organizations) and NFTs (non-fungible tokens)
– the 80/20 of his research + editing process, including how he processed 172 podcasts for 1 recent report
– we go behind the mind & discuss some of his rules for life, we touch on incentives, stories + courage
Let us know what you think on Twitter: https://twitter.com/bzaidi https://twitter.com/DruRly
Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/q5rdqLzy-Gw
Timestamps:
- 0:00:00 - Preview
- 0:02:46 - Intro To Dru + Trends
- 0:04:57 - Scale of Trends
- 0:05:39 - Software Engineering Background + Knowing When To Leave
- 0:08:14 - Starting Books In The Middle
- 0:11:46 - Making First $15 after saving up $250k
- 0:21:00 - Rejecting An Offer Of Investment
- 0:22:22 - Decision Dilution + Stakeholder Types
- 0:25:14 - Content vs Trust Treadmill
- 0:26:01 - Refining Like A Standup Comedian
- 0:28:34 - Signals To Look For In Feedback
- 0:31:37 - Meta-trends
- 0:33:45 - Democratization
- 0:36:18 - Ability To Build Smaller
- 0:38:06 - Coders vs Builders - “Code Is Being Commoditized”
- 0:40:57 - Decentralization
- 0:43:06 - Positive Sum Networks
- 0:45:26 - What are DAOs (decentralized autonomous orgs)
- 0:46:53 - Fractional Ownership
- 0:48:45 - NFTs
- 0:51:41 - Direct To Consumer
- 0:52:44 - Research + Writing Process
- 0:54:57 - Processing 172 Podcasts
- 0:59:10 - Podcast Speed + Dopamine Hits
- 1:02:15 - Edit - “How Many, How Much”
- 1:03:52 - Filtering Feedback
- 1:05:49 - Constraints
- 1:08:34 - Starting From Scratch Today
- 1:11:37 - Behind The Mind - 100 Rules To Live By
- 1:12:15 - Hard choices easy life. Easy choices hard life.
- 1:13:05 - Think Grey, Not Black + White - Annie Duke
- 1:14:09 - Stories vs Insight
- 1:16:59 - Incentives
- 1:17:56 - “Life Is Short, Not Fair”
- 1:19:27 - Don’t Try To Change Someone’s Worldview
- 1:21:20 - “It’s Not About The Bag”
- 1:23:24 - Memento Mori
- 1:24:29 - Life Is Not Baseball - Play Asymmetric Games
- 1:25:23 - Courage
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